EWElie Wiesel

95 collected words

Elie Wiesel

Life dates: 1928 AD — 2016 AD

Name supplied in the contributor-provided quotation collection. Basic attribution label; identity, lifetime and quotation authenticity have not been independently verified.

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Quotations and sayings

01c. 1972 AD

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.

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02c. 1972 AD

War is like night, she said. It covers everything.

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03c. 1972 AD

I needed to know that there was such a thing as love and that it brought smiles and joy in its wake.

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04c. 1972 AD

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?

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05c. 1972 AD

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.

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06c. 1972 AD

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.

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07c. 1972 AD

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

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08c. 1972 AD

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.

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09c. 1972 AD

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.

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10c. 1972 AD

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...

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11c. 1972 AD

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.

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12c. 1972 AD

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?

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13c. 1972 AD

Not to transmit an experience is to betray it.

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14c. 1972 AD

Friendship marks a life even more deeply rhan love. Love risks degenerating into obsession friendship is never anything but sharing.

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15c. 1972 AD

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

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16c. 1972 AD

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.

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17c. 1972 AD

Just as despair can come to one only from other human beings, hope, too, can be given to one only by other human beings.

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18c. 1972 AD

Hope is like peace. It is not a gift from God. It is a gift only we can give one another.

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19c. 1972 AD

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

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20c. 1972 AD

I'm a teacher and a writer; my life is words. When I see the denigration of language, it hurts me, and it's easy to denigrate a word by trivializing it.

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21c. 1972 AD

Because I remember, I despair. Because I remember, I have the duty to reject despair.

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22c. 1972 AD

Because of indifference, one dies before one actually dies.

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23c. 1972 AD

I decided to devote my life to telling the story because I felt that having survived I owe something to the dead. and anyone who does not remember betrays them again.

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24c. 1972 AD

Historically, I come from Jewish history. I had the classic upbringing in the Yeshiva, learning, learning, and more learning.

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