“No one may speak for the dead, no one may interpret their mutilated dreams and visions.”
— Elie Wiesel
“Hope is like peace. It is not a gift from God. It is a gift only we can give one another.”
— Elie Wiesel
“Just as despair can come to one only from other human beings, hope, too, can be given to one only by other human beings.”
— Elie Wiesel
“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
“We must always take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented.”
— Elie Wiesel
“Friendship marks a life even more deeply rhan love. Love risks degenerating into obsession friendship is never anything but sharing.”
— Elie Wiesel
“Not to transmit an experience is to betray it.”
— Elie Wiesel
“If life is not a celebration, why remember it ? If life — mine or that of my fellow man — is not an offering to the other, what are we doing on this earth?”
— Elie Wiesel
“I swore never to be silent whenever human beings endure suffering and humiliation. We must take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented. Sometimes we must interfere. When human lies are endangered, when human dignity is in jeopardy, national borders and sensitivities become irrelevant. Whenever men and women are prosecuted because of their race, religion, or political views, that place must–at that moment–become the center of the universe.”
— Elie Wiesel
“One day when we came to a stop, a worker took a piece of bread out of his bag and threw it into a wagon. There was a stampede. Dozens of starving men fought desperately over a few crumbs. The worker watched the spectacle with great interest… Years later, I witnessed a similar spectacle in Aden. Out ship’s passengers amused themselves by throwing coins to the “natives,” who dove to retrieve them. An elegant Parisian lady took great pleasure in this game. When I noticed two children desperately fighting in the water, one trying to strangle the other, I implored the lady, ‘Please don’t throw any more coins!’ ‘Why not?’ said she. ‘I like to give charity…”
— Elie Wiesel
“What does mysticism really mean? It means the way to attain knowledge. It’s close to philosophy, except in philosophy you go horizontally while in mysticism you go vertically.”
— Elie Wiesel
“He explained to me with great insistence that every question posessed a power that did not lie in the answer.”
— Elie Wiesel
“All my life, until today, I have been content to ask questions. All the while knowing that the real questions, those that concern the creator and his creation, have no answers. I’ll go even farther and say that there is a level at which only the questions are eternal, the answers never are. And so, the patient that I am, more charitable, repeats: ‘Since God is, He is to be found in the questions as well as in the answers.”
— Elie Wiesel
“Three days after the liberation of Buchenwald, I became very ill; some sort of poisoning. I was transferred to a hospital and spent two weeks between life and death.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.”
— Elie Wiesel
“There are moments when I think it will never end, that it will last indefinitely. It’s like the rain. Here the rain, like everything else, suggests permanence and eternity. I say to myself: it’s raining today and it’s going to rain tomorrow and the next day, the next week and the next century.”
— Elie Wiesel
“We marched. Gates opened and closed. We continued to march between the barbed wire. At every step, white signs with black skulls looked down on us. The inscription: WARNING! DANGER OF DEATH. What irony. Was there here a single place where one was NOT in danger of death?”
— Elie Wiesel
“I needed to know that there was such a thing as love and that it brought smiles and joy in its wake.”
— Elie Wiesel
“War is like night, she said. It covers everything.”
— Elie Wiesel
“Night is purer than day; it is better for thinking, 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.”
— Elie Wiesel
“This day I ceased to plead. I was no longer capable of lamentation. On the contrary, I felt very strong. I was the accuser, God the accused.”
— Elie Wiesel
“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.”
— Elie Wiesel
“Our backyard looked like a marketplace. Valuable objects, precious rugs, silver candlesticks, Bibles and other ritual objects were strewn over the dusty grounds- pitiful relics that seemed never to have had a home. All this under a magnificent blue sky.”
— Elie Wiesel
“Our first act as free men was to throw ourselves onto the provisions. thats all we thought about. No thought of revenge, or of parents. Only of bread.”
— Elie Wiesel
“We must take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silent encourages the tormentor, never the tormented.”
— Elie Wiesel
“We were masters of nature, masters of the world. We had forgotten everything–death, fatigue, our natural needs. Stronger than cold or hunger, stronger than the shots and the desire to die, condemned and wandering, mere numbers, we were the only men on earth.”
— Elie Wiesel
“One day I was able to get up, after gathering all my strength. I wanted to see myself in the mirror hanging on the opposite wall. I had not seen myself since the ghetto. From the depths of the mirror, a corpse gazed back at me. The look in his eyes, as they stared into mine, has never left me.”
— Elie Wiesel
“Never shall I forget those moments which murdered my God and my soul and turned my dreams to dust. Never shall I forget these things, even if I am condemned to live as long as God Himself. Never.”
— Elie Wiesel
“We have to go into the despair and go beyond it, by working and doing for somebody else, by using it for something else.”
— Elie Wiesel
“At the time of the liberation of the camps, I remember, we were convinced that after Auschwitz there would be no more wars, no more racism, no more hatred, no more anti-Semitism. We were wrong. This produced a feeling close to despair. For if Auschwitz could not cure mankind of racism, was there any chance of success ever? The fact is, the world has learned nothing. Otherwise, how is one to comprehend the atrocities committed in Cambodia, Rwanda, Bosnia…”
— Elie Wiesel
“The stars were only sparks of the fire which devoured us. Should that fire die out one day, there would be nothing left in the sky but dead stars, dead eyes.”
— Elie Wiesel