Elie Wiesel Quotes (80 Quotes)

I shall always remember that smile. From what world did it come from?

I told him that I did not believe that they could burn people in our age, that humanity would never tolerate it . . .

In the beginning there was faith - which is childish; trust - which is vain; and illusion - which is dangerous.

It is obvious that the war which Hitler and his accomplices waged was a war not only against Jewish men, women, and children, but also against Jewish religion, Jewish culture, Jewish tradition, therefore Jewish memory.

It was like a page torn from a history book, from some historical novel about the captivity of babylon or Spanish Inquisition.

It was pitch dark. I could hear only the violin, and it was as though Juliek's soul were the bow. He was playing his life. The whole of his life was gliding on the strings--his last hopes, his charred past, his extinguished future. He played as he would never play again...When I awoke, in the daylight, I could see Juliek, opposite me, slumped over, dead. Near him lay his violin, smashed, trampled, a strange overwhelming little corpse.

Listen to me, kid. Don't forget that you are in a concentration camp. In this place, it is every many for himself, and you cannot think of others. Not even you father. In this place, there is no such thing as father, brother, friend. Each of us lives and dies alone. Let me give you good advice: stop giving your ration of bread and soup to your old father. You cannot help him anymore. And you are hurting yourself. In fact, you should be getting his rations...

Never shall I forget that night, the first night in camp, which has turned my life into one long night, seven times cursed and seven times sealed....Never shall I forget those moments which murdered my God and my soul and turned my dreams to dust. Never shall I forget these things, even if I am condemned to live as long as God Himself. Never.

And I, the for­mer mys­tic, was think­ing: Yes, man is stronger, greater than God. When Adam and Eve de­ceived You, You chased them from par­adise. When You were dis­pleased by Noah's generation, You brought down the Flood. When Sodom lost Your fa­vour, You caused the heav­ens to rain down fire and damna­tion. But look at these men whom You have be­trayed, al­low­ing them to be tortured, slaugh­tered, gassed, and burned, what do they do? They pray be­fore You! They praise Your name!

Never shall I forget these things, even if I am condemned to life as long as God himself

Bread, soup - these were my whole life. I was a body. Perhaps less than that even: a starved stomach. The stomach alone was aware of the passage of time.

Never shall I forget those moments that murdered my God and my soul and turned my dreams to ashes.

Did I write it so as not to go mad or, on the contrary, to go mad in order to understand the nature of madness?

Next to him lay his violin, trampled, an eerily poignant little corpse.

Everybody around us was weeping. Someone began to recite Kaddish, the prayer for the dead. I don't know whether, during the history of the Jewish people, men have ever before recited Kaddish for themselves.

One more stab to the heart, one more reason to hate. One less reason to live.

For in the end, it is all about memory, its sources and its magnitude, and, of course, its consequences.

The world? The world is not interested in us. Today, everything is possible, even the crematoria...

He explained to me with great insistence that every question posessed a power that did not lie in the answer.

We believed in God, trusted in man, and lived with the illusion that every one of us has been entrusted with a sacred spark.

Human suffering anywhere concerns men and women everywhere.

We were masters of nature, masters of the world. We had forgotten everything--death, fatigue, our natural needs. Stronger than cold or hunger, stronger than the shots and the desire to die, condemned and wandering, mere numbers, we were the only men on earth.

I am not so naïve as to believe that this slim volume will change the course of history or shake the conscience of the world. Books no longer have the power they once did. Those who kept silent yesterday will remain silent tomorrow.

Writing is not like painting where you add. It is not what you put on the canvas that the reader sees. Writing is more like a sculpture where you remove, you eliminate in order to make the work visible. Even those pages you remove somehow remain.

There are victories of the soul and spirit. Sometimes, even if you lose, you win.

I believe that all the survivors are mad. One time or another their madness will explode. You cannot absorb that much madness and not be influenced by it. That is why the children of survivors are so tragic. I see them in school. They don't know how

The books I have read were composed by generations of fathers and sons, mothers and daughters, teachers and disciples. I am the sum total of their experiences, and so are you.

I swore never to be silent whenever and wherever human beings endure suffering and humiliation. We must always take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented.

The opposite of love is not hate, it's indifference.

Man, as long as he lives, is immortal. One minute before his death he shall be immortal. But one minute later, God wins.

I have not lost faith in God. I have moments of anger and protest. Sometimes I've been closer to him for that reason.

The letter was a very special letter, and it touched me, ... I said, 'How can I say no'

Better than one heart be broken a thousand times in the retelling, if it means that a thousand other hearts need not be broken at all.

He answers that question, both in the editorial and in the interview. I hope the Palestinians have the same courage (Sharon) has shown now, ... The communities should live in peace.

Peace is not God's gift to his creatures. It is our gift to each other.

Because of indifference, one dies before one actually dies.

Nobody is stronger, nobody is weaker than someone who came back. There is nothing you can do to such a person because whatever you could do is less than what has already been done to him. We have already paid the price.

Hope is like peace. It is not a gift from God. It is a gift only we can give one another.

I decided to devote my life to telling the story because I felt that having survived I owe something to the dead. and anyone who does not remember betrays them again.

Most people think that shadows follow, precede or surround beings or objects. The truth is that they also surround words, ideas, desires, deeds, impulses and memories.

Ultimately, the only power to which man should aspire is that which he exercises over himself.

I rarely speak about God. To God, yes. I protest against Him. I shout at Him. But to open a discourse about the qualities of God, about the problems that God imposes, theodicy, no. And yet He is there, in silence, in filigree.

Friendship marks a life even more deeply than love. Love risks degenerating into obsession, friendship is never anything but sharing.

No one is as capable of gratitude as one who has emerged from the kingdom of night.

If there is a crisis in the world, the U.N. should send a task force immediately, within 24 hours,

This is the duty of our generation as we enter the twenty-first century -- solidarity with the weak, the persecuted, the lonely, the sick, and those in despair. It is expressed by the desire to give a noble and humanizing meaning to a community in which all members will define themselves not by their own identity but by that of others.

Indifference, to me, is the epitome of evil.

That is my major preoccupation, memory, the kingdom of memory. I want to protect and enrich that kingdom, glorify that kingdom and serve it.

We are still here. And no matter what, we shall continue to be here to tell people so they can learn from our history.

Simply because, one hand, there are the haters, ... The hater has power. ... All we can do is oppose it, or one becomes an accomplice.