Elie Wiesel

Bekannte Zitate von Elie Wiesel

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

I was very, very religious. And of course I wrote about it in 'Night.' I questioned God's silence. So I questioned. I don't have an answer for that. Does it mean that I stopped having faith? No. I have faith, but I question it.

Human beings should be held accountable. Leave God alone. He has enough problems.

Man, as long as he lives, is immortal. One minute before his death he shall be immortal. But one minute later, God wins.

It all happened so fast. The ghetto. The deportation. The sealed cattle car. The fiery altar upon which the history of our people and the future of mankind were meant to be sacrificed.

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

Some stories are true that never happened.

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.

No human race is superior no religious faith is inferior. All collective judgments are wrong. Only racists make them.

After all, God is God because he remembers.

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.

Without memory, there is no culture. Without memory, there would be no civilization, no society, no future.

Hope is like peace. It is not a gift from God. It is a gift only we can give one another.

Because of indifference, one dies before one actually dies.

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.

I have not lost faith in God. I have moments of anger and protest. Sometimes I've been closer to him for that reason.

Just as despair can come to one only from other human beings, hope, too, can be given to one only by other human beings.

I do not recall a Jewish home without a book on the table.

Not to transmit an experience is to betray it.

Look, if I were alone in the world, I would have the right to choose despair, solitude and self-fulfillment. But I am not alone.

No one may speak for the dead, no one may interpret their mutilated dreams and visions.

In Jewish history there are no coincidences.