Quotes About Humanity

I wept because-because of something inside me that felt the need for tears.

The lack of hate between executioner and victim, perhaps this is God.

A novel about Auschwitz is not a novel—or else it is not about Auschwitz.

Yes, we even doubted his resolve to exterminate us. Annihilate an entire people? Wipe out a population dispersed throughout so many nations? So many millions of people! By what means? In the middle of the twentieth century!

And that is why I swore never to be silent whenever and wherever human beings endure suffering and humiliation. We must take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented.

Deep down, the witness knew then, as he does now, that his testimony would not be received. After all, it deals with an event that sprang from the darkest zone of man. Only those who experienced Auschwitz know what it was. Others will never know. But would they at least understand?

For us, this was the true equality: Nakedness. Shivering with the cold.

I cannot cure everybody. I cannot help everybody. But to tell the lonely person that I am not far or different from that lonely person, that I am with him or her, that's all I think we can do and we should do.

An act so absolute as that of killing involves not only the killer but, as well, those who have formed him. In murdering a man I was making them murderers.

No one was praying for the night to pass quickly. The stars were but sparks of the immense conflagration that was consuming us.

At the gate, the sign proclaimed that work meant freedom.

Auschwitz." Nobody had ever heard that name.

Can this be true? This is the twentieth century, not the Middle Ages. Who would allow such crimes to be committed? How could the world remain silent?" And

Because if we forget, we are guilty, we are accomplices. And

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.

Every tragedy is unique, just as every human is unique. When a person loses someone dear to her, who am I to say that my tragedy was greater? I have no right. For that person, her tragedy is the greatest in the world—and she is right in thinking so.

Human suffering anywhere concerns men and women everywhere. To forget the dead would be akin to killing them a second time.

Then he smiled. I shall always remember that smile. What world did it come from?

We were the masters of nature, the masters of the world. We had transcended everything—death, fatigue, our natural needs. We were stronger than cold and hunger, stronger than the guns and the desire to die, doomed and rootless, nothing but numbers, we were the only men on earth.

None of us is in a position to eliminate war, but it is our obligation to denounce it and expose it in all its hideousness. War leaves no victors, only victims.

under an indifferent sky.

The different human peoples did not evolve out of a common ancestor; they were each born out of the womb of their own homeland. We appeared in different parts of the world at the same time. Each group was as much a part of their environment as the other animals and plants of the region.

Humans are animals, too, you know.

I could stare at this forever: swirling stars in the background and a human being, a real live human, lost in a task.