Quotes from Elie Wiesel

Do I have the right to represent the multitudes who have perished? Do I have the right to accept this great honor on their behalf? I do not. No one may speak for the dead, no one may interpret their mutilated dreams and visions. And yet, I sense their presence. I always do—and at this moment more than ever. The presence of my parents, that of my little sister. The presence of my teachers, my friends, my companions … This honor belongs

He struggles to understand why fate has spared him and not so many others. Was it to know happiness? His happiness will never be complete. To know love? He will never be sure of being worthy of love. A part of him is still back there, on the other side, where the dead deny the living the right to leave them behind. His recovery will be a road into exile, a journey in which the touch of the woman he loves will matter less than the image of his grandmother buried under a mountain of ashes.

i swore never to be silent whenever 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

What all these victims need above all is to know that they are not alone; that we are not forgetting them, that when their voices are stifled we shall lend them ours, that while their freedom depends on ours, the quality of our freedom depends on theirs.

To forget a holocaust is to kill twice.

OUR FIRST ACT AS FREE MEN was to throw ourselves onto the provisions. That's all we thought about. No thought of revenge, or of parents. Only of bread. And

I was twelve. I believed profoundly. During the day I studied the Talmud, and at night I ran to the synagogue to weep over the destruction of the Temple.

He explained to me, with great emphasis, that every question possessed a power that was lost in the answer …

I learned that man lives differently, depending on whether he is in a horizontal or vertical position.

It was only after the war that I found out who had knocked that night. It was an inspector of the Hungarian police, a friend of my father's. Before we entered the ghetto, he had told us, "Don't worry. I'll warn you if there is danger." Had he been able to speak to us that night, we might still have been able to flee … But by the time we succeeded in opening the window, it was too late. There was nobody outside.

Beggars inspired me with mingled feelings of love and fear. I knew that I ought to be kind to them, for they might not be what they seemed.

Man prefers to blame himself for all possible sins and crimes rather than coe to the conclussion tat God is capable of the most flagrant injustice. I still blush everytime I think of the way God makes fun of human beings, his favorite toys.

The tragedy of man is that he doesn't know how to distinguish between day and night. He says things at night that should only be said by day." He

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.

If your suffering splashes others, those around you, those for whom you represent a reason to live, then you must kill it, choke it.

Where is God to be found? In suffering or in rebellion? When is a man most truly a man? When he submits or when he refuses? Where does suffering lead him? To purification or to bestiality?

The revolver was black and nearly new. I was afraid to even touch it, for in it lay all the whole difference between what I was and what I was going to be.

After trampling over many bodies and corpses, we succeeded in getting inside. We let ourselves fall to the ground.

How do I find God?' you ask. I do not know how, but I do know where-in my fellow man.

Dawn is purely a work of fiction, but I wrote it to look at myself in a new way. Obviously I did not live this tale, but I was implicated in its ethical dilemma from the moment that I assumed my character's place.

From Jeff Greenfield: I once asked Elie Wiesel Are you an optimist or a pessimist? An optimist, he said. I have to be.

The opposite of life is not death, it's indifference

one person of integrity can make a difference, a difference of life and death. As long as one dissident is in prison, our freedom will not be true. As long as one child is hungry, our life will be filled with anguish and shame. What all these victims need above all is to know that they are not alone; that we are not forgetting them, that when their voices are stifled we shall lend them ours, that while their freedom depends on ours, the quality of our freedom depends on theirs.

Whatever you think in life… think higher and feel deeper, be positive.