Elie Wiesel
83 quotes
Biography
Eliezer "Elie" Wiesel was a Romanian-born American writer, professor, political activist, Nobel laureate, and Holocaust survivor. He authored 57 books, written mostly in French and English, including Night, which is based on his experiences as a Jewish prisoner at Auschwitz and Buchenwald during the Holocaust.
"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."
"Friendship marks a life even more deeply than love. Love risks degenerating into obsession, friendship is never anything but sharing."
"Once you bring life into the world, you must protect it. We must protect it by changing the world."
"Hope is like peace. It is not a gift from God. It is a gift only we can give one another."
"Just as despair can come to one only from other human beings, hope, too, can be given to one only by other human beings."
"There may be times when we are powerless to prevent injustice, but there must never be a time when we fail to protest."
"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."
"If the only prayer you say throughout your life is "Thank You,"then that will be enough."
"Write only if you cannot live without writing. Write only what you alone can write."
"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."
"I write to understand as much as to be understood."
"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."
"Even in darkness it is possible to create light and encourage compassion. That it is possible to feel free inside a prison. That even in exile, friendship exists and can become an anchor. That one instant before dying, man is still immortal."
"A disciple came to the celebrated Master of the Good Name with a question. “Rabbi, how are we to distinguish between a true master and a fake?” And the master of the good name said, “When you meet a person who poses as a master, ask him a question: whether he knows how to purify your thoughts. If he says that he knows, then he is a fake."
"Some writings could sometimes, in moments of grace, attain the quality of deeds."
"Time does not heal all wounds; there are those that remain painfully open."
"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."
"Miracles in mysticism don't occupy such an important place. It's metaphor, for the peasants, for the crowds, to impress people. 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. You plunge into it. 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."
"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."
"I have not lost faith in God. I have moments of anger and protest. Sometimes I've been closer to him for that reason."
"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."