Elie Wiesel Quotes

The most important question a human being has to face... What is it? The question, Why are we here?

MARIA: Hell? Is he talking about hell? Good. For a moment I was afraid he was making sense.

BERISH: I distrust miracles. They exist only in books, and books say anything.

I pray to the God within me that He will give me the strength to ask Him the right questions.

Indifference to me, is the epitome of all evil.

I have learned two lessons in my life: first, there are no sufficient literary, psychological, or historical answers to human tragedy, only moral ones. Second, just as despair can come to one another only from other human beings, hope, too, can be given to one only by other human beings.

The street resembled fairgrounds deserted in haste. There was a little of everything: suitcases, briefcases, bags, knives, dishes, banknotes, papers, faded portraits. All the things one planned to take along and finally left behind. They had ceased to matter.
Open rooms everywhere. Gaping doors and windows looked out into the void. It all belonged to everyone since it no longer belonged to anyone. It was there for the taking. An open tomb.

God made man because He loves stories.

Most people thought we would remain in the ghetto until the end of the war, until the arrival of the Red Army. Afterward everything would be as before. The ghetto was ruled by neither German nor Jew; it was ruled by delusion.

Just as man cannot live without dreams, he cannot live without hope. If dreams reflect the past, hope summons the future.

Just as there are predatory birds, so there are predatory ideas: I came under their spell. . . .Just as the survivors say that no one will ever understand the victims, what I must tell you is that you will never understand the executioners.

I write to understand as much as to be understood.

It is obvious that the war which Hitler and his accomplices waged was a war not only against Jewish men, women, and children, but also against Jewish religion, Jewish culture, Jewish tradition, therefore Jewish memory.

AVREMEL: You came to us from Zhironov?
YANKEL: Were you there when—
MENDEL: Yes, I was there.
AVREMEL: How did you manage to escape?
SAM: There is always one singled out to escape.
YANKEL: A miracle!
SAM: There is always someone to call it a miracle.

The opposite of love is not hate, it's indifference. The opposite of art is not ugliness, it's indifference. The opposite of faith is not heresy, it's indifference. And the opposite of life is not death, it's indifference. Because of indifference, one dies before one actually dies. To be in the window and watch people being sent to concentration camps or being attacked in the street and do nothing, that's being dead.