Elie Wiesel Quotes

If we want to know history, I would think there would be every reason to.

Next to him lay his violin, trampled, an eerily poignant little corpse.

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.

For me [Patriarchs] exist. Abraham, Isaac and Jacob exist today. They are people that you see with white beards. I have no doubt of their existence.

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.

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

Christians call it the "Sacrifice of Isaac," and Jews call it the "Binding of Isaac."

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.

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

Did I write it so as not to go mad or, on the contrary, to go mad in order to understand the nature of madness?

When I say it doesn't make much difference, I mean in terms of the importance of the piece of literature.

That [Exodus] occurred, I have no doubt.

Since God is, He is to be found in the questions as well as the answers.

Even if people tell me they have historical proof [that it is not historical], that doesn't really bother me.

Those who kept silent yesterday will remain silent tomorrow.

Life is really fascinated only by death. It vibrates only when it comes in contact with death.

The Holocaust is the most documented tragedy in recorded history. And therefore, later on, if there will be a later on, anyone wishing to know will know where to go for knowledge.

When our center is strong, everything else is secondary.

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.

The whole community must be saved [in Tibet].

The only place where I felt at home, on familiar ground, was the Jewish cemetery. And yet I had never set foot in it before. Children had been forbidden to enter.

If God exists, how can we lay claim to freedom, since He is its beginning and its end?

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.

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

Except if it has some historical meaning for them to have Tibet under their control. I don't understand why [ Chinese] want it so much.

Life belongs to man, but the meaning of life is beyond him.

The darkness enveloped us. All I could hear was the violin and it was as if Juliek's soul had become the bow. He was playing his life...He played that which he would never play again.

Each man was his own executioner and his own victim.

When I began teaching you hardly could find a university in America or a college where they would teach either Jewish studies or Holocaust studies.

I have to be self-conscious of what I'm trying to do with my life.

Politicians, they give the visible aspect of the change, but the change, the root, the anchor are in young people.

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).

If the victims are my problem, the killers are yours.

It's not only America. Terrorism now is a threat to the whole world.

Weapons means killing. Weapons is ah, I'm simply sensitive to the word.

I feel very close to French culture and to the French humanism, which occasionally one finds, even in the highest places. And therefore, all of my books have been written in French.

Naturally, the human being wants to forget pain.

Not to remember is not an option.

No commandment surpasses the one concerning the liberation of hostages, for they are among the starving, the thirsting, the stripped, always in danger of death.

I was 15, not 14, when I was inside there [Auschwitz], 15, and for me both were actually a surprise.

One can do without solutions. Only the questions matter. We may share them or turn away from them.

[Adolf] Hitler needed, he didn't want to kill Jews, he wanted to expel German Jews, and therefore it's not entirely corroborating your theory.

I wrote my first book, I published it in 1955, it was in Yiddish and it was called And The World Was Silent.

First we must understand that there can be no life without risk - and when our center is strong, everything else is secondary, even the risks.

Do you know what laughter is? I'll tell you. It's God's mistake. When God made man in order to bend him to his wishes he carelessly gave him the gift of laughter.

A voice behind me asked, "Where is God? Where is He? Where can He be now?" and a voice within me answered: "Where? Here He is - He has been hanged here, on these gallows."

I don't believe in collective guilt. The children of killers are not killers, but children.

If there is a single theme that dominates all my writings, all my obsessions, it is that of memory-because I fear forgetfulness as much as hatred and death.

Granted that every war is madness-civil war, fratricide, is the worst of all; it reaches deeper into ugliness, cruelty and absurdity.

It always hurts when you lose a secret.