Quotes by Elie Wiesel

• 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.
• Just as despair can come to one only from other human beings, hope, too, can be given to one only by other human beings.
• Indifference, to me, is the epitome of evil.
• In Jewish history there are no coincidences.
• I write to understand as much as to be understood.
• I swore never to be silent whenever and wherever human beings endure suffering and humiliation. We must always take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented.
• I marvel at the resilience of the Jewish people. Their best characteristic is their desire to remember. No other people has such an obsession with memory.
• Man, as long as he lives, is immortal. One minute before his death he shall be immortal. But one minute later, God wins.
• I do not recall a Jewish home without a book on the table.
• Mankind must remember that peace is not God's gift to his creatures; peace is our gift to each other.
• Hope is like peace. It is not a gift from God. It is a gift only we can give one another.
• A destruction, an annihilation that only man can provoke, only man can prevent.
• No human race is superior; no religious faith is inferior. All collective judgments are wrong. Only racists make them.
• Most people think that shadows follow, precede or surround beings or objects. The truth is that they also surround words, ideas, desires, deeds, impulses and memories.
• Friendship marks a life even more deeply than love. Love risks degenerating into obsession, friendship is never anything but sharing.
• Because of indifference, one dies before one actually dies.
• Because I remember, I despair. Because I remember, I have the duty to reject despair.
• I have not lost faith in God. I have moments of anger and protest. Sometimes I've been closer to him for that reason.
• We have to go into the despair and go beyond it, by working and doing for somebody else, by using it for something else.
• Not to transmit an experience is to betray it.
• 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.
• There may be times when we are powerless to prevent injustice, but there must never be a time when we fail to protest.
• There is a difference between a book of two hundred pages from the very beginning, and a book of two hundred pages which is the result of an original eight hundred pages. The six hundred are there. Only you don't see them.
• There are victories of the soul and spirit. Sometimes, even if you lose, you win.
• Once you bring life into the world, you must protect it. We must protect it by changing the world.
• That is my major preoccupation, memory, the kingdom of memory. I want to protect and enrich that kingdom, glorify that kingdom and serve it.
• Some stories are true that never happened.
• Peace is our gift to each other.
• Words can sometimes, in moments of grace, attain the quality of deeds.
• Our obligation is to give meaning to life and in doing so to overcome the passive, indifferent life.