Elie Wiesel Quotes

After all, God is God because he remembers.

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

No human race is superior no religious faith is inferior. All collective judgments are wrong. Only r...

Indifference to me, is the epitome of all evil.

Our first act as free men was to throw ourselves onto the provisions. thats all we thought about. No...

From Jeff Greenfield: "I once asked Elie Wiesel "Are you an optimist or a pessimist?" "An optimist,"...

Friendship marks a life even more deeply than love. Love risks degenerating into obsession, friendsh...

We must take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silent encourages the tormento...

In any society, fanatics who hate don't hate only me - they hate you, too. They hate everybody.

Peace is our gift to each other.

Friendship marks a life even more deeply rhan love. Love risks degenerating into obsession friendsh...

In Jewish history there are no coincidences.

If the only prayer you say throughout your life is "Thank You," then that will be enough.

Once you bring life into the world, you must protect it. We must protect it by changing the world.

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

Historically, I come from Jewish history. I had the classic upbringing in the Yeshiva, learning, lea...

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

Because I remember, I despair. Because I remember, I have the duty to reject despair.

Some stories are true that never happened.

When a person doesn't have gratitude, something is missing in his or her humanity. A person can almo...

I'm a teacher and a writer; my life is words. When I see the denigration of language, it hurts me, a...

I marvel at the resilience of the Jewish people. Their best characteristic is their desire to rememb...

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

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

Religion is a very personal thing for me. Religion has its good moments and its poor moments.

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

I was very, very religious. And of course I wrote about it in 'Night.' I questioned God's silence. S...

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

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

We must always take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the ...

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

Wherever men and women are persecuted because of their race, religion, or political views, that plac...

I no longer ask You for either happiness or paradise; all I ask of You is to listen and let me be aw...

Look, if I were alone in the world, I would have the right to choose despair, solitude and self-fulf...

Because of indifference, one dies before one actually dies.

When a person doesn't have gratitude, something is missing in his or her humanity.

There may be times when we are powerless to prevent injustice, but there must never be a time when w...

I write to understand as much as to be understood.

Religion is not man's relationship to God, it is man's relationship to man.

I don't know much about politics, and I don't want to know. That's why I rarely involve myself in po...

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

A disciple came to the celebrated Master of the Good Name with a question. “Rabbi, how are we to dis...

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

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

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

Most people think that shadows follow, precede or surround beings or objects. The truth is that they...

What does mysticism really mean? It means the way to attain knowledge. It's close to philosophy, exc...

We marched. Gates opened and closed. We continued to march between the barbed wire. At every step, w...

Now, when I hear that Christians are getting together in order to defend the people of Israel, of co...

Not to transmit an experience is to betray it.

I decided to devote my life to telling the story because I felt that having survived I owe something...

Man asks and God replies but we don't understand his replies because they dwell in the depths of our...

For the dead and the living, we must bear witness.

It all happened so fast. The ghetto. The deportation. The sealed cattle car. The fiery altar upon wh...

Three days after the liberation of Buchenwald, I became very ill; some sort of poisoning. I was tran...

Sometimes I am asked if I know the response to Auschwitz; I answer that not only do I not know it, b...

True enemies aren't always the ones who hate each other.

I still believe in man in spite of man. I believe in language even though it has been wounded, defor...

All my life, until today, I have been content to ask questions. All the while knowing that the real ...

At the time of the liberation of the camps, I remember, we were convinced that after Auschwitz there...

Even in darkness it is possible to create light and encourage compassion. That it is possible to fee...

If life is not a celebration, why remember it ? If life --- mine or that of my fellow man --- is not...

We must choose between the violence of adults and the smiles of children, between the ugliness of ha...

I swore never to be silent whenever human beings endure suffering and humiliation. We must take side...

I had many things to say, I did not have the words to say them. Painfully aware of my limitations, I...

Man comes closer to God through the questions he asks Him, he liked to say.

Our backyard looked like a marketplace. Valuable objects, precious rugs, silver candlesticks, Bibles...

No one may speak for the dead, no one may interpret their mutilated dreams and visions.

Wherever men and women are persecuted because of their race, religion, or political views, that plac...

One day I was able to get up, after gathering all my strength. I wanted to see myself in the mirror ...

My faceless neighbor spoke up:“Don’t be deluded. Hitler has made it clear that he will annihilate al...

For the survivor who chooses to testify, it is clear: his duty is to bear witness for the dead and f...

Why do you pray?" he asked me, after a moment. Why did I pray? A strange question. Why did I live? W...

This day I ceased to plead. I was no longer capable of lamentation. On the contrary, I felt very str...

Violence is not the answer. Terrorism is the most dangerous of answers.

There's a long road of suffering ahead of you. But don't lose courage. You've already escaped the gr...

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

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

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

We were masters of nature, masters of the world. We had forgotten everything--death, fatigue, our na...

All this under a magnificent blue sky.

Never shall I forget those moments which murdered my God and my soul and turned my dreams to dust. N...

One day when we came to a stop, a worker took a piece of bread out of his bag and threw it into a wa...

We are all brothers and we are all suffering the same fate. The same smoke floats over all our heads...

Never shall I forget that night, the first night in camp, that turned my life into one long night se...

The stars were only sparks of the fire which devoured us. Should that fire die out one day, there wo...

There are moments when I think it will never end, that it will last indefinitely. It's like the rain...

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

A mn ages hs enemy because he hates his own hate. He says to himself: I hate him not because he's my...

Night is purer than day; it is better for thinking, loving and dreaming. At night everything is more...

I needed to know that there was such a thing as love and that it brought smiles and joy in its wake.

What does mysticism really mean? It means the way to attain knowledge. It’s close to philosophy, exc...

If I had spoken to him out loud, he would have understood the tragic fate of those who came back, le...

What is the difference between Jew and Christians? We all await the Messiah. You believe He has alre...

Music does not replace words, it gives tone to the words

Mankind must remember that peace is not God's gift to his creatures peace is our gift to each other.

We do not know the worth of one single drop of blood, one single tear.