Elie Wiesel > Quotes

“The opposite of love is not hate, it's indifference. The opposite of art is not ugliness, it's indifference. The opposite of faith is not heresy, it's indifference. And the opposite of life is not death, it's indifference.”
― Elie Wiesel

“There may be times when we are powerless to prevent injustice, but there must never be a time when we fail to protest.”
― Elie Wiesel

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

“We must always take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented.”
― Elie Wiesel

“To forget the dead would be akin to killing them a second time.”
― Elie Wiesel, Night

“When a person doesn’t have gratitude, something is missing in his or her humanity. A person can almost be defined by his or her attitude toward gratitude.”
― Elie Wiesel

“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. 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, their quests. And so are you.”
― Elie Wiesel

“For the dead and the living, we must bear witness.”
― Elie Wiesel

“One person of integrity can make a difference.”
― Elie Wiesel

“Human suffering anywhere concerns men and women everywhere.”
― Elie Wiesel, Night

“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.”
― Elie Wiesel, Night

“Which is worse? Killing with hate or killing without hate?”
― Elie Wiesel

“Only the guilty are guilty. Their children are not.”
― Elie Wiesel

“If the only pray you say throughout your life is "Thank You," then that will be enough.”
― Elie Wiesel

“I pray to the God within me that He will give me the strength to ask Him the right questions.”
― Elie Wiesel, Night

“I swore never to be silent whenever and wherever human beings endure suffering and humiliation. We must always take sides.”
― Elie Wiesel

“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.”
― Elie Wiesel

“Then came the march past the victims. The two men were no longer alive. Their tongues were hanging out,
swollen and bluish. But the third rope was still moving: the child, too light, was still breathing...
And so he remained for more than half an hour, lingering between life and death, writhing before our eyes.
And we were forced to look at him at close range. He was still alive when I passed him. His tongue was still
red, his eyes not yet extinguished.

Behind me, I heard the same man asking:
"For God's sake, where is God?"
And from within me, I heard a voice answer:
"Where He is? This is where--hanging here from this gallows..."

That night, the soup tasted of corpses.”
― Elie Wiesel, Night

“Write only if you cannot live without writing. Write only what you alone can write.”
― Elie Wiesel

“For in the end, it is all about memory, its sources and its magnitude, and, of course, its consequences.”
― Elie Wiesel, Night

“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.”
― Elie Wiesel

“There are victories of the soul and spirit. Sometimes, even if you lose, you win. ”
― Elie Wiesel

“We must take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented. Sometimes we must interfere. When human lives are endangered, when human dignity is in jeopardy, national borders and sensitivities become irrelevant. 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.”
― Elie Wiesel, The Night Trilogy: Night, Dawn, The Accident

“I shall always remember that smile. From what world did it come from?”
― Elie Wiesel, Night

“Think higher, feel deeper.”
― Elie Wiesel

“I feel that books, just like people, have a destiny. Some invite sorrow, others joy, some both. ”
― Elie Wiesel

“No human race is superior; no religious faith is inferior. All collective judgments are wrong. Only racists make them”
― Elie Wiesel

“Whoever survives a test, whatever it may be, must tell the story. That is his duty.”
― Elie Wiesel

“For the survivor who chooses to testify, it is clear: his duty is to bear witness for the dead and for the living. He has no right to deprive future generations of a past that belongs to our collective memory. To forget would be not only dangerous but offensive; to forget the dead would be akin to killing them a second time.”
― Elie Wiesel, Night

“I don't want my past to become anyone else's future.”
― Elie Wiesel

“Indifference is the sign of sickness, a sickness of the soul more contagious than any other.”
― Elie Wiesel, The Judges: A Novel

“We must not see any person as an abstraction. Instead, we must see in every person a universe with its own secrets, with its own treasures, with its own sources of anguish, and with some measure of triumph.”
― Elie Wiesel

“Ultimately, the only power to which man should aspire is that which he exercises over himself.”
― Elie Wiesel

“God is God because he remembers.”
― Elie Wiesel

“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.”
― Elie Wiesel

“Music does not replace words, it gives tone to the words”
― Elie Wiesel

“[Moishe] explained to me, with great emphasis, that every question possessed a power that was lost in the answer....
And why do you pray, Moishe?' I asked him.
I pray to the God within me for the strength to ask Him the real questions.”
― Elie Wiesel, Night

“Love makes everything complicated.”
― Elie Wiesel

“The opposite of love is not hate, it's indifference.”
― Elie Wiesel

“One more stab to the heart, one more reason to hate. One less reason to live.”
― Elie Wiesel, Night

“One day when I was able to get up, I decided to look at myself in the mirror on the opposite wall. I had not seen myself since the ghetto. From the depths of the mirror, a corpse was contemplating me. The look in his eyes as he gazed at me has never left me.”
― Elie Wiesel, Night

“I've been fightingn 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.”
― Elie Wiesel

“He explained to me with great insistence that every question posessed a power that did not lie in the answer.”
― Elie Wiesel, Night

“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)”
― Elie Wiesel, Night

“No human being is illegal.”
― Elie Wiesel

“I have learned two lessons in my life: first, there are no sufficient literary, psychological, or historical answers to human tragedy, only moral ones. Second, just as despair can come to one another only from other human beings, hope, too, can be given to one only by other human beings.”
― Elie Wiesel

“Peace is our gift to each other.”
― Elie Wiesel

“His cold eyes stared at me. At last, he said wearily: "I have more faith in Hitler than in anyone else. He alone has kept his promises, all his promises, to the Jewish people.”
― Elie Wiesel, Night

“Blessed be God's name? Why, but why would I bless Him? Every fiber in me rebelled. Because He caused thousands of children to burn in His mass graves? Because he kept six crematoria working day and night, including Sabbath and the Holy Days? Because in His great might, He had created Auschwitz, Birkenau, Buna, and so many other factories of death? How could I say to Him: Blessed be Thou, Almighty, Master of the Universe, who chose us among all nations to be tortured day and night, to watch as our fathers, our mothers, our brothers, end up in the furnaces? Praised be Thy Holy Name, for having chosen us to be slaughtered on Thine altar?”
― Elie Wiesel, Night

“But because of his telling, many who did not believe have come to believe, and some who did not care have come to care. He tells the story, out of infinite pain, partly to honor the dead, but also to warn the living - to warn the living that it could happen again and that it must never happen again. Better than 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. (vi)”
― Elie Wiesel, Night