Quotes from Elie Wiesel

Man asks and God replies. But we don't understand His replies. We cannot understand them. Because they dwell in the depths of our souls and remain there until we die.

How are we ever to disarm evil and abolish death as a means to an end? How are we ever to break the cycle of violence and rage? Can terror coexist with justice? Does murder call for murder, despair for revenge? Can hate engender anything but hate?

I had many things to say, I did not have the words to say them. Painfully aware of my limitations, I watched helplessly as language became an obstacle…. Writing in my mother tongue—at that point close to extinction—I would pause at every sentence, and start over and over again…. All the dictionary had to offer seemed meager, pale, lifeless.

Judge God. He created the universe and made justice stem from injustices. He brought it about that a people should attain happiness through tears, that the freedom of a nation, like that of a man, should be a monument built upon a pile, a foundation of dead bodies…

For us it meant true equality: nakedness. We trembled in the cold. A

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?' Elie Wiesel

Love is worth as much as prayer. Sometimes more.

when you give bread to a beggar we give him that taste of paradise which only the poor can savor.

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

I speak from experience that even in darkness, it is possible to create light and encourage compassion. There it is: I still believe in man in spite of man.

Suddenly he stopped in front of me and asked for a cigarette. I had a package of Players in my pocket and wanted to give them to him. But he refused to take the whole package, saying quite calmly that obviously he didn't have time to smoke them all.

How was it possible that men, women, and children are being burned and that the world kept silent?

You mustn't be afraid of the dark... Night is purer than day; it is better for thinking and 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. 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.

I was nothing but a body. Perhaps even less: a famished stomach. The stomach alone was measuring time.     IN

Every murder is a suicide.

Man walks the moon but his soul remains riveted to earth. Once upon a time it was the opposite.

Human suffering anywhere concerns men and women everywhere. That

How are we ever to disarm evil and abolish death as a means to an end? How are we ever to break the cycle of violence and rage? Can terror coexist with justice? Does murder call for murder, despair for revenge? Can hate engender anything but hate? The

God does not create other people so we could turn our backs on them.

There is nothing sacred, nothing uplifting, in hatred or in death. In

Wasn't forgetfulness a gift of the gods to the ancient world? Without it. Life would be intolerable, wouldn't it? Yes, but the Jews live by other rules. For a Jew, nothing is more important than memory. He is bound to his origins by memory. It is memory that connects him to Abraham, Moses and Rabbi Akiva.

The news spread through Sighet like wildfire. Soon that was all people talked about. But not for long. Optimism soon revived: The Germans will not come this far. They will stay in Budapest. For strategic reasons, for political reasons … In less than three days, German Army vehicles made their appearance on our streets.

Jusqu'alors j'avais toujours cru que la mission du Juif consistait à être le tremblement de l'Histoire, plutôt que le vent qui la fait trembler.

I have more faith in Hitler than in anyone else. He alone has kept his promises, all his promises, to the Jewish people."     THAT