Elie Wiesel
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.Collection: War
What all these victims need above all is to know that they are not alone; that we are not forgetting them, that when their voices are stifled we shall lend them ours, that while their freedome depends on ours, the quality of our freedom depends on theirs.Collection: Voice
You’re shaking … so am I. It’s because of Jerusalem, isn’t it? One doesn’t go to Jerusalem, one returns to it. That’s one of its mysteries.Collection: Jerusalem
Because I survived, I must do everything possible to help others.Collection: Helping Others
I think this century more than any other really has seen the phenomenon of people being uprooted in such numbers, such a degree. They even have a word for it: The refugees. It's a new word, a 20th Century word, but refugee is actually a misnomer.Collection: Thinking
The most important question a human being has to face... What is it? The question, Why are we here?Collection: Important
Suffering pulls us farther away from other human beings. It builds a wall made of cries and contempt to separate us.Collection: Wall
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.Collection: Brother
But where was I to start? The world is so vast, I shall start with the country I knew best, my own. But my country is so very large. I had better start with my town. But my town, too, is large. I had best start with my street. No, my home. No, my family. Never mind, I shall start with myself.Collection: Country
We believed in God, trusted in man, and lived with the illusion that every one of us has been entrusted with a sacred spark.Collection: Men
John XXI was a very great pope and he's the one who actually corrected the liturgy. He did so because of his friend Jules Isaac, a French Jewish historian who was a friend of John Paul, of John 23rd, and he convinced him and he changed the liturgy, no more Jew, the perfidious Jew and so forth and now, and don't speak any more of the Jews killing Christ. Things have changed.Collection: Speak
For one who is indifferent, life itself is a prison. Any sense of community is external or, even worse, nonexistent. Thus, indifference means solitude. Those who are indifferent do not see others. They feel nothing for others and are unconcerned with what might happen to them. They are surrounded by a great emptiness. Filled by it, in fact. They are devoid of all hope as well as imagination. In other words, devoid of any future.Collection: Hope
There is no word in Hebrew for religion, by the way.Collection: Way
I was there when God was put on trial....At the end of the trial, they used the word chayav, rather than 'guilty'. It means 'He owes us something'. Then we went to pray.Collection: Mean
Never shall I forget those moments that murdered my God and my soul and turned my dreams to ashes.Collection: Dream
Oh, it is not death that frightens me, but the impossibility of imparting some meaning to my past.Collection: Past
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 furnaces? Praised be Thy Holy Name, for having chosen us to be slaughtered on Thine altar?Collection: Mother
My interpretation is different. God asks Cain, "Where is your brother Abel?" [Genesis 4:9] And Cain answers "Lo yadati, "I don't know" or "I didn't know." Then comes a period, followed by "Am I my brother's keeper?"Collection: Brother
I think he is condemned by himself to loneliness. God is One: he was, he is, he will be always One. One is so lonely. Maybe that is why he created human beings--to feel less lonely. But as human beings betray his creation, he may become even lonelier.Collection: God
The more we know, the more pain we have. But because we are human beings, this must be. Otherwise we become objects rather than subjects.Collection: Pain
And I, the former mystic, was thinking: Yes, man is stronger, greater than God. When Adam and Eve deceived You, You chased them from paradise. When You were displeased by Noah’s generation, You brought down the Flood. When Sodom lost Your favour, You caused the heavens to rain down fire and damnation. But look at these men whom You have betrayed, allowing them to be tortured, slaughtered, gassed, and burned, what do they do? They pray before You! They praise Your name!Collection: Rain
Whatever we thought was certain is no longer certain, and therefore in science probably certain things must be correct, but in human behaviour I am not so sure.Collection: Behaviour
There are moments when I think it will never end, that it will last indefinitely. It's like the rain. Here the rain, like everything else, suggests permanence and eternity. I say to myself: it's raining today and it's going to rain tomorrow and the next day, the next week and the next century.Collection: Rain
Remember also that it is not knowledge but the yearning for knowledge that makes for a complete, accomplished man. Such a man does not stand still but perseveres in the face of adversity, nor does he remain untouched by the pain cause by absence. On the contrary, he recognizes himself in each cry, uttered or repressed, in the smallest rift, in the most pressing need.Collection: Pain
Take the story of Cain and Abel. Why were we given that story? Scientifically, you may have an explanation for it, but I'm not approaching it from the scientific point of view. I'm saying: Why do we need that? It's a sordid story, a depressing story, a dark story. Why should I believe that I'm a descendant of either Cain or Abel? Thank God there is a third son! [Genesis 4:25]Collection: Depressing
[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.Collection: Memories
I read the text; and then I come to the Shirat ha-Yam, to the Song of the Sea [Exodus 15], to the poetry. Who could have written such a poem except someone who went through it? It is so full of life, so full of truth, of passion, of concern. And the thousands and thousands of commentaries in the Talmudic tradition that have been written on it. It had to have happened. But even if not, I would attribute the same beauty to the text as I do now.Collection: Song
[Shirat ha-Yam ] is one of the earliest, if not the earliest, pieces of Biblical literature that we possess. It is much closer to history than later traditions of the Exodus.Collection: Biblical
[Moses] Mendelssohn was a religious Jew. I felt sorry for him.Collection: Religious
The Pope going to Jerusalem, the Pope recognising the State of Islam, the Pope going to the wall organising a concert for the Holocaust in the Vatican, going to the synagogue in Vatican, and that happens in Protestant service as well. That doesn't mean that anti-Semitism disappear, but it is on certain level that Jews all the time, or with Christians, Catholics, Protestants, Jews, meeting all the time, studying together, signing petitions for all kinds of causes.Collection: Christian
A Jew who converted, who simulated, was, at least in some periods, safe. Hitler in the beginning did not want to kill all the Jews but he wanted us to have a Germany free of Jews. If America had allowed Jews to come in, the British had accepted Jews from Palestine, they were safe.Collection: America
In spite of despair, hope must exist. In spite of suffering, humanity must prevail. And in spite of all the differences in the world, the worst enemy, the worst peril, is indifference.Collection: Worst Enemy
We're alone, but we are capable of communicating to one another both our loneliness and our desire to break through it. You say, 'I'm alone.' Someone answers, 'I'm alone too.' There's a shift in the scale of power. A bridge is thrown between the two abysses.Collection: Loneliness
There are so many who know more than I do, who understand the world better than I do. I would be truly learned, a great scholar, if only I could retain everything I've learned from those I have known. But then would I still be me? And isn't all that only words? Words grow old, too; they change their meaning and their usage. They get sick just as we do; they die of their wounds and then they are relegated to the dust of dictionaries. And where am I in all this?Collection: Dust
Whether every story that's there [in the Bible] is a historic truth ... Again, I'm not concerned.Collection: Stories
Usually I get up early every morning and from 6:00 to 10:00 I write. The rest of the time I study and prepare my work or I do other things. But four hours a day are exclusively devoted to writing.Collection: Morning
The primary task of a Jew in turbulent times is to be Jewish.Collection: Tasks
I cannot cure everybody. I cannot help everybody. But to tell the lonely person that I am not far or different from that lonely person, that I am with him or her, that's all I think we can do and we should do.Collection: Lonely
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.Collection: Children
One more stab to the heart, one more reason to hate. One less reason to live.Collection: Hate
I'd rather speak as a student of philosophy. Philosophically it makes no sense, absolutely makes no sense. Why should people inherit evil things when their memories could contain and should invoke good things?Collection: Memories
Listen to me, kid. Don't forget that you are in a concentration camp. In this place, it is every many for himself, and you cannot think of others. Not even you father. In this place, there is no such thing as father, brother, friend. Each of us lives and dies alone. Let me give you good advice: stop giving your ration of bread and soup to your old father. You cannot help him anymore. And you are hurting yourself. In fact, you should be getting his rations.Collection: Brother
No human being is illegal.Collection: Illegal
It was pitch dark. I could hear only the violin, and it was as though Juliek's soul were the bow. He was playing his life. The whole of his life was gliding on the strings--his last hopes, his charred past, his extinguished future. He played as he would never play again...When I awoke, in the daylight, I could see Juliek, opposite me, slumped over, dead. Near him lay his violin, smashed, trampled, a strange overwhelming little corpse.Collection: Dark
I feel that books, just like people, have a destiny. Some invite sorrow, others joy, some both.Collection: Book
He explained to me with great insistence that every question posessed a power that did not lie in the answer.Collection: Lying
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.Collection: Night
A holy war is a contradiction in terms. War dehumanizes, war diminishes, war debases all those who wage it.Collection: War
This is the duty of our generation as we enter the twenty-first century - solidarity with the weak, the persecuted, the lonely, the sick, and those in despair. It is expressed by the desire to give a noble and humanizing meaning to a community in which all members will define themselves not by their own identity but by that of others.Collection: Lonely