Elie Wiesel Quotes

Every single human being is a unique human being. And, therefore, it's so criminal to do something to that human being, because he or she represents humanity.

The yellow star? Oh well, what of it? You dont die of it.

I remember, May 1944: I was 15-and-a-half, and I was thrown into a haunted universe where the story of the human adventure seemed to swing irrevocably between horror and malediction.

I learned to trust the threats of enemies before the promises of friends.

Every moment contains a spark of eternity.

In the concentration camps, we discovered this whole universe where everyone had his place. The killer came to kill, and the victims came to die.

Just as despair can come to one only from other human beings, hope, too, can be given to one only by other human beings.

What does mysticism really mean? It means the way to attain knowledge. It's close to philosophy, except in philosophy you go horizontally while in mysticism you go vertically.

I came to the conclusion that I am free to choose my own suffering. But I am not free to consent to someone else's suffering.

Bite your lips, little brother...Don't cry. Keep your anger, your hate, for another day, for later. The day will come but not now...Wait. Clench your teeth and wait.

A religious person answers to God, not to the elected or non-elected official.

Human suffering anywhere concerns men and women everywhere.

The Holocaust is a sacred subject. One should take off one's shoes when entering its domain, one should tremble each time one pronounces the word.

Sometimes I am asked if I know 'the response to Auschwitz; I answer that not only do I not know it, but that I don't even know if a tragedy of this magnitude has a response.

The opposite of life is not death, it's indifference.

I don't want my past to become anyone else's future.

[Friedrich] Nietzsche said something marvellous, he said "Madness is not a consequence of uncertainty but of certainty", and this is fanaticism.

We have to go into the despair and go beyond it, by working and doing for somebody else, by using it for something else.

For me, every hour is grace. And I feel gratitude in my heart each time I can meet someone and look at his or her smile.

The opposite of faith is not heresy but indifference

They are committing the greatest indignity human beings can inflict on one another: telling people who have suffered excruciating pain and loss that their pain and loss were illusions. (v)

Because I survived, I must do everything possible to help others.

Whoever survives a test, whatever it may be, must tell the story. That is his duty.

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

To forget a Holocaust is to kill twice

God means movement, and not explanation.

Write only if you cannot live without writing. Write only what you alone can write.

Wherever men and women are persecuted because of their race, religion, or political views, that place must - at that moment - become the center of the universe.

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

Whatever you think in life... think higher and feel deeper.

There is divine beauty in learning... To learn means to accept the postulate that life did not begin at my birth. Others have been here before me, and I walk in their footsteps.

My faith is a wounded faith, but it's not without faith. My life is not without faith.

Without memory, there is no culture. Without memory, there would be no civilization, no society, no future.

Human beings should be held accountable. Leave God alone. He has enough problems.

Because of indifference, one dies before one actually dies.

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.

For me, every hour is grace.

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

Suffering pulls us farther away from other human beings. It builds a wall made of cries and contempt to separate us.

Only fanatics — in religion as well as in politics — can find a meaning in someone else’s death.

The most important question a human being has to face... What is it? The question, Why are we here?

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

I had to be honest with myself and that I felt hatred then, but as children say "I hate you", it's not really hate, you know, it's anger.

Human beings all change. Not what they are but who they are. We have the power to change what we do with our life and turn it into our destiny.

My faith is a wounded faith, but my life is not without faith. I didn't divorce God, but I'm quarrelling and arguing and questioning, it's a wounded faith.

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

I do not recall a Jewish home without a book on the table.

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

Perhaps some day someone will explain how, on the level of man, Auschwitz was possible; but on the level of God, it will forever remain the most disturbing of mysteries.

None of us is in a position to eliminate war, but it is our obligation to denounce it and expose it in all its hideousness. War leaves no victors, only victims.