Elie Wiesel Quotes

Our first act as free men was to throw ourselves onto the provisions. thats all we thought about. No thought of revenge, or of parents. Only of bread.

~ Elie Wiesel

We must take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silent encourages the tormentor, never the tormented.

~ Elie Wiesel

Night is purer than day; it is better for thinking, 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

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

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

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

~ Elie Wiesel

I needed to know that there was such a thing as love and that it brought smiles and joy in its wake.

~ Elie Wiesel

We marched. Gates opened and closed. We continued to march between the barbed wire. At every step, white signs with black skulls looked down on us. The inscription: WARNING! DANGER OF DEATH. What irony. Was there here a single place where one was NOT in danger of death?

~ 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

Three days after the liberation of Buchenwald, I became very ill; some sort of poisoning. I was transferred to a hospital and spent two weeks between life and death.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.From the depths of the mirror, a corpse was contemplating me. The look in his eyes as he gazed at me has never left me.

~ Elie Wiesel

He explained to me with great insistence that every question posessed a power that did not lie in the answer.

~ 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

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

I swore never to be silent whenever human beings endure suffering and humiliation. We must take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented. Sometimes we must interfere. When human lies are endangered, when human dignity is in jeopardy, national borders and sensitivities become irrelevant. Whenever men and women are prosecuted because of their race, religion, or political views, that place must--at that moment--become the center of the universe.

~ Elie Wiesel

If life is not a celebration, why remember it ? If life --- mine or that of my fellow man --- is not an offering to the other, what are we doing on this earth?

~ Elie Wiesel

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

~ 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

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

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

~ Elie Wiesel

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

~ Elie Wiesel

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.

~ Elie Wiesel

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

~ Elie Wiesel

Because of indifference, one dies before one actually dies.

~ Elie Wiesel

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.

~ Elie Wiesel

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

~ Elie Wiesel

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.

~ Elie Wiesel

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

~ Elie Wiesel

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

~ 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

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

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

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.

~ Elie Wiesel

In Jewish history there are no coincidences.

~ Elie Wiesel

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

~ Elie Wiesel

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

~ Elie Wiesel

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

~ 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

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.

~ Elie Wiesel

After all, God is God because he remembers.

~ 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