Quotes By Elie Wiesel

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

Because of indifference, one dies before one actually dies.

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.

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

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.

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

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

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.

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

After all, God is God because he remembers.

For me, every hour is grace.

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.

Peace is our gift to each other.

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.

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

In Jewish history there are no coincidences.

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.

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

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

I write to understand as much as to be understood.

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.

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.

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.

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

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