Quotes from Elie Wiesel

We must take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented.

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.

I come from a tradition - from the Jewish tradition, which believes in words, in language, in communication.

Will you join me in hearing the case for keeping weapons from those who preach death to Israel and America?

After my father's death, nothing could touch me any more.

When language fails, violence becomes a language; I never had that feeling.

I never felt any attraction towards violence. I never tried to express myself through violence. Violence is a language.

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

No one is as capable of gratitude as one who has emerged from the kingdom of night.

No commandment surpasses the one concerning the liberation of hostages, for they are among the starving, the thirsting, the stripped, always in danger of death.

You know, words have strange destiny, too. They grow. They get old. They die. They come back.

I feel that books, just like people, have a destiny. Some invite sorrow, others joy, some both.

There are no accidents, only encounters with destiny!

Education in the key to preventing the cycle of violence and hatred that marred the 20th century from repeating itself in the 21st century.

When I was young I lost everything.

I do not deal with the text [of the Bible] scientifically. I read it, I'm interested in its layers of meaning, but my relation to it is much more an emotional one.

Not to transmit an experience is to betray it.

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

I have not lost faith in God. I have moments of anger and protest. Sometimes I've been closer to him for that reason.

Man asks and God replies but we don't understand his replies because they dwell in the depths of our souls and remain there until we die.

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.

My anger rises up within faith and not outside it.

Perhaps fate isn't blind after all. Perhaps it's capable of fantasy, even compassion.

The deeper the nostalgia and the more complete the fear, the purer, the richer the word and the secret.