Elie Wiesel
There is not anti-semitism as an ideology. The civilized world must think that anti-semitism is stupid.Collection: Stupid
My ambition really was, even as a child, to be a writer, a commentator, and a teacher, but a teacher of Talmud.Collection: Teacher
The sins I regret the most are the one's I didn't commit.Collection: Regret
Abraham is trying to obey God, but not to kill. I feel that moment is one of the defining moments of Jewish faith.Collection: Trying
No one has written the way Isaiah does. The royal style, the majesty of the language. He is called the prince of the prophets. No one has written like that. I've studied ancient literature, Homer, for example, but it's not the same thing.Collection: Ancient Literature
I am looking for the word which is there and shouldn't be there. I wonder, why is it there? Or I look for problems: the Akedah [the Binding of Isaac - Genesis 22]. It still baffles me. Each time I read it - and I read it at least twice a year - each time I discover new layers in it. Always. So this is of more concern to me than the minimalists.Collection: Years
Writing should not be routine; writing should actually be the opposite of procedural because otherwise the written word would become a routine word.Collection: Writing
When I have my manuscript finished, more or less, I type it myself, with two fingers. I type fast with two fingers. And then when it's ready, I reread, recorrect, and retype it. Everything is my own work. I do not give it to secretaries or to typists.Collection: Two
The sincere Christian knows that what died in Auschwitz was not the Jewish people but Christianity.Collection: Christian
I was working as a journalist for an Israeli paper in Paris, and my salary at the highest was fifty dollars a month. At the end of the month I always had palpitations; I didn't know how to pay my rent. Even after the war, I was often hungry. But that's part of the romantic condition of a student. To be a student in Paris and not be hungry is wrong.Collection: War
Humanity? Humanity is not concerned with us. Today anything is allowed. Anything is possible.Collection: Humanity
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.Collection: Powerful
Since God is, He is to be found in the questions as well as the answers.Collection: Answers
[Adolf] Hitler needed, he didn't want to kill Jews, he wanted to expel German Jews, and therefore it's not entirely corroborating your theory.Collection: Want
One day - I remember it was a Sabbath afternoon - I came to the synagogue with a book in my hand. I saw a commentary on the Bible by a certain Rabbi Moshe Dessauer, better known as Moses Mendelssohn. An elderly man came up to me - I was then maybe 10 or 12. "What are you studying?" he said. "Dessauer's commentaries," I said. So he gave me a slap on my face.Collection: Book
[The Bible] is been my passion almost from my youth.Collection: Passion
Next to him lay his violin, trampled, an eerily poignant little corpse.Collection: Littles
My faceless neighbor spoke up: “Don’t be deluded. Hitler has made it clear that he will annihilate all Jews before the clock strikes twelve.” I exploded: “What do you care what he said? Would you want us to consider him a prophet? 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.Collection: Eye
I try to see their moral relevance [in the Bible] and, of course, to admire the literary beauty of the text. Prophetic poetry: No one has written the way Isaiah does.Collection: Trying
[ Rabbi Shlomo ben Isaac] was the greatest commentator [of the Bible] we ever had.Collection: Rabbi
[My approach to the Bible, history does really matter.] Everything matters. But I have priorities. For instance, for me to know whether there were two Isaiahs or one is less important than the text itself. Of course I read the arguments for and against. But it's not my task in life to say there were two or three authors of Isaiah's book, or how many authors there were of Deuteronomy. This is not what I'm doing.Collection: Book
I remember when I heard the words "Biblical criticism" in my town, it was with disdain: "Biblical criticism? How dare you?".Collection: Biblical
In those dark times, one rose to the very heights of humanity by simply remaining human.Collection: Dark
I remember those faces of people who were good I saw that. I saw a father who gave his bread to his son and his son gave back the bread to his father. That, to me, was such a defeat of the enemies, will of the enemies, theories of the enemies, aspirations, here [in Auschwitz].Collection: Father
I was 15, not 14, when I was inside there [Auschwitz], 15, and for me both were actually a surprise.Collection: Surprise
If life is not a celebration, why remember it ? If life --- mine or that of my fellow man --- is not an offering to the other, what are we doing on this earth?Collection: Men
I needed to know that there was such a thing as love and that it brought smiles and joy in its wake.Collection: Joy
In my lifetime I was to write only one book, this would be the one. Just as the past Lingers in the present, all my writings after night, including those that deal with biblical, Talmudic, or Hasidic themes, profoundly bear it's stamp, and cannot be understood if one has not read this very first of my works. Why did I write it? Did I write it so as not to go mad or, on the contrary, to go mad in order to understand the nature of the madness, the immense, terrifying madness that had erupted in history and in the conscience of mankind?Collection: Book
Still I believe that Hanna Arendt, she was wrong when she tried to say that we are all actually capable of this, it's not true. I think it's not true. There are certain things human beings are not capable of. I mean people, even normal human beings. You have to do certain things in order to become what the enemy was and I didn't accept her philosophical outlook on that.Collection: Believe
If you ask me what I want to achieve, it's to create an awareness, which is already the beginning of teaching.Collection: Teaching
Therefore, all my adult life, since I began my life as an author, or as a teacher, I always try to listen to the victim.Collection: Teacher
No one is as capable of gratitude as one who has emerged from the kingdom of night. We know that every moment is a moment of grace, every hour an offering; not to share them would mean to betray them. Our lives no longer belong to us alone; they belong to all those who need us desperately.Collection: Gratitude
you can do something. You can, even for one person Don't turn away; help. Because those who suffer, often suffer not because of the person or the group that inflicts the suffering; they seem to suffer because nobody cares.Collection: Suffering
Every moment contains a spark of eternity.Collection: Sparks
Every single human being is a unique human being. And, therefore, it's so criminal to do something to that human being, because he or she represents humanity.Collection: Unique
I learned to trust the threats of enemies before the promises of friends.Collection: Promise
Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented.Collection: Bystanders
I came to the conclusion that I am free to choose my own suffering. But I am not free to consent to someone else's suffering.Collection: Suffering
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)Collection: Pain
Only fanatics — in religion as well as in politics — can find a meaning in someone else’s death.Collection: Wells
Human suffering anywhere concerns men and women everywhere.Collection: Men
To forget the dead would be akin to killing them a second time.Collection: Holocaust
Night is purer than day; it is better for thinking and loving and dreaming. At night everything is more intense, more true. The echo of words that have been spoken during the day takes on a new and deeper meaning. The tragedy of man is that he doesn't know how to distinguish between day and night. He says things at night that should only be said by day.Collection: Dream
I think the Messianic concept, which is the Jewish offering to mankind, is a great victory. What does it mean? It means that history has a sense, a meaning, a direction; it goes somewhere, and necessarily in a good direction--the Messiah.Collection: Mean
Will you join me in hearing the case for keeping weapons from those who preach death to Israel and America?Collection: America
My faith is a wounded faith, but my life is not without faith. I didn't divorce God, but I'm quarrelling and arguing and questioning, it's a wounded faith.Collection: Divorce
To forget a Holocaust is to kill twiceCollection: Holocaust
We must choose between the violence of adults and the smiles of children. Between the ugliness of hate and the will to oppose it. Between inflicting suffering and humiliation on our fellow man and offering him the solidarity and hope he deserves.Collection: Children
Eternity is the place where questions and answers become one.Collection: Questions And Answers