Quotes from Elie Wiesel

Someone who hates one group will end up hating everyone - and, ultimately, hating himself or herself.

When has religion ever been unifying? Religion has introduced many wars in this world, enough bloodshed and violence.

I'll tell you what: I believe mysticism is a very serious endeavor. One must be equipped for it.

I write to understand as much as to be understood.

Man, as long as he lives, is immortal. One minute before his death he shall be immortal. But one minute later, God wins.

Perhaps some day someone will explain how, on the level of man, Auschwitz was possible; but on the level of God, it will forever remain the most disturbing of mysteries.

The knowledge that I have acquired must not remain imprisoned in my brain. I owe it to many men and women to do something with it. I feel the need to pay back what was given to me. Call it gratitude.

Man, by definition, is born a stranger: coming from nowhere, he is thrust into an alien world which existed before him-a world which didn't need him. And which will survive him.

What is man? Ally of God or simply his toy? His triumph or his fall?

I remember, May 1944: I was 15-and-a-half, and I was thrown into a haunted universe where the story of the human adventure seemed to swing irrevocably between horror and malediction.

Human suffering anywhere concerns men and women everywhere.

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.

I've been fighting my entire adult life for men and women everywhere to be equal and to be different. But there is one right I would not grant anyone. And that is the right to be indifferent.

I would like to see real peace and a state of Israel living peacefully alongside a state of Palestine.

Writing is like a sculpture where you remove, you eliminate, in order to make the work visible. Even those pages you remove somehow remain

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.

Bite your lips, little brother...Don't cry. Keep your anger, your hate, for another day, for later. The day will come but not now...Wait. Clench your teeth and wait.

It used to be said that when the Baal Shem Tov came into a town, his impact was so strong, he didn't have to speak. His disciples had to dance or to sing or to preach to have the same effect. I think a real messenger, myself or anyone, by the very fact that he is there as a person, as a symbol, could have the same impact.

Usually I get up early every morning and from 6:00 to 10:00 I write. The rest of the time I study and prepare my work or I do other things. But four hours a day are exclusively devoted to writing.

I developed an anger at [Moses] Mendelssohn. Later, I read the book. I realized there was nothing subversive in it.

Today, as yesterday, a nation is judged by its attitude towards refugees.

I do not belong to this world. I continue to write everything in longhand. If I have to see something on the Internet, I ask my secretary or students. I am lucky, because I have people who do it for me.

Language failed me very often, but then, the substitute for me was silence, but not violence.

I try to see their moral relevance [in the Bible] and, of course, to admire the literary beauty of the text. Prophetic poetry: No one has written the way Isaiah does.