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.
--Elie Wiesel
An immoral society betrays humanity because it betrays the basis for humanity, which is memory.
--Elie Wiesel
As the Nobel laureate Elie Wiesel warned years ago, to forget a holocaust is to kill twice.
--Iris Chang
Because I remember, I despair. Because I remember, I have the duty to reject despair.
--Elie Wiesel
Friendship marks a life even more deeply than love. Love risks degenerating into obsession, friendship is never anything but sharing.
--Elie Wiesel
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.
--Elie Wiesel
I don't believe in accidents. There are only encounters in history. There are no accidents.
--Elie Wiesel
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.
--Elie Wiesel
I rarely speak about God. To God, yes. I protest against Him. I shout at Him. But to open a discourse about the qualities of God, about the problems that God imposes, theodicy, no. And yet He is there, in silence, in filigree.
--Elie Wiesel
Indifference, to me, is the epitome of evil.
--Elie Wiesel
Just as despair can come to one only from other human beings, hope, too, can be given to one only by other human beings.
--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
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.
--Elie Wiesel
No human race is superior; no religious faith is inferior. All collective judgments are wrong. Only racists make them.
--Elie Wiesel
Nobody is stronger, nobody is weaker than someone who came back. There is nothing you can do to such a person because whatever you could do is less than what has already been done to him. We have already paid the price.
--Elie Wiesel
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.
--Elie Wiesel
Once you bring life into the world, you must protect it. We must protect it by changing the world.
--Elie Wiesel
Remember that despair is never the solution. Remember, hatred is never an option. Remember that hope is not a gift given to us, hope is a gift that we give to others.
--Elie Wiesel
Some stories are true that never happened.
--Elie Wiesel
Sometimes it happens that we travel for a long time without knowing that we have made the long journey solely to pronounce a certain word, a certain phrase, in a certain place. The meeting of the place and the word is a rare accomplishment.
--Elie Wiesel
The opposite of love is not hate, it's indifference. The opposite of beauty is not ugliness, it's indifference. The opposite of faith is not heresy, it's indifference. And the opposite of life is not death, but indifference between life and death.
--Elie Wiesel
There are victories of the soul and spirit. Sometimes, even if you lose, you win.
--Elie Wiesel
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 re sult of an original eight hundred pages. The six hundred are there. Only you don't see them.
--Elie Wiesel
There may be times when we are powerless to prevent injustice, but there must never be a time when we fail to protest.
--Elie Wiesel
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
Time does not heal all wounds; there are those that remain painfully open.
--Elie Wiesel
We are heading towards catastrophe. I think the world is going to pieces. I am very pessimistic. Why? Because the world hasn't been punished yet, and the only punishment that could be adequate is the nuclear destruction of the world.
--Elie Wiesel
We must always take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented.
--Elie Wiesel
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.
--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
When you see the abyss, and we have looked into it, then what? There isn't much room at the edge- one person, another, not many. If you are there, others cannot be there. If you are there, you become a protective wall. What happens? You become part of the abyss.
--Elie Wiesel
Whenever an angel says 'Be not afraid!' you'd better start worrying. A big assignment is on the way.
--Elie Wiesel
Words can sometimes, in moments of grace, attain the quality of deeds.
--Elie Wiesel
Found 33 occurence(s) in 52,045 quotation(s).