60 Elie Wiesel Quotes That Will Instantly Lift You Up
Elie Wiesel (born 30 September 1928, Sighetu Marmației, Romania – died 2 July 2016, Manhattan, New York, United States) was a Romanian-born American writer, human rights activist, professor, and Holocaust survivor. He was the author of over 50 books, including Night, a harrowing account of his time in Nazi concentration camps. In 1986, he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.
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.What hurts the victim most is not the cruelty of the oppressor, but the silence of the bystander.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.
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.
Elie Wiesel
Human suffering anywhere concerns men and women everywhere.Without memory, there is no culture. Without memory, there would be no civilization, no society, no future.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.Mankind must remember that peace is not God's gift to his creatures; peace is our gift to each other.For the dead and the living, we must bear witness. Not only are we responsible for the memories of the dead, we are responsible for what we do with those memories.To forget would be not only dangerous but offensive; to forget the dead would be akin to killing them a second time.No human race is superior; no religious faith is inferior. All collective judgments are wrong. Only racists make them.I have not lost faith in God. I have moments of anger and protest. Sometimes I've been closer to him for that reason.To remain silent and indifferent is the greatest sin of all.When human lives are endangered, when human dignity is in jeopardy, national borders and sensitivities become irrelevant.Even in darkness it is possible to create light.
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
One person of integrity can make a difference.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.Some stories are true that never happened.In order to fly, you have to give up the ground you are standing on.Hope is like peace. It is not a gift from God. It is a gift only we can give one another.Be careful with words, they’re dangerous. Be wary of them. They begat either demons or angels. It’s up to you to give life to one or the other. Be careful, I tell you, nothing is as dangerous as giving free rein to words.
Sometimes we must interfere. When human lives are endangered, when human dignity is in jeopardy, national borders and sensitivities become irrelevant. Wherever men or women are persecuted because of their race, religion, or political views, that place must—at that moment—become the center of the universe.
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
Just as despair can come to one only from other human beings, hope, too, can be given to one only by other human beings.Think higher, feel deeper.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?I pray to the God within me that He will give me the strength to ask Him the right questions.
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 how
Elie Wiesel
Write only if you cannot live without writing. Write only what you alone can write.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?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.We must not see any person as an abstraction. Instead, we must see in every person a universe with its own secrets, with its own treasures, with its own sources of anguish, and with some measure of triumph.Once you bring life into the world, you must protect it. We must protect it by changing the world.Because of indifference, one dies before one actually dies.When language fails, violence becomes a language; I never had that feeling.A destruction, an annihilation that only man can provoke, only man can prevent.If I were immersed in constant melancholy, I would not be who I am.For in my tradition, as a Jew, I believe that whatever we receive we must share.Because I remember, I despair. Because I remember, I have the duty to reject despair.Someone who hates one group will end up hating everyone—and, ultimately, hating himself or herself.Human beings should be held accountable. Leave God alone. He has enough problems.Words can sometimes, in moments of grace, attain the quality of deeds.For in the end, it is all about memory, its sources and its magnitude, and, of course, its consequences.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.The philosophers are wrong: it is not words that kill, it is silence.Our obligation is to give meaning to life and in doing so to overcome the passive, indifferent life.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.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.Education in the key to preventing the cycle of violence and hatred that marred the 20th century from repeating itself in the 21st century.In the word question, there is a beautiful word – quest. I love that word.Life is not a fist. Life is an open hand waiting for some other hand to enter it.I write to understand as much as to be understood.In the face of suffering, one has no right to turn away, not to see.Every moment contains a spark of eternity.Once upon a time refugee meant somebody who has a refuge, found a place, a haven where he could find refuge.Better that 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.Just as man cannot live without dreams, he cannot live without hope. If dreams reflect the past, hope summons the future.
I am pessimistic because I don't trust history. But at the same time, I am optimistic. Out of despair, one creates. What else can one do? There is no good reason to go on living, but you must go on living. There is no good reason to bring a child into this world but you must have children to give the world a new innocence, a new reason to aspire towards innocence. As Camus said, in a world of unhappiness, you must create happiness.
