All collective judgments are wrong. Only racists make them. No human race is superior; no religious faith is inferior.
ELIE WIESELOur obligation is to give meaning to life and in doing so to overcome the passive, indifferent life.
More Elie Wiesel Quotes
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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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I write to understand as much as to be understood.
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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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I don’t want my past to become anyone else’s future.
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Never shall I forget those moments that murdered my God and my soul and turned my dreams to ashes.
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The opposite of love is not hate, but indifference. Indifference creates evil. Hatred is evil itself. Indifference is what allows evil to be strong, what gives it power.
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There may be times when we are powerless to prevent injustice, but there must never be a time when we fail to protest.
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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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Even in darkness it is possible to create light.
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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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Life is not a fist. Life is an open hand waiting for some other hand to enter it.
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An indifference to suffering makes humans inhuman
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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.
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I swore never to be silent whenever and wherever human beings endure suffering and humiliation.
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In the beginning there was faith – which is childish; trust – which is vain; and illusion – which is dangerous.
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I came to the conclusion that I am free to choose my own suffering. But I am not free to consent to someone else’s suffering.
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Every moment contains a spark of eternity.
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Human beings should be held accountable. Leave God alone. He has enough problems.
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The philosophers are wrong: it is not words that kill, it is silence.
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Most people think that shadows follow, precede or surround beings or objects. The truth is that they also surround words, ideas, desires, deeds, impulses and memories.
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Only the guilty are guilty: the children of killers are not killers, but children.
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We believed in God, trusted in man, and lived with the illusion that every one of us has been entrusted with a sacred spark.
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You’re shaking … so am I. It’s because of Jerusalem, isn’t it? One doesn’t go to Jerusalem, one returns to it. That’s one of its mysteries.
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We are all teachers, or should be. Anyone who relays experience to another person is a teacher. Not to transmit your experience is to betray it.
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When a person doesn’t have gratitude, something is missing in his or her humanity.
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No human being is illegal. That is a contradiction in terms. Human beings can be beautiful or more beautiful, they can be fat or skinny, they can be right or wrong, but illegal? How can a human being be illegal?
ELIE WIESEL