Quotes from Elie Wiesel

One thing is that [Tibetans] should not give up hope. That's - even [if] it lasts a century. My discussions with the Dalai Lama always were about that.

My students are very special. They are my source of pride, my source of joy, my source of hope. I am terribly fond of my students.

All I hope is that the American coalition is doing its best to prevent civilian casualties and the killing of innocent people.

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

Every single human being is a unique human being. And, therefore, it's so criminal to do something to that human being, because he or she represents humanity.

I told him that I did not believe that they could burn people in our age, that humanity would never tolerate it . . .

One always goes back to one's childhood in the beginning, and I come from a very religious family and surrounding. Very religious.

This is the role of writers: to turn their tears into a story - and perhaps into a prayer.

Words can be turned into spears. They can be turned into prayers. It's a strange world that you are in. But you deal with words.

I say to myself, if the text was good enough for my father and grandfather, it must be good enough for me. I admit, that is a rather personal way of approaching the text - or a prayer.

If the only prayer you say throughout your life is "Thank You, " then that will be enough.

They are committing the greatest indignity human beings can inflict on one another: telling people who have suffered excruciating pain and loss that their pain and loss were illusions. (v)

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

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.

I told him that I did not believe that they could burn people in our age, that humanity would never tolerate it…

There are victories of the soul and spirit. Sometimes, even if you lose, you win.

I don't want my past to become anyone else's future.

I believe it important to emphasize how strongly I feel that books, just like people, have a destiny. Some invite sorrow, others joy, some both.

Ultimately, the only power to which man should aspire is that which he exercises over himself.

My faceless neighbor spoke up: "Don't be deluded. Hitler has made it clear that he will annihilate all Jews before the clock strikes twelve." I exploded: "What do you care what he said? Would you want us to consider him a prophet? His cold eyes stared at me. At last he said, wearily: "I have more faith in Hitler than in anyone else. He alone has kept his promises, all his promises, to the Jewish people.

It was pitch dark. I could hear only the violin, and it was as though Juliek's soul were the bow. He was playing his life. The whole of his life was gliding on the strings--his last hopes, his charred past, his extinguished future. He played as he would never play again...When I awoke, in the daylight, I could see Juliek, opposite me, slumped over, dead. Near him lay his violin, smashed, trampled, a strange overwhelming little corpse.

Did I write it so as not to go mad or, on the contrary, to go mad in order to understand the nature of madness?

Whoever survives a test, whatever it may be, must tell the story. That is his duty.

Indifference is the sign of sickness, a sickness of the soul more contagious than any other.