Quotes by Elie Wiesel

About Elie Wiesel:

Eliezer is a Romanian-born Jewish writer, professor, political activist, and Nobel Laureate. He is the author of 57 books, including Night, a work based on his experiences as a prisoner in the Auschwitz, Buna, and Buchenwald concentration camps. Wiesel is also the Advisory Board chairman of the newspaper Algemeiner Journal.
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

Bread, soup - these were my whole life. I was a body. Perhaps less than that even: a starved stomach. The stomach alone was aware of the passage of time.

Elie Wiesel

I had many things to say, I did not have the words to say them. Painfully aware of my limitations, I watched helplessly and language became an obstacle. It became clear that it would be necessary to invent a new language... I would pause at every sen...

Elie Wiesel

Never shall I forget those moments which murdered my God and my soul and turned my dreams to dust. Never shall I forget these things, even if I am condemned to live as long as God Himself. Never.

Elie Wiesel

Our backyard looked like a marketplace. Valuable objects, precious rugs, silver candlesticks, Bibles and other ritual objects were strewn over the dusty grounds- pitiful relics that seemed never to have had a home. All this under a magnificent blue s...

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

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 ...

Elie Wiesel

Violence is not the answer. Terrorism is the most dangerous of answers.

Elie Wiesel

Why do you pray?" he asked me, after a moment. Why did I pray? A strange question. Why did I live? Why did I breathe? "I don't know why," I said, even more disturbed and ill at ease. "I don't know why." After that day I saw him often. He explained to...

Elie Wiesel

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

Elie Wiesel

The world? The world is not interested in us. Today, everything is possible, even the crematoria...

Elie Wiesel

We believed in God, trusted in man, and lived with the illusion that every one of us has been entrusted with a sacred spark.

Elie Wiesel

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.

Elie Wiesel

When a person doesn't have gratitude, something is missing in his or her humanity.

Elie Wiesel

We must choose between the violence of adults and the smiles of children, between the ugliness of hate and the will to oppose it. Between inflicting suffering and humiliation on our fellow man and offering him the solidarity and hope he deserves. Or ...

Elie Wiesel

I still believe in man in spite of man. I believe in language even though it has been wounded, deformed, and perverted by the enemies of mankind. And I continue to cling to words because it is up to us to transform them into instruments of comprehens...

Elie Wiesel

Even in darkness it is possible to create light and encourage compassion. That it is possible to feel free inside a prison. That even in exile, friendship exists and can become an anchor. That one instant before dying, man is still immortal.

Elie Wiesel

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?

Elie Wiesel

Her eyes burrow into my forehead like greedy grubs that want to feed off my private thoughts.

Elie Wiesel

Not to transmit an experience is to betray it.

Elie Wiesel

My greatest disappointment is that I believe that those of us who went through the war and tried to write about it, about their experience, became messengers. We have given the message, and nothing changed.

Elie Wiesel

One always goes back to one's childhood in the beginning, and I come from a very religious family and surrounding. Very religious.

Elie Wiesel

Author Bio

  • NameElie Wiesel
  • Descriptionwriter, professor, political activist, Nobel Laureate, and Holocaust survivor
  • AliasesEliezer Wiesel
  • BornSeptember 30, 1928
  • CountryRomania; United States Of America
  • ProfessionWriter; Political Activist; Judaic Scholar; Novelist; Autobiographer
  • AwardsNobel Peace Prize; Knight Commander Of The Order Of The British Empire; Norman Mailer Prize; Presidential Medal Of Freedom; National Humanities Medal; Four Freedoms Award - Freedom Of Worship; Freedom Award; Light Of Truth Award