Title Image - Quotes by Author Elie WieselPhoto Credit: WikiMedia Commons

You cannot write in more than one language. Words don't come out as well.

--Elie Wiesel


I developed an anger at Moses Mendelssohn. Later, I read the book. I realized there was nothing subversive in it.

--Elie Wiesel

The Bible is been my passion almost from my youth.

--Elie Wiesel

I don't speak about my pain. My pain is something that doesn't need to be purged. I want to prevent people from suffering. I don't speak about my suffering. Suffering is something personal and discreet. Also, I know it will never leave me. I don't want it to leave me. It would be a betrayal.

--Elie Wiesel

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

--Elie Wiesel

Once upon a time refugee meant somebody who has a refuge, found a place, a haven where he could find refuge.

--Elie Wiesel

We are all teachers, or should be. Anyone who relays experience to another person is a teacher. Not to transmit your experience is to betray it.

--Elie Wiesel


Fanaticism in many lands has surfaced as the greatest threat to the world. Indifference to its consequences would be a serious mistake.

--Elie Wiesel

I belong to a tradition that believes that the death of a single child is a blemish on creation.

--Elie Wiesel

I think he is condemned by himself to loneliness. God is One: he was, he is, he will be always One. One is so lonely. Maybe that is why he created human beings -- to feel less lonely. But as human beings betray his creation, he may become even lonelier.

--Elie Wiesel

I spent most of my time talking to God more than to people.

--Elie Wiesel

What is Scripture? The Hebrew word is torah. Torah means teaching, learning.

--Elie Wiesel

God made human beings because he loves stories.

--Elie Wiesel

Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented.

--Elie Wiesel

The primary task of a Jew in turbulent times is to be Jewish.

--Elie Wiesel

Nevertheless, we are led to believe that true words can communicate more than truth, they communicate what life is all about, that it's threatened, when it's threatened, when it's in danger, then it becomes a curse or a blessing.

--Elie Wiesel

What is man?
Hope turned to dust.
No.
What is man?
Dust turned to hope.

--Elie Wiesel

Usually I get up early every morning and from 6:00 to 10:00 I write. The rest of the time I study and prepare my work or I do other things. But four hours a day are exclusively devoted to writing.

--Elie Wiesel

Certain things, certain events, seem inexplicable only for a time: up to the moment when the veil is torn aside.

--Elie Wiesel

The impact of the holocaust on believers as well as unbelievers, on Jews as well as Christians, has not yet been evaluated. Not deeply, not enough.

--Elie Wiesel

I was the accuser, God the accused. My eyes were open and I was alone -- terribly alone in a world without God and without (hu)man(ity).

--Elie Wiesel

I think that human beings are capable of the worst things possible.

--Elie Wiesel

Longer Version:

I think that human beings are capable of the worst things possible and they show that there were times, and there probably are times, that it is human to be inhuman.


It was neither German nor Jew who ruled the ghetto -- it was illusion.

--Elie Wiesel

As you know, I describe Shirat ha-Yam as part of an epic story that has qualities of history and which also has qualities of the mythological, of an epic.

--Elie Wiesel

It was like a page torn from a history book, from some historical novel about the captivity of babylon or Spanish Inquisition.

--Elie Wiesel

And action is the only remedy to indifference, the most insidious danger of all.

--Elie Wiesel

Whatever we thought was certain is no longer certain, and therefore in science probably certain things must be correct, but in human behaviour I am not so sure.

--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

Am I my brother's keeper? There you have the whole Biblical understanding that you are your brother's keeper. You also have a whole other understanding in which you are not your brother's keeper. And I've heard some extremely bright people take this position.

--Elie Wiesel

I think Sacrifice of Isaac is the most important event in the Bible except for Sinai.

--Elie Wiesel

The story of the Sacrifice of Isaac is much more a part of theology than of history.

--Elie Wiesel

The story of Abraham and the sacrifice of Isaac are nowhere in any other tradition.

--Elie Wiesel

If you make a determination that story of Abraham and the sacrifice of Isaac is not historical, do you throw it away? I don't think we can say whether it's precisely, scientifically historical.

--Elie Wiesel

A Jew must be sensitive to the pain of all human beings. A Jew cannot remain indifferent to human suffering... The mission of the Jewish people has never been to make the world more Jewish, but to make it more human.

--Elie Wiesel

When I see a child who is hungry, I see a person who is humiliated.

--Elie Wiesel



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.

--Elie Wiesel

For the good of all, I say: Be careful, the brutality of the world must not be more powerful or attractive than love and friendship.

--Elie Wiesel

Go over to Greece with the Iliad and Odyssey. These have elements of history, and they have non-historical elements. It's very difficult to pull them apart. And I think there's not much reason to.

--Elie Wiesel

I've organised for the last years, since I got the Nobel Prize actually, Anatomy of Hate Conferences all over the world, what is hate. Didn't help but at least they explored it.

--Elie Wiesel

You would be amazed at the number of doors a Nobel Prize opens.

--Elie Wiesel

Religion is a very personal thing for me. Religion has its good moments and its poor moments.

--Elie Wiesel

I have one request: may I never use my reason against truth.

--Elie Wiesel

I listen to music when I write. I need the musical background. Classical music. I'm behind the times. I'm still with Baroque music, Gregorian chant, the requiems, and with the quartets of Beethoven and Brahms. That is what I need for the climate, for the surroundings, for the landscape: the music.

--Elie Wiesel

A religious person answers to God, not to the elected or non-elected official.

--Elie Wiesel

I imagine, like all his predecessors, Barak Obama would like to achieve greatness in bringing peace in the Middle East. I hope it will not be at the expense of Israel.

--Elie Wiesel

In my town we studied the five Books of Moses, but rarely the prophets. We studied the Talmud so much that I sometimes knew the prophets because of the prophetic quotations in the Talmud. We almost never studied the prophets themselves.

--Elie Wiesel

The Biblical text does not have punctuation marks like periods and question marks. Where we end sentences is a matter of interpretation.

--Elie Wiesel

In Talmudic literature, certainly in the beginning, he was like a human being -- except he was a serpent. But he was talking and walking and probably dreaming.

--Elie Wiesel

I am not so naïve as to believe that this slim volume will change the course of history or shake the conscience of the world. Books no longer have the power they once did. Those who kept silent yesterday will remain silent tomorrow.

--Elie Wiesel

When I see what is happening all over the world today -- the violence -- the stupid, arrogant, grotesque violence that is dominating humankind. I cannot not remember that there were other times, of course the Second World War. I never compare.

--Elie Wiesel

The Holocaust is not a cheap soap opera. The Holocaust is not a romantic novel. It is something else.

--Elie Wiesel

I swore never to be silent whenever and wherever human beings endure suffering and humiliation.

--Elie Wiesel

Longer Version:

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.


I would hesitate to give advice to the Dalai Lama and his people because they are suffering. The Dalai Lama suffered from exile and the people in Tibet suffer from oppression.

--Elie Wiesel


Tibet's a tragedy. It's an insult to human decency.

--Elie Wiesel

What of the Exodus? That too, is a wonderful story, but from the viewpoint of an historian, it is -- to use a word scholars love -- problematic. Let's say there are doubts, to say the least, among many scholars, as to whether the Exodus actually occurred. That's a historical issue.

--Elie Wiesel

I think so. 9 11 has been a turning point in American history, there's no doubt about that.

--Elie Wiesel

London radio, which we listened to every evening, announced encouraging news: the daily bombings of Germany and Stalingrad, the preparation of the Second Front. And so we, the Jews of Sighet, waited for better days that surely were soon to come.

--Elie Wiesel

Writing should not be routine; writing should actually be the opposite of procedural because otherwise the written word would become a routine word.

--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

The sky is so close to the sea that it is difficult to tell which is reflected in the other, which one needs the other, which one is dominating the other.

--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

Never shall I forget that night, the first night in camp, which has turned my life into one long night, seven times cursed and seven times sealed.

--Elie Wiesel

Never shall I forget those moments that murdered my God and my soul and turned my dreams to ashes.

--Elie Wiesel

When you die and go to heaven our maker is not going to ask, 'why didn't you discover the cure for such and such? why didn't you become the Messiah?' The only question we will be asked in that precious moment is 'why didn't you become you?'

--Elie Wiesel

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

--Elie Wiesel

I believe that all the survivors are mad. One time or another their madness will explode. You cannot absorb that much madness and not be influenced by it. That is why the children of survivors are so tragic. I see them in school. They don't know how.

--Elie Wiesel

Today there isn't a university where they don't have special courses Jewish studies or Holocaust studies, hundreds and hundreds of universities, young people today want to know more than their elders did, much more, and therefore I am very optimistic about young people.

--Elie Wiesel

I don't see the junk youth. I only meet students, and even those who are not formally at the university, if they come to listen to me, they come to read me, it means they are not junk students.

--Elie Wiesel

There is Israel, for us at least. What no other generation had, we have. We have Israel in spite of all the dangers, the threats and the wars, we have Israel. We can go to Jerusalem. Generations and generations could not and we can.

--Elie Wiesel

You're shaking … so am I. It's because of Jerusalem, isn't it? One doesn't go to Jerusalem, one returns to it. That's one of its mysteries.

--Elie Wiesel

Every moment is a new beginning.

--Elie Wiesel

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

--Elie Wiesel

The opposite of faith is not heresy but indifference.

--Elie Wiesel

Friendship marks a life even more deeply than love.

--Elie Wiesel

Longer Version:

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



Every single human being is a unique human being. And, therefore, it's so criminal to do something to that human being, because he or she represents humanity.

--Elie Wiesel

Ultimately, the only power to which man should aspire is that which he exercises over himself.

--Elie Wiesel

What hurts the victim most is not the cruelty of the oppressor, but the silence of the bystander.

--Elie Wiesel

No human being is illegal.

--Elie Wiesel

Longer Version:

No human being is illegal. That is a contradiction in terms. Human beings can be beautiful or more beautiful, they can be fat or skinny, they can be right or wrong, but illegal? How can a human being be illegal?


Every nation has its prestigious military academies -- or so few of them -- that reach not only the virtues of peace but also the art of attaining it? I mean attaining and protecting it by means other than weapons, the tools of war. Why are we surprised whenever war recedes and yields to peace?

--Elie Wiesel

Whatever you think in life... think higher and feel deeper.

--Elie Wiesel

Whoever survives a test, whatever it may be, must tell the story. That is his duty.

--Elie Wiesel

The opposite of love is not hate; it's indifference.

--Elie Wiesel

Longer Version:

The opposite of love is not hate, but indifference. Indifference creates evil. Hatred is evil itself. Indifference is what allows evil to be strong, what gives it power.


We must see in every person a universe with its own secrets, with its own treasures, with its own sources of anguish, and with some measure of triumph.

--Elie Wiesel

Think higher, feel deeper.

--Elie Wiesel

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