“The opposite of love is not hate, it's indifference. The opposite of art is not ugliness, it's indifference. The opposite of faith is not heresy, it's indifference. And the opposite of life is not death, it's indifference.”
Elie Wiesel71 likes
“The opposite of love is not hate, it's indifference. The opposite of art is not ugliness, it's indifference. The opposite of faith is not heresy, it's indifference. And the opposite of life is not death, it's indifference.”
“There may be times when we are powerless to prevent injustice, but there must never be a time when we fail to protest.”
“I've given my life to the principle and the ideal of memory, and remembrance.”
“If I were immersed in constant melancholy, I would not be who I am.”
“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.”
“Man, as long as he lives, is immortal. One minute before his death he shall be immortal. But one minute later, God wins.”
“After all, God is God because he remembers.”
“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.”
“Without memory, there is no culture. Without memory, there would be no civilization, no society, no future.”
“I don't know much about politics, and I don't want to know. That's why I rarely involve myself in politics.”
“Not to transmit an experience is to betray it.”
“If I were in the government, I would persuade the prime minister to see the beauty in the fact that people see Israel as a haven - from their sadness to their hope.”
“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.”
“Language failed me very often, but then, the substitute for me was silence, but not violence.”
“Religion is a very personal thing for me. Religion has its good moments and its poor moments.”
“Moses was the greatest legislator and the commander in chief of perhaps the first liberation army.”
“No one may speak for the dead, no one may interpret their mutilated dreams and visions.”
“When language fails, violence becomes a language; I never had that feeling.”
“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.”
“The opposite of love is not hate, it's indifference.”
“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.”
“When did I learn the Bible? When I was four or five years old. It's still the pull of my childhood, a fascination with the vanished world, and I can find everything except that world.”
“I'll tell you what: I believe mysticism is a very serious endeavor. One must be equipped for it.”
“I write to understand as much as to be understood.”
“We must take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented.”
“Once you bring life into the world, you must protect it. We must protect it by changing the world.”
“A destruction, an annihilation that only man can provoke, only man can prevent.”
“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.”
“In the beginning there was faith - which is childish; trust - which is vain; and illusion - which is dangerous.”
“For in my tradition, as a Jew, I believe that whatever we receive we must share.”
“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.”
“Because of indifference, one dies before one actually dies.”
“I would like to see real peace and a state of Israel living peacefully alongside a state of Palestine.”
“Never shall I forget that night, the first night in camp, that turned my life into one long night seven times sealed. Never shall I forget that smoke. Never shall I forget the small faces of the children whose bodies I saw transformed into smoke under a silent sky. Never shall I forget those flames that consumed my faith forever. Never shall I forget the nocturnal silence that deprived me for all eternity of the desire to live. Never shall I forget those moments that murdered my God and my soul and turned my dreams to ashes. Never shall I forget those things, even were I condemned to live as long as God Himself. Never.”
“I do not recall a Jewish home without a book on the table.”
“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.”
“There's a long road of suffering ahead of you. But don't lose courage. You've already escaped the gravest danger: selection. So now, muster your strength, and don't lose heart. We shall all see the day of liberation. Have faith in life. Above all else, have faith. Drive out despair, and you will keep death away from yourselves. Hell is not for eternity. And now, a prayer - or rather, a piece of advice: let there be comradeship among you. We are all brothers, and we are all suffering the same fate. The same smoke floats over all our heads. Help one another. It is the only way to survive.”
“In any society, fanatics who hate don't hate only me - they hate you, too. They hate everybody.”
“Our obligation is to give meaning to life and in doing so to overcome the passive, indifferent life.”
“One always goes back to one's childhood in the beginning, and I come from a very religious family and surrounding. Very religious.”
“I don't like docudramas. Documentaries should not go together with fiction, or half-fiction or quarter-fiction. The two should not go together. They cannot mix.”
“Historically, I come from Jewish history. I had the classic upbringing in the Yeshiva, learning, learning, and more learning.”
“I believe in superstitions. You don't talk about a child who hasn't been born.”
“When my father was born, it was part of the Austro-Hungarian empire. When I was born, it was Lithuania. When I left, it was Hungary. It is difficult to say where I come from.”
“Human beings should be held accountable. Leave God alone. He has enough problems.”
“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.”
“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.”
“Words can sometimes, in moments of grace, attain the quality of deeds.”