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

After all, God is God because he remembers.

Elie Wiesel

The Bible is not only laws, it's also stories. It begins, 'In the beginning God created Heaven.' If I had written these words, I wouldn't have written anything else; it's just enough.

Elie Wiesel

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.

Elie Wiesel

Once you bring life into the world, you must protect it. We must protect it by changing the world.

Elie Wiesel

Our obligation is to give meaning to life and in doing so to overcome the passive, indifferent life.

Elie Wiesel

That I survived the Holocaust and went on to love beautiful girls, to talk, to write, to have toast and tea and live my life - that is what is abnormal.

Elie Wiesel

I've given my life to the principle and the ideal of memory, and remembrance.

Elie Wiesel

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

Elie Wiesel

I'm a teacher and a writer; my life is words. When I see the denigration of language, it hurts me, and it's easy to denigrate a word by trivializing it.

Elie Wiesel

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

Elie Wiesel

A destruction, an annihilation that only man can provoke, only man can prevent.

Elie Wiesel

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

Elie Wiesel

Words can sometimes, in moments of grace, attain the quality of deeds.

Elie Wiesel

In the concentration camps, we discovered this whole universe where everyone had his place. The killer came to kill, and the victims came to die.

Elie Wiesel

Indifference, to me, is the epitome of evil.

Elie Wiesel

I remember, May 1944: I was 15-and-a-half, and I was thrown into a haunted universe where the story of the human adventure seemed to swing irrevocably between horror and malediction.

Elie Wiesel

Sometimes I am asked if I know 'the response to Auschwitz; I answer that not only do I not know it, but that I don't even know if a tragedy of this magnitude has a response.

Elie Wiesel

The Bible is not only laws, it's also stories.

Elie Wiesel

I never felt any attraction towards violence. I never tried to express myself through violence. Violence is a language.

Elie Wiesel

Moses was the greatest legislator and the commander in chief of perhaps the first liberation army.

Elie Wiesel

In my tradition, one must wait until one has learned a lot of Bible and Talmud and the Prophets to handle mysticism. This isn't instant coffee. There is no instant mysticism.

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