Elie Wiesel Quotes

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.

I've been fighting my entire adult life for men and women everywhere to be equal and to be different. But there is one right I would not grant anyone. And that is the right to be indifferent.

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

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.

It all happened so fast. The ghetto. The deportation. The sealed cattle car. The fiery altar upon which the history of our people and the future of mankind were meant to be sacrificed.

In Jewish history there are no coincidences.

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

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.

Some stories are true that never happened.

Not to transmit an experience is to betray it.

People become the stories they hear and the stories they tell.

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.

Oh, it is not death that frightens me, but the impossibility of imparting some meaning to my past.

Questions outlive the answers.

Take sides. Neutrality always serves the oppressor and never the oppressed.

This is the role of writers: to turn their tears into a story - and perhaps into a prayer.

That I survived the Holocaust and went on to love beautiful girls, to talk, to write, to have toast and tea and live my life - that is what is abnormal.

Some events do take place but are not true; others are, although they never occurred.

You know, words have strange destiny, too. They grow. They get old. They die. They come back.

For in my tradition, as a Jew, I believe that whatever we receive we must share.

Anything you want to say about God you better make sure you can say in front of a pit of burning babies.

Certain things, certain events, seem inexplicable only for a time: up to the moment when the veil is torn aside.

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

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

I don't think [governments] use [religious repression ] as a weapon, they use it as a as a means of - of oppression. To stifle opposition. To mute resistance.

This day I ceased to plead. I was no longer capable of lamentation. On the contrary, I felt very strong. I was the accuser, God the accused.

War is like night, she said. It covers everything.

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

The knowledge that I have acquired must not remain imprisoned in my brain. I owe it to many men and women to do something with it. I feel the need to pay back what was given to me. Call it gratitude.

[Memory] is a passion no less powerful or pervasive than love. It is [the ability] to live in more than one world, to prevent the past from fading, and to call upon the future to illuminate it.

No human being is illegal.

What is being lost is the magic of the word. I am not an image person. Imagery belongs to another civilization: the caveman. Caveman couldn't express himself so he put images on walls.

I belong to a tradition that believes that the death of a single child is a blemish on creation.

God made (human beings) because he loves stories.

The Jewish tradition of learning-is learning. Adam chose knowledge instead of immortality.

I don't think I should accept other people's suffering because I suffered. Just the opposite, because I suffered I don't want others to suffer.

What is man? Ally of God or simply his toy? His triumph or his fall?

Writing is like a sculpture where you remove, you eliminate, in order to make the work visible. Even those pages you remove somehow remain

Words can sometimes, in moments of grace, attain the quality of deeds.

Terrorism must be outlawed by all civilized nations — not explained or rationalized, but fought and eradicated. Nothing can, nothing will justify the murder of innocent people and helpless children.

In my tradition, one must wait until one has learned a lot of Bible and Talmud and the Prophets to handle mysticism. This isn't instant coffee. There is no instant mysticism.

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

How can a human being be illegal?

I feel that books, just like people, have a destiny. Some invite sorrow, others joy, some both.

Man walks the moon but his soul remains riveted to earth. Once upon a time it was the opposite.

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.

I'll tell you what: I believe mysticism is a very serious endeavor. One must be equipped for it.

Only one enemy is worse than despair: indifference. In every area of human creativity, indifference is the enemy; indifference of evil is worse than evil, because it is also sterile.

Warmed-over loves and soups are generally not recommended.

I do not believe in collective guilt.