Elie Wiesel

“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.”

“Language failed me very often, but then, the substitute for me was silence, but not violence.”

“I wanted to write a commentary on the Bible, to write about the Talmud, about celebration, about the great eternal subjects: love and happiness.”

“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.”

“Just as despair can come to one only from other human beings, hope, too, can be given to one only by other human beings.”

“Wherever men and women are persecuted because of their race, religion, or political views, that place must — at that moment — become the center of the universe.”

“Friendship marks a life even more deeply than love. Love risks degenerating into obsession, friendship is never anything but sharing.”

“After all, God is God because he remembers.”

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

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

“Friendship marks a life even more deeply than love. Love risks degenerating into obsession, friendship is never anything but sharing.”

“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.”

“The opposite of love is not hate, it's indifference.”

“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.”

“I was very, very religious. And of course I wrote about it in 'Night.' I questioned God's silence. So I questioned. I don't have an answer for that. Does it mean that I stopped having faith? No. I have faith, but I question it.”

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

“Friendship marks a life even more deeply than love. Love risks degenerating into obsession, friendship is never anything but sharing.”

“Time does not heal all wounds; there are those that remain painfully open.”

“Some writings could sometimes, in moments of grace, attain the quality of deeds.”

“If you ask me what I want to achieve, it's to create an awareness, which is already the beginning of teaching.”

“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.”

“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.”

“That place, Mr. President, is not your place. Your place is with the victims of the SS.”

“What hurts the victim most is not the cruelty of the oppressor but the silence of the bystander.”

“Indifference, to me, is the epitome of evil.”

“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. Because of indifference, one dies before one actually dies. To be in the window and watch people being sent to concentration camps or being attacked in the street and do nothing, that's being dead.”

“Whenever an angel says "Be not afraid!" you'd better start worrying. A big assignment is on the way.”

“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. .\xa0.\xa0. War may be too much a part of history to be eliminated—ever.”

“No human race is superior; no religious faith is inferior. All collective judgments are wrong. Only racists make them.”

“I don't believe in accidents. There are only encounters in history. There are no accidents.”

“An immoral society betrays humanity because it betrays the basis for humanity, which is memory. An immoral society deals with memory as some politicians deal with politics. A moral society is committed to memory: I believe in memory. The Greek word alethia means Truth, Things that cannot be forgotten. I believe in those things that cannot be forgotten and because of that so much in my work deals with memory... What do all my books have in common? A commitment to memory.”

“Close your eyes and listen. Listen to the silent screams of terrified mothers, the prayers of anguished old men and women. Listen to the tears of children. Jewish children, a beautiful little girl among them, with golden hair, whose vulnerable tenderness has never left me. Look and listen as they walk towards dark flames so gigantic that the planet itself seemed in danger.”

“The duty of the survivor is to bear testimony to what happened .\xa0.\xa0. You have to warn people that these things can happen, that evil can be unleashed. Race hatred, violence, idolatries—they still flourish.”

“Mankind must remember that peace is not God's gift to his creatures; peace is our gift to each other.”

“What is abnormal is that I am normal. 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.”

“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.”

“Friendship marks a life even more deeply than love. Love risks degenerating into obsession, friendship is never anything but sharing.”

“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.”

“I had anger but never hate. Before the war, I was too busy studying to hate. After the war, I thought, What's the use? To hate would be to reduce myself.”

“In Jewish history there are no coincidences.”

“I believe mysticism is a very serious endeavor. One must be equipped for it. One doesn't study calculus before studying arithmetic. 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.”

“The most important question a human being has to face... What is it? The question, Why are we here?”

“It's up to you now, and we shall help you — that my past does not become your future.”

“When a Jew visits Jerusalem for the first time, it is not the first time; it is a homecoming.”

“There are victories of the soul and spirit. Sometimes, even if you lose, you win.”

“They called him Moishe the Beadle, as if his entire life he had never had a surname.”

“"The yellow star? So what? It's not lethal..."(Poor Father! Of what then did you die?)”

“The barbed wire that encircled us like a wall did not fill us with real fear. In fact, we felt this was not a bad thing: we were entirely among ourselves. A small Jewish republic...”

“People thought this was a good thing. We would no longer have to look at all those hostile faces, endure those hate-filled stares. No more fear. No more anguish. We would live entirely among Jews, among brothers...”

“Most people thought we would remain in the ghetto until the end of the war, until the arrival of the Red Army. Afterward everything would be as before. The ghetto was ruled by neither German nor Jew; it was ruled by delusion.”

“No human race is superior; no religious faith is inferior. All collective judgments are wrong. Only racists make them.”

“The street resembled fairgrounds deserted in haste. There was a little of everything: suitcases, briefcases, bags, knives, dishes, banknotes, papers, faded portraits. All the things one planned to take along and finally left behind. They had ceased to matter.Open rooms everywhere. Gaping doors and windows looked out into the void. It all belonged to everyone since it no longer belonged to anyone. It was there for the taking. An open tomb.”

“"Faster! Faster! Move, you lazy good-for-nothings!" the Hungarian police were screaming.That was when I began to hate them, and my hatred remains our only link today. They were our first oppressors. They were the first faces of hell and death.”

“No one was praying for the night to pass quickly. The stars were but sparks of the immense conflagration that was consuming us. Were this conflagration to be extinguished one day, nothing would be left in the sky but extinct stars and unseeing eyes.”

“My faceless neighbor spoke up:”

“The Hungarian lieutenant went around with a basket and retrieved the last possessions from those who chose not to go on tasting the bitterness of fear.The two disappeared. The doors clanked shut. We had fallen into the trap, up to our necks. The doors were nailed, the way back irrevocably cut off. The world had become a hermetically sealed cattle car.”

“The beloved objects that we had carried with us from place to place were now left behind in the wagon and, with them, finally, our illusions.”

“An SS came toward us wielding a club. He commanded:Eight words spoken quietly, indifferently, without emotion. Eight simple, short words. Yet that was the moment when I left my mother. There was no time to think, and I already felt my father's hand press against mine: we were alone.”

“The world? The world is not interested in us. Today, everything is possible, even the crematoria...”

“"Yisgadal, veyiskadash, shmey raba...May His name be celebrated and sanctified..." whispered my father.For the first time, I felt anger rising within me. Why should I sanctify His name? The Almighty, the eternal and terrible Master of the Universe, chose to be silent. What was there to thank Him for?”

“The night had passed completely. The morning star shone in the sky. I too had become a different person. The student of Talmud, the child I was, had been consumed by the flames. All that was left was a shape that resembled me. My soul had been invaded - and devoured - by a black flame.”

“"For God's sake, where is God?"That night, the soup tasted of corpses.”

“If the only prayer you say throughout your life is "Thank You," then that will be enough.”

“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 favor, 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!”

“But now, I no longer pleaded for anything. I was no longer able to lament. On the contrary, I felt very strong. I was the accuser, God the accused. My eyes had opened and I was alone, terribly alone in a world without God, without man. Without love or mercy. I was nothing but ashes no, but I felt myself to be stronger than this Almighty to whom my life had been bound for so long. In the midst of these men assembled for prayer, I felt like an observer, a stranger.”

“The bell. It was already time to part, to go to bed. The bell regulated everything. It gave me orders and I executed them blindly. I hated that bell. Whenever I happened to dream of a better world, I imagined a universe without a bell.”

“Human beings should be held accountable. Leave God alone. He has enough problems.”

“Don't be deluded. Hitler has made it clear that he will annihilate all Jews before the clock strikes twelve.""I have more faith in Hitler than in anyone else. He alone has kept his promises, all his promises, to the Jewish people.”

“We were outside. The icy wind whipped my face. I was constantly biting my lips so that they wouldn't freeze. All around me, what appeared to be a dance of death. My head was reeling. I was walking through a cemetery. Among the stiffened corpses, there were logs of wood. Not a sound of distress, not a plaintive cry, nothing but mass agony and silence. Nobody asked anyone for help. One died because one had to. No point in making trouble.”

“His last word had been my name. He had called out to me and I had not answered.I did not weep, and it pained me that I could not weep. But I was out of tears. And deep inside me, if I could have searched the recesses of my feeble conscience, I might have found something like: Free at last!”

“One day when I was able to get up, I decided to look at myself in the mirror on the opposite wall. I had not seen myself since the ghetto.The look in his eyes as he gazed at me has never left me.”

“Look, if I were alone in the world, I would have the right to choose despair, solitude and self-fulfillment. But I am not alone.”

“BERISH: I resigned from membership in God—I resigned from God. Let Him look for another innkeeper, let Him find another people, let Him push around another Jew—I’m through with Him!MARIA: Don’t you worry, Master. You say things, but God isn’t angry How could He be? He isn’t even listening.”

“PRIEST: Are you taking their side, daughter? You’ll burn in hell.MARIA: Better in hell with them than in paradise with you.”

“MENDEL: What shall we play?BERISH: When you do something without doing it, when you say something without saying it, while thinking that you did say, and you did do something—anything—that’s theater.”

“BERISH: I distrust miracles. They exist only in books, and books say anything.”

“MENDEL: Once you’re on your knees, you can’t stand up straight again.”

“BERISH: Prosecutor. That’s what I am going to be. Prosecutor.AVREMEL: That’s someone nice who has the right to be nasty.”

“MARIA: The people can say anything they please—MENDEL: Right. Under one condition: that they do not say it.”

“We must take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented.”

“MARIA: Hell? Is he talking about hell? Good. For a moment I was afraid he was making sense.”

“Without memory, there is no culture. Without memory, there would be no civilization, no society, no future.”

“SAM: Isn’t this a circus...of sorts?SAM: So does the theater.”

“Because I remember, I despair. Because I remember, I have the duty to reject despair.”

“AVREMEL: You came to us from Zhironov?SAM: There is always someone to call it a miracle.”

“Hope is like peace. It is not a gift from God. It is a gift only we can give one another.”

“No one is as capable of gratitude as one who has emerged from the kingdom of night.”

“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.”

“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.”

“Mankind must remember that peace is not God's gift to his creatures; peace is our gift to each other.”

“Wherever men and women are persecuted because of their race, religion, or political views, that place must at that moment become the center of the universe.”

“The opposite of love is not hate, it's indifference.”

“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.”

“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."”

“Indifference, to me, is the epitome of evil.”

“If anything can, it is memory that will save humanity.”

“What does mysticism really mean? It means the way to attain knowledge. It's close to philosophy, except in philosophy you go horizontally while in mysticism you go vertically.”

“Just as man cannot live without dreams, he cannot live without hope. If dreams reflect the past, hope summons the future.”

“Human beings should be held accountable. Leave God alone. He has enough problems.”

“A recollection. The time: After the war. The place: Paris. A young man struggles to readjust to life. His mother, his father, his small sister are gone. He is alone. On the verge of despair. And yet he does not give up. On the contrary, he strives to find a place among the living. He acquires a new language. He makes a few friends who, like himself, believe that the memory of evil will serve as a shield against evil; that the memory of death will serve as a shield against death.”

“Someone who hates one group will end up hating everyone - and, ultimately, hating himself or herself.”

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

“Waking among the dead, one wondered if one was still alive. And yet real despair only seized us later. Afterwards. As we emerged from the nightmare and began to search for meaning.”

“I would like to see real peace and a state of Israel living peacefully alongside a state of Palestine.”

“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.”

“For us, forgetting was never an option. 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.”

“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.”

“Of course some wars may have been necessary or inevitable, but none was ever regarded as holy. For us, a holy war is a contradiction in terms. War dehumanizes, war diminishes, war debases all those who wage it. The Talmud says, "Talmidei hukhamim marbin shalom baolam" (It is the wise men who will bring about peace). Perhaps, because wise men remember best.”

“Once you bring life into the world, you must protect it. We must protect it by changing the world.”

“How are we to reconcile our supreme duty towards memory with the need to forget that is essential to life? No generation has had to confront this paradox with such urgency. The survivors wanted to communicate everything to the living: the victim's solitude and sorrow, the tears of mothers driven to madness, the prayers of the doomed beneath a fiery sky.”

“I decided to devote my life to telling the story because I felt that having survived I owe something to the dead. and anyone who does not remember betrays them again.”

“After the war we reassured ourselves that it would be enough to relate a single night in Treblinka, to tell of the cruelty, the senselessness of murder, and the outrage born of indifference: it would be enough to find the right word and the propitious moment to say it, to shake humanity out of its indifference and keep the torturer from torturing ever again.”

“In Jewish history there are no coincidences.”

“We thought it would be enough to tell of the tidal wave of hatred which broke over the Jewish people for men everywhere to decide once and for all to put an end to hatred of anyone who is "different" — whether black or white, Jew or Arab, Christian or Moslem — anyone whose orientation differs politically, philosophically, sexually.”

“Religion is not man's relationship to God, it is man's relationship to man.”

“We tried. It was not easy. At first, because of the language; language failed us. We would have to invent a new vocabulary, for our own words were inadequate, anemic. And then too, the people around us refused to listen; and even those who listened refused to believe; and even those who believed could not comprehend. Of course they could not. Nobody could. The experience of the camps defies comprehension.”

“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.”

“Hope is like peace. It is not a gift from God. It is a gift only we can give one another.”

“If someone had told us in 1945 that in our lifetime religious wars would rage on virtually every continent, that thousands of children would once again be dying of starvation, we would not have believed it. Or that racism and fanaticism would flourish once again, we would not have believed it.”

“I don't know much about politics, and I don't want to know. That's why I rarely involve myself in politics.”

“Terrorism must be outlawed by all civilized nations — not explained or rationalized, but fought and eradicated. Nothing can, nothing will justify the murder of innocent people and helpless children.”

“I've given my life to the principle and the ideal of memory, and remembrance.”

“Because I remember, I despair. Because I remember, I have the duty to reject despair. I remember the killers, I remember the victims, even as I struggle to invent a thousand and one reasons to hope.”

“I write to understand as much as to be understood.”

“There may be times when we are powerless to prevent injustice, but there must never be a time when we fail to protest. The Talmud tells us that by saving a single human being, man can save the world.”

“For me, every hour is grace.”

“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.”

“I love teaching.”

“A destruction only man can provoke, only man can prevent. Mankind must remember that peace is not God's gift to his creatures, it is our gift to each other.”

“Some stories are true that never happened.”

“Most people think that shadows follow, precede or surround beings or objects. The truth is that they also surround words, ideas, desires, deeds, impulses and memories.”

“Religion is a very personal thing for me. Religion has its good moments and its poor moments.”

“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.”

“There may be times when we are powerless to prevent injustice, but there must never be a time when we fail to protest.”

“Friendship marks a life even more deeply than love. Love risks degenerating into obsession, friendship is never anything but sharing.”

“Just as despair can come to one only from other human beings, hope, too, can be given to one only by other human beings.”

“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.”

“When language fails, violence becomes a language; I never had that feeling.”

“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.”

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

“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.”

“A destruction, an annihilation that only man can provoke, only man can prevent.”

“Wherever men and women are persecuted because of their race, religion, or political views, that place must - at that moment - become the center of the universe.”

“Words can sometimes, in moments of grace, attain the quality of deeds.”

“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.”

“Not to transmit an experience is to betray it.”

“Human beings should be held accountable. Leave God alone. He has enough problems.”

“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.”

“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.”

“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.”

“I will say, with memoir, you must be honest. You must be truthful.”

“I'm a teacher and a writer; my life is words. When I see the denigration of language, it hurts me, and it's easy to denigrate a word by trivializing it.”

“No human race is superior; no religious faith is inferior. All collective judgments are wrong. Only racists make them.”

“There is a difference between a book of two hundred pages from the very beginning, and a book of two hundred pages which is the result of an original eight hundred pages. The six hundred are there. Only you don't see them.”

“Peace is our gift to each other.”

“After all, God is God because he remembers.”

“For in my tradition, as a Jew, I believe that whatever we receive we must share.”

“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.”

“I do not recall a Jewish home without a book on the table.”

“Moses was the greatest legislator and the commander in chief of perhaps the first liberation army.”

“Hope is like peace. It is not a gift from God. It is a gift only we can give one another.”

“Once you bring life into the world, you must protect it. We must protect it by changing the world.”

“When a person doesn't have gratitude, something is missing in his or her humanity.”

“There are victories of the soul and spirit. Sometimes, even if you lose, you win.”

“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.”

“I believe in superstitions. You don't talk about a child who hasn't been born.”

“Because of indifference, one dies before one actually dies.”

“If I were immersed in constant melancholy, I would not be who I am.”

“Some stories are true that never happened.”

“I do not recall a Jewish home without a book on the table.”

“True enemies aren't always the ones who hate each other.”

“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.”

“I never felt any attraction towards violence. I never tried to express myself through violence. Violence is a language.”

“When did I learn the Bible? When I was four or five years old. It's still the pull of my childhood, a fascination with the vanished world, and I can find everything except that world.”

“You would be amazed at the number of doors a Nobel Prize opens.”

“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.”

“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.”

“I'll tell you what: I believe mysticism is a very serious endeavor. One must be equipped for it.”

“No one may speak for the dead, no one may interpret their mutilated dreams and visions.”

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

“I was very, very religious. And of course I wrote about it in 'Night.' I questioned God's silence. So I questioned. I don't have an answer for that. Does it mean that I stopped having faith? No. I have faith, but I question it.”

“We have to go into the despair and go beyond it, by working and doing for somebody else, by using it for something else.”

“The Bible is not only laws, it's also stories.”

“When I was young I lost everything.”

“War is like night, she said. It covers everything.”

“One always goes back to one's childhood in the beginning, and I come from a very religious family and surrounding. Very religious.”

“Historically, I come from Jewish history. I had the classic upbringing in the Yeshiva, learning, learning, and more learning.”

“I never teach the same course twice.”

“Not to transmit an experience is to betray it.”

“Because I remember, I despair. Because I remember, I have the duty to reject despair.”

“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.”

“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.”

“In any society, fanatics who hate don't hate only me - they hate you, too. They hate everybody.”

“Without memory, there is no culture. Without memory, there would be no civilization, no society, no future.”

“Our obligation is to give meaning to life and in doing so to overcome the passive, indifferent life.”

“That is my major preoccupation, memory, the kingdom of memory. I want to protect and enrich that kingdom, glorify that kingdom and serve it.”

“Look, if I were alone in the world, I would have the right to choose despair, solitude and self-fulfillment. But I am not alone.”

“I have to be self-conscious of what I'm trying to do with my life.”

“Never shall I forget those flames which consumed my faith forever."”

“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.”