Elie Wiesel
Sometimes I am asked if I know 'the response to Auschwitz; I answer that not only do I not know it, but that I don't even know if a tragedy of this magnitude has a response.
When my father was born, it was part of the Austro-Hungarian empire. When I was born, it was Lithuania. When I left, it was Hungary. It is difficult to say where I come from.
I don't like docudramas. Documentaries should not go together with fiction, or half-fiction or quarter-fiction. The two should not go together. They cannot mix.
I never felt any attraction towards violence. I never tried to express myself through violence. Violence is a language.
I do not belong to this world. I continue to write everything in longhand. If I have to see something on the Internet, I ask my secretary or students. I am lucky, because I have people who do it for me.
We must take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented.
When language fails, violence becomes a language; I never had that feeling.
It's clear to me that one can't be Jewish without Israel. Religious or non-religious, Zionist or non-Zionist, Ashkenazi or Sephardic - all these will not exist without Israel.
There are victories of the soul and spirit. Sometimes, even if you lose, you win.
In the concentration camps, we discovered this whole universe where everyone had his place. The killer came to kill, and the victims came to die.
Our obligation is to give meaning to life and in doing so to overcome the passive, indifferent life.
Indifference, to me, is the epitome of evil.
If I were in the government, I would persuade the prime minister to see the beauty in the fact that people see Israel as a haven - from their sadness to their hope.
Someone who hates one group will end up hating everyone - and, ultimately, hating himself or herself.
In any society, fanatics who hate don't hate only me - they hate you, too. They hate everybody.
A destruction, an annihilation that only man can provoke, only man can prevent.
Man, as long as he lives, is immortal. One minute before his death he shall be immortal. But one minute later, God wins.
My greatest disappointment is that I believe that those of us who went through the war and tried to write about it, about their experience, became messengers. We have given the message, and nothing changed.
Not to transmit an experience is to betray it.
Now, when I hear that Christians are getting together in order to defend the people of Israel, of course it brings joy to my heart. And it simply says, look, people have learned from history.
I will say, with memoir, you must be honest. You must be truthful.
If I were immersed in constant melancholy, I would not be who I am.
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.
Historically, I come from Jewish history. I had the classic upbringing in the Yeshiva, learning, learning, and more learning.
We have to go into the despair and go beyond it, by working and doing for somebody else, by using it for something else.
I'll tell you what: I believe mysticism is a very serious endeavor. One must be equipped for it.
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.
I have to be self-conscious of what I'm trying to do with my life.
One always goes back to one's childhood in the beginning, and I come from a very religious family and surrounding. Very religious.
I remember, May 1944: I was 15-and-a-half, and I was thrown into a haunted universe where the story of the human adventure seemed to swing irrevocably between horror and malediction.
It used to be said that when the Baal Shem Tov came into a town, his impact was so strong, he didn't have to speak. His disciples had to dance or to sing or to preach to have the same effect. I think a real messenger, myself or anyone, by the very fact that he is there as a person, as a symbol, could have the same impact.
Words can sometimes, in moments of grace, attain the quality of deeds.
What hurts the victim most is not the cruelty of the oppressor, but the silence of the bystander.Collection: Hurt
I swore never to be silent whenever and wherever human beings endure suffering and humiliation. We must always take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented.Collection: Peace
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.Collection: Love
Sometimes we must interfere. When human lives are endangered, when human dignity is in jeopardy, national borders and sensitivities become irrelevant. Whenever men or women are persecuted because of their race, religion, or political views, that place must - at that moment - become the center of the universe.Collection: Inspirational
To remain silent and indifferent is the greatest sin of all.Collection: Sin
Take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim.Collection: Bystanders
For the dead and the living, we must bear witness. Not only are we responsible for the memories of the dead, we are responsible for what we do with those memoriesCollection: Memories
Even in darkness it is possible to create light.Collection: Positivity
In order to fly, you have to give up the ground you are standing on.Collection: Giving Up
I still believe in man in spite of man. I believe in language even though it has been wounded, deformed, and perverted by the enemies of mankind. And I continue to cling to words because it is up to us to transform them into instruments of comprehension rather than contempt. It is up to us to choose whether we wish to use them to curse or to heal, to wound or to console.Collection: Inspirational
Be careful with words, they're dangerous. Be wary of them. They begat either demons or angels. It's up to you to give life to one or the other. Be careful, I tell you, nothing is as dangerous as giving free rein to wordsCollection: Teaching
One person of integrity can make a difference.Collection: Integrity
A Jew must be sensitive to the pain of all human beings. A Jew cannot remain indifferent to human suffering... The mission of the Jewish people has never been to make the world more Jewish, but to make it more human.Collection: Pain
... True, we are often too weak to stop injustices; but the least we can do is to protest against them. True, we are too poor to eliminate hunger; but in feeding one child, we protest against hunger. True, we are too timid and powerless to take on all the guards of all the political prisons in the world; but in offering our solidarity to one prisoner we denounce all the tormentors. True, we are powerless against death; but as long as we help one man, one woman, one child live one hour longer in safety and dignity, we affirm man's [woman's] right to live.Collection: Children
People become the stories they hear and the stories they tell.Collection: People
[Friedrich] Nietzsche said something marvellous, he said "Madness is not a consequence of uncertainty but of certainty", and this is fanaticism.Collection: Madness
The opposite of love is not hate, but indifference. Indifference creates evil. Hatred is evil itself. Indifference is what allows evil to be strong, what gives it power.Collection: Strong