Elie Wiesel Quotes & Sayings

His last word had been my name. A summons. And I had not responded. — Elie Wiesel

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

I have to be self-conscious of what I'm trying to do with my life. — Elie Wiesel

We do not know the worth of one single drop of blood, one single tear. — Elie Wiesel

One can do without solutions. Only the questions matter. We may share them or turn away from them. — Elie Wiesel

Man prefers to blame himself for all possible sins and crimes rather than come to the conclusion that God is capable of the most flagrant injustice. I still blush every time I think of the way God makes fun of human beings, his favorite toys. — Elie Wiesel

When a person doesn't have gratitude, something is missing in his or her humanity. A person can almost be defined by his or her attitude toward gratitude. — Elie Wiesel

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. — Elie Wiesel

For me, every hour is grace. And I feel gratitude in my heart each time I can meet someone and look at his or her smile. — Elie Wiesel

AFTER THE WAR, I learned the fate of those who had remained at the infirmary. They were, quite simply, liberated by the Russians, two days after the evacuation. — Elie Wiesel

As for me, I had ceased to pray. I concurred with Job! I was not denying His existence, but I doubted His absolute justice. Akiba — Elie Wiesel

It all happened so fast. The ghetto. The deportation. The sealed cattle car. The fiery altar upon which the history of our people and the future of mankind were meant to be sacrificed. — Elie Wiesel

In an inn somewhere, a wealthy guest mistakes [Rebbe Zusia] for a beggar and treats him accordingly. Later he learns his identity and comes to cry his remorse: "Forgive me, Rebbe, you must - for I didn't know!"
"Why do you ask Zusia to forgive you?" Rebbe Zusia said, shaking his head and smiling. "You haven't done anything bad to him; it is not Zusia you insulted but a poor beggar, so go and ask the beggars, everywhere, to forgive you! — Elie Wiesel

Our obligation is to give meaning to life and in doing so to overcome the passive, indifferent life. — Elie Wiesel

If there is a single theme that dominates all my writings, all my obsessions, it is that of memory-because I fear forgetfulness as much as hatred and death. — Elie Wiesel

Knowledge does not corrupt, unless it is arrogant; but then it is not true knowledge. — Elie Wiesel

It is in man that God must be loved, because the love of God goes through the love of man. Whoever loves God exclusively, namely excluding man, reduces his love and his God to the level of abstraction. Beshtian Hasidism denies all abstraction. — Elie Wiesel

Perhaps some day someone will explain how, on the level of man, Auschwitz was possible; but on the level of God, it will forever remain the most disturbing of mysteries. — Elie Wiesel

Humanity would never tolerate it — Elie Wiesel

If anyone had told us in 1945 that there are certain battles we'll have to fight again we wouldn't have believed it. Racism, anti-Semitism, starvation of children and, who would have believed that? At least I was convinced then, naively, that at least something happened in history that, because of myself, certain things cannot happen again. — Elie Wiesel

I pray to the God within me that He will give me the strength to ask Him the right questions. — Elie Wiesel

There were two sorts of light in the room: one white, around the sleeping Gideon and Joab, the other black, enveloping the ghosts. — Elie Wiesel

Our backyard looked like a marketplace. Valuable objects, precious rugs, silver candlesticks, Bibles and other ritual objects were strewn over the dusty grounds- pitiful relics that seemed never to have had a home. All this under a magnificent blue sky. — Elie Wiesel

Everybody around us was weeping. Someone began to recite Kaddish, the prayer for the dead. I don't know whether, during the history of the Jewish people, men have ever before recited Kaddish for themselves. — Elie Wiesel

I thought he was talking about my grandmother. I didn't want to see her. I knew she had died - of thirst, maybe - and I was afraid she wouldn't be as I remembered her. I was afraid she wouldn't have the black shawl on her head, nor those burning tears in her eyes, nor that clear, calm expression that could make you forget you were cold. — Elie Wiesel

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

After all, God is God because he remembers. — Elie Wiesel

The Bible is not only laws, it's also stories. It begins, 'In the beginning God created Heaven.' If I had written these words, I wouldn't have written anything else; it's just enough. — Elie Wiesel

The sky is so close to the sea that it is difficult to tell which is reflected in the other, which one needs the other, which one is dominating the other. — Elie Wiesel

The American and the British armies liberated camps, there wasn't a single order of the day: Let's go and liberate the camp. They stumbled upon the camps. Same thing with the Russians, I asked the Colonel who liberated Auschwitz, they didn't, there wasn't a priority. But I feel that that was a mistake, it was a sin because they could have saved so many people and they didn't. — Elie Wiesel

In this place, there is no such thing as father, brother, friend. Each of us lives and dies alone. — Elie Wiesel

In those dark times, one rose to the very heights of humanity by simply remaining human. — Elie Wiesel

The philosophers are wrong: it is not words that kill, it is silence. — Elie Wiesel

But the forces of evil have not abdicated. The malevolent ghosts of hatred are resurgent with a fury and a boldness that are as astounding as they are nauseating: ethnic conflicts, religious riots, anti-Semitic incidents here, there, and everywhere. What is wrong with these morally degenerate people that they abuse their freedom, so recently won? — Elie Wiesel

The silence of two people is deeper than the silence of one. — Elie Wiesel

Indifference to me, is the epitome of all evil. — Elie Wiesel

From time immemorial, people have talked about peace without achieving it. Do we simply lack enough experience? Though we talk peace, we wage war. Sometimes we even wage war in the name of peace ... War may be too much a part of history to be eliminated-ever. — Elie Wiesel

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. — Elie Wiesel

She is gazing out into the night, and the night has a thousand eyes, which are mine. — Elie Wiesel

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. — Elie Wiesel

The witness has forced himself to testify. For the youth of today, for the children who will be born tomorrow. He does not want his past to become their future. — Elie Wiesel

I wrote my first book, I published it in 1955, it was in Jiddish and it was called And The World Was Silent. — Elie Wiesel

Never shall I forget the little faces of the children, whose bodies turned into wreaths of smoke beneath a silent blue sky. — Elie Wiesel

Man asks and God replies but we don't understand his replies because they dwell in the depths of our souls and remain there until we die. — Elie Wiesel

When you listen to a witness, you become a witness. — Elie Wiesel

The Holocaust is a sacred subject. One should take off one's shoes when entering its domain, one should tremble each time one pronounces the word. — Elie Wiesel

I imagine, like all his predecessors, Barak Obama would like to achieve greatness in bringing peace in the Middle East. I hope it will not be at the expense of Israel. — Elie Wiesel

My faith is a wounded faith, but it's not without faith. My life is not without faith. — Elie Wiesel

I have one request: may I never use my reason against truth. — Elie Wiesel

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

Beggars inspired me with mingled feelings of love and fear. I knew that I ought to be kind to them, for they might not be what they seemed. — Elie Wiesel

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." — Elie Wiesel

Yet another last night. The last night at home, the last night in the ghetto, the last night in the train, and, now, the last night in Buna. How much longer were our lives to be dragged out from one 'last night' to another? — Elie Wiesel

It was neither German nor Jew who ruled the ghetto - it was illusion. — Elie Wiesel

I've been fighting my entire adult life for men and women everywhere to be equal and to be different. But there is one right I would not grant anyone. And that is the right to be indifferent. — Elie Wiesel

Humanity? Humanity is not concerned with us. Today anything is allowed. Anything is possible. — Elie Wiesel

We know that every moment is a moment of grace, every hour an offering; not to share them would mean to betray them. — Elie Wiesel

How can one explain the attraction terror holds for some minds - and why for intellectuals? ... In a totalitarian and terrorist regime, man is no longer a unique being with infinite possibilities and limitless choices but a number, a puppet, with just this difference - numbers and puppets are not susceptible to fear. — Elie Wiesel

From Jeff Greenfield: "I once asked Elie Wiesel "Are you an optimist or a pessimist?" "An optimist," he said. "I have to be. — Elie Wiesel

I spent most of my time talking to God more than to people. — Elie Wiesel

The night was gone. The morning star was shining in the sky. I too had become a completely different person. The student of the Talmud, the child that I was, had been consumed in the flames. There remained only a shape that looked like me. A dark flame had entered into my soul and devoured it. — Elie Wiesel

In the beginning was belief, foolish belief, and faith, empty faith, and illusion, the terrible illusion ... We believed in God, had faith in man, and lived with the illusion that in each one of us is a sacred spark from the fire of the shekinah, that each one carried in his eyes and in his soul the sign of God. This was the source - if not the cause - of all our misfortune. — Elie Wiesel

The opposite of faith is not heresy but indifference — Elie Wiesel

This day I ceased to plead. I was no longer capable of lamentation. On the contrary, I felt very strong. I was the accuser, God the accused. — Elie Wiesel

If I were immersed in constant melancholy, I would not be who I am. — Elie Wiesel

In order to fly, you have to give up the ground you are standing on. — Elie Wiesel

Every Jew, somewhere in his being, should set apart a zone of hate -healthy virile hate- for what the German personifies and for what persists in the German. — Elie Wiesel

Philosophy is a slow process of logic and logical discourse: A bringing B bringing C and so forth. In mysticism you can jump from A to Z. But the ultimate objective is the same. It's knowledge. It's truth. — Elie Wiesel

Man, as long as he lives, is immortal. One minute before his death he shall be immortal. But one minute later, God wins. — Elie Wiesel

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]. — Elie Wiesel

I've worked with five Presidents in America, all of them I ask the same question always: Why didn't the American allies bomb the railways going to Auschwitz? — Elie Wiesel

No human being is illegal. That is a contradiction in terms. Human beings can be beautiful or more beautiful, they can be fat or skinny, they can be right or wrong, but illegal? How can a human being be illegal? — Elie Wiesel

There is a coalition of anti-Semitism today, the extreme left, the extreme right and in the middle the huge corpus of Islam. I'm worried, I go around with a very heavy heart. — Elie Wiesel

There is Israel, for us at least. What no other generation had, we have. We have Israel in spite of all the dangers, the threats and the wars, we have Israel. We can go to Jerusalem. Generations and generations could not and we can. — Elie Wiesel

From the depths of the mirror, a corpse gazed back at me. The look in his eyes, as they stared into mine, has never left me. — Elie Wiesel

I marvel at the resilience of the Jewish people. Their best characteristic is their desire to remember. No other people has such an obsession with memory. — Elie Wiesel

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. — Elie Wiesel

Memory is the keyword which combines past with present, past and future. — Elie Wiesel

Without memory, there is no culture. Without memory, there would be no civilization, no society, no future. — Elie Wiesel

I have not lost faith in God. I have moments of anger and protest. Sometimes I've been closer to him for that reason. — Elie Wiesel

On the seventh day of Passover, the curtain finally rose: the Germans arrested the leaders of the Jewish community. From that moment on, everything happened very quickly. The race toward death had begun. First edict: Jews were prohibited from leaving their residences for three days, under penalty of death. Moishe the Beadle came running to our house. "I warned you," he shouted. And left without waiting for a response. The same day, the Hungarian police — Elie Wiesel

Music does not replace words, it gives tone to the words — Elie Wiesel

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? — Elie Wiesel

All my life, until today, I have been content to ask questions. All the while knowing that the real questions, those that concern the creator and his creation, have no answers. I'll go even farther and say that there is a level at which only the questions are eternal, the answers never are. And so, the patient that I am, more charitable, repeats: 'Since God is, He is to be found in the questions as well as in the answers. — Elie Wiesel

I remember he asked his father, "Can this be true? This is the twentieth century, not the Middle Ages. Who would allow such crimes to be commited? How could the world remain silent?" And now the boy is turning to me. "Tell me," he asks, "what have you done with my future, what have you done with your life?" And I tell him that I have tried. That I have tried to keep memory alive, that I have tried to fight those who would forget. Because if we forget we are guilty, we are accomplices. And then I explain to him how naive we were, that the world did know and remained silent. And that is why I swore never to be silent whenever and wherever human beings endure suffering and humiliation. — Elie Wiesel

You are the sum total of all that we have been," said the youngster who looked like my former self. "In a way we are the ones to execute John Dawson. Because you can't do it without us. Now, do you see?" I was beginning to understand. An act so absolute as that of killing involves not only the killer but, as well, those who have formed him. In murdering a man I was making them murderers. — Elie Wiesel

My anger rises up within faith and not outside it. — Elie Wiesel

I believe in God
in spite of God! I believe in Mankind
in spite of Mankind! I believe in the Future
in spite of the Past! — Elie Wiesel

Whoever came to see Rebbe Shmelke with outstretched palms left bearing a gift. one day, when he had not a single piece of change, he gave a beggar a ring he saw lying on the table. It belonged to his wife, who, when she heard the story, complained loudly: "How could you, didn't you know this was a valuable ring, a diamond ring?"
Whereupon Shmelke ran out of the house in pursuit of the beggar, shouting: "Friend, listen, that ring is valuable! Don't let the jeweler cheat you! You mustn't sell it too cheap! — Elie Wiesel

Gratitude is a word that I cherish. Gratitude is what defines the happiness and humanity of the human being. — Elie Wiesel

The sincere Christian knows that what died in Auschwitz was not the Jewish people but Christianity. — Elie Wiesel

[The shock of finding a familiar word in an unfamiliar setting.] A SS man would examine us. Whenever he found a weak one, a musulman as we called them, he would write his number down: good for the crematory. — Elie Wiesel

What I don't like today is, to put it coarsely, the phony Hasidism, the phony mysticism. Many students say, "Teach me mysticism." It's a joke. — Elie Wiesel

People become the stories they hear and the stories they tell. — Elie Wiesel

Religion is a very personal thing for me. Religion has its good moments and its poor moments. — Elie Wiesel

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. — Elie Wiesel

The only way for us to help ourselves is to help others and to listen to each other's stories. — Elie Wiesel

Holy War is a contradiction of terms ... — Elie Wiesel

Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. — Elie Wiesel

A man who is fighting for the future of mankind is not waiting for torture, he's waiting for
the Revolution. — Elie Wiesel