Elie Wiesel
The Holocaust is not a cheap soap opera. The Holocaust is not a romantic novel. It is something else.Collection: Holocaust
I'm not a political person. I usually beware of political persons. I know many, but I'm not one of them. I have no political ambitions.Collection: Ambition
every question possessed a power that was lost in the answer . . .Collection: Answers
Young people want to learn, they are thirsty for knowledge, they want to understand and remember. The main thing is to teach them where not to go. Oppression, not to go; dictatorship, not to go; racism and prejudice, absolutely not to go. This is a moral plan [for society].Collection: Racism
I believe that all the survivors are mad. One time or another their madness will explode. You cannot absorb that much madness and not be influenced by it. That is why the children of survivors are so tragic. I see them in school. They don't know howCollection: Children
When you die and go to heaven our maker is not going to ask, 'why didn't you discover the cure for such and such? why didn't you become the Messiah?' The only question we will be asked in that precious moment is 'why didn't you become you?'Collection: Death
Every moment is a new beginning.Collection: Inspirational
In the word question, there is a beautiful word - quest. I love that word. We are all partners in a quest. The essential questions have no answers. You are my question, and I am yours - and then there is dialogue. The moment we have answers, there is no dialogue. Questions unite people.Collection: Beautiful
There is much to be done, there is much that can be done... one person of integrity can make a difference.Collection: Integrity
Think higher, feel deeper.Collection: Thinking
We are all teachers, or should be. Anyone who relays experience to another person is a teacher. Not to transmit your experience is to betray it.Collection: Success
In the face of suffering, one has no right to turn away, not to see.Collection: Compassion
Words can be turned into spears. They can be turned into prayers. It's a strange world that you are in. But you deal with words.Collection: Prayer
I never compared Nazis into communism, but communism was the same thing, the end justifies the means. Whatever the means.Collection: Mean
Just as man cannot live without dreams, he cannot live without hope. If dreams reflect the past, hope summons the future.Collection: Dream
There is much to be done, there is much that can be done... One person of integrity, can make a difference, a difference of life and death. As long as one dissident is in prison, our freedom will not be true. As long as one child is hungry, our lives will be filled with anguish and shame. 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 freedom depends on ours, the quality of our freedom depends on theirs.Collection: Children
We cannot indefinitely avoid depressing subject matter, particularly it it is true, and in the subsequent quarter century the world has had to hear a story it would have preferred not to hear - the story of how a cultured people turned to genocide, and how the rest of the world, also composed of cultured people, remained silent in the face of genocide. (v)Collection: Depressing
In the face of suffering, one has no right to turn away, not to see. In the face of injustice, one may not look the other way. When someone suffers, and it is not you, that person comes first. One's very suffering gives one priority. . . . To watch over one who grieves is a more urgent duty than to think of God.Collection: Thinking
Emphasis must be put on learning: there is no substitute to education. It can be briefly formulated in a few words: always, whatever you do in life, think higher and feel deeper.Collection: Thinking
In the word question, there is a beautiful word - quest. I love that word.Collection: Beautiful
Remembering is a noble and necessary act. The call of memory, the call to memory, reaches us from the very dawn of history. No commandment figures so frequently, so insistently, in the Bible. It is incumbent upon us to remember the good we have received, and the evil we have suffered.Collection: Memories
The danger lies in forgetting.Collection: Lying
I don't think I should accept other people's suffering because I suffered. Just the opposite, because I suffered I don't want others to suffer.Collection: Thinking
I have no doubt that faith is only pure when it does not negate the faith of another. I have no doubt that evil can be fought and that indifference is no option. I have no doubt that fanaticism is dangerous. And of all the books in the world on life, I have no doubt that the life of one person weighs more than them all.Collection: Life
One can do without solutions. Only the questions matter. We may share them or turn away from them.Collection: Thought Provoking
Knowledge does not corrupt, unless it is arrogant; but then it is not true knowledge.Collection: Doe
I rarely speak about God. To God yes. I protest against Him. I shout at Him. But open discourse about the qualities of God, about the problems that God imposes, theodicy, no. And yet He is there, in silence, in filigree.Collection: God
Every moment is a moment of grace, every hour an offering; not to share them would mean to betray them.Collection: Mean
There are no accidents, only encounters with destiny!Collection: Destiny
There is one right I would not grant anyone. And that is the right to be indifferent.Collection: Indifferent
Acutely aware of the poverty of my means, language became obstacle. At every page I thought, 'That's not it.' So I began again with other verbs and other images. No, that wasn't it either. But what exactly was that it I was searching for? It must have been all that eludes us, hidden behind a veil so as not to be stolen, usurped and trivialized. Words seemed weak and pale.Collection: Writing
And to write is to sow and to reap at the same time.Collection: Writing
Every nation has its prestigious military academies - or so few of them - that reach not only the virtues of peace but also the art of attaining it? I mean attaining and protecting it by means other than weapons, the tools of war. Why are we surprised whenever war recedes and yields to peace?Collection: Art
Sometimes I think I prefer the storyteller in [Roman Vishniac] to the photographer. But aren't they one and the same?Collection: Thinking
First we must understand that there can be no life without risk - and when our center is strong, everything else is secondary, even the risks.Collection: Strong
Perhaps fate isn't blind after all. Perhaps it's capable of fantasy, even compassion.Collection: Fate
Drawn to childhood, the old man will seek it in a thousand different ways.Collection: Men
I wanted to come back to Sighet to tell you the story of my death. So that you could prepare yourselves while there was still time. To live? I don't attach any importance to my life any more. I'm alone. No, I wanted to come back, and to warn you. And see how it is, no one will listen to me.Collection: Stories
It is true that not all the victims were Jews, but all the Jews were victimsCollection: Holocaust
My loyalty to my people, to our people, and to Israel comes first and prevents me from saying anything critical of Israel outside Israel… As a Jew I see my role as a melitz yosher, a defender of Israel: I defend even her mistakes… I must identify with whatever Israel does – even with her errors.Collection: Loyalty
The impact of the holocaust on believers as well as unbelievers, on Jews as well as Christians, has not yet been evaluated. Not deeply, not enough.Collection: Christian
I'm a privileged person, I feel privileged because of who I am. I write books, I write novels, I write essays and I teach and I go from university to university. I'm one of the old, but I still go around, but I only see those who are not like that, I don't see the junk youth. I only meet students, and even those who are not formally at the university, if they come to listen to me, they come to read me, it means they are not junk students.Collection: Book
Some of the men spoke of God: His mysterious ways, the sins of the Jewish people, and the redemption to come. As for me, I had ceased to pray. I concurred with Job! I was not denying His existence, but I doubted His absolute justice.Collection: Jobs
A voice behind me asked, "Where is God? Where is He? Where can He be now?" and a voice within me answered: "Where? Here He is - He has been hanged here, on these gallows."Collection: Voice
The deeper the nostalgia and the more complete the fear, the purer, the richer the word and the secret.Collection: Secret
I describe incidents which may or may not have happened but which are true.Collection: Holocaust
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)Collection: Pain