Hostage Quotes

“Never again" becomes more than a slogan: It's a prayer, a promise, a vow. There will never again be hatred, people say. Never again jail and torture. Never again the suffering of innocent people, or the shooting of starving, frightened, terrified children. And never again the glorification of base, ugly, dark violence. It's a prayer.”
― Elie Wiesel, Hostage

“You're at the bottom of the mountain. May you climb up without suffering.”
― Elie Wiesel, Hostage

“For the good of all, I say: Be careful, the brutality of the world must not be more powerful or attractive than love and friendship.”
― Elie Wiesel, Hostage

“...Those who know don't talk and those who talk don't know. And even the survivors who have decided to bear witness confirm it in their way: They almost all say that their experience can't be related in words, and yet, as witnesses, they're morally compelled to resort to them. Their silence, except if it is ontologically integral to their disposition, would not help truth triumph. It would only open the road to oblivion and, as one survivor put it, enable the executioner to kill his victims a second time.”
― Elie Wiesel, Hostage

“With the years and convulsions of history, the word-as reductionist as the dictionary itself-has undergone absurd metamorphoses. In some countries, they prefer the word "destabilization." Poor" countries no longer exist, just "disadvantaged" or "underprivileged" ones. We say "brainwashing" instead of "propaganda." And now we refer to revolutions in fashion, music and electronics, where ink flows but not blood. The point is profit, not truth”
― Elie Wiesel, Hostage

“Torture is the act of making someone die a slow death, making the prisoner die several times.”
― Elie Wiesel, Hostage

“Even torture that is only verbal reinforce the power of the torturer: The prisoner's imagination leads him to dread the next round of interrogations. And when it happens, the feeling of inferiority becomes more acute; it bores into the brain, and the cultural and psychological defenses that surround the brain disintegrate and vanish. The ego is dissolved.”
― Elie Wiesel, Hostage

“Today's wealthy are poor though they don't know it. They can't bring their possessions to where we're all going.”
― Elie Wiesel, Hostage

“the torturer scores a victory over his victim when the latter, in the grip of doubt, begins to torture himself.”
― Elie Wiesel, Hostage

“No commandment surpasses the one concerning the liberation of hostages, for they are among the starving, the thirsting, the stripped, always in danger of death.”
― Elie Wiesel, Hostage

“It was a destructive novel of acquired ideas. To finally wake up in a state of creative anguish, to lose oneself in order to find oneself again, to sleep in the arms of a beautiful student whose name one didn't know, to fall back to sleep over a love poem-that was called existence. The harmonics of artistic creation, of fertile sensibility, of anticipated events-history in movement-that was called a privilege.”
― Elie Wiesel, Hostage

“Thoughts arise in the hostage's tormented brain. In the hospital, patients feel they are returning to childhood; in prison, they age. The gods blind themselves.”
― Elie Wiesel, Hostage

“There is no discussing theology, sociology and politics when someone is under the spell of a self-enclosed totalitarian ideology. Intentionally or out of ignorance, Ahmed, who is empirical in all matters, detests pointless and laborious philosophical imaginings, never-ending discussions, or clashes of ideas that might be respectful of non-believer opponents and sinners deserving only of complete contempt.”
― Elie Wiesel, Hostage

“Some of life's moments mark a break in consciousness; others give rise to streams of scintillating, philosophical ideas or astonishing works of art; still others, to important meeting or profound personal upheavals.”
― Elie Wiesel, Hostage