I was there when God was put on trial. At the end of the trial, they used the word chayav, rather than ‘guilty’. It means ‘He owes us something’. Then we went to pray.
ELIE WIESELBut where was I to start? The world is so vast, I shall start with the country I knew best, my own. But my country is so very large. I had better start with my town. But my town, too, is large. I had best start with my street. No, my home. No, my family. Never mind, I shall start with myself.
More Elie Wiesel Quotes
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Our obligation is to give meaning to life and in doing so to overcome the passive, indifferent life.
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All collective judgments are wrong. Only racists make them. No human race is superior; no religious faith is inferior.
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There is much to be done, there is much that can be done… one person of integrity can make a difference.
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Think higher, feel deeper.
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Just as man cannot live without dreams, he cannot live without hope. If dreams reflect the past, hope summons the future.
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Every Jew, somewhere in his being, should set apart a zone of hate – healthy virile hate – for what the German personifies and for what persists in the German.
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Life is not a fist. Life is an open hand waiting for some other hand to enter it.
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To remain silent and indifferent is the greatest sin of all.
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A Jew must be sensitive to the pain of all human beings. A Jew cannot remain indifferent to human suffering… The mission of the Jewish people has never been to make the world more Jewish, but to make it more human.
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Every single human being is a unique human being. And, therefore, it’s so criminal to do something to that human being, because he or she represents humanity.
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This is the role of writers: to turn their tears into a story – and perhaps into a prayer.
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When a person doesn’t have gratitude, something is missing in his or her humanity.
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The most important question a human being has to face. What is it? The question, Why are we here?
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For us it’s not easy to be conformist, I cannot stand to be conformist, I don’t accept what it is, I like to say no. If I see an injustice I scream.
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Better that one heart be broken a thousand times in the retelling, he has decided, if it means that a thousand other hearts need not be broken at all.
ELIE WIESEL