Elie Wiesel: Trending quotes (page 6)

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“If someone had told us in 1945 that in our lifetime religious wars would rage on virtually every continent, that thousands of children would once again be dying of starvation, we would not have believed it. Or that racism and fanaticism would flourish once again, we would not have believed it.”

Elie Wiesel

Hope, Despair, and Memory (1986)

War , Children , Rage

“When I woke up, it was daylight. That is when I remembered that I had a father. During the alert, I had followed the mob, not taking care of him. I knew he was running out of strength, close to death, and yet had abandoned him.
I went to look for him.
Yet at the same time a thought crept into my mind: If only I didn't find him! If only I were relieved of this responsibility, I could use all my strength to fight for my own survival, to take care of myself…Instantly, I felt ashamed, ashamed of myself forever.”

Elie Wiesel book Night

Night (1960)

Death , Time , Fight

“But now, I no longer pleaded for anything. I was no longer able to lament. On the contrary, I felt very strong. I was the accuser, God the accused. My eyes had opened and I was alone, terribly alone in a world without God, without man. Without love or mercy. I was nothing but ashes no, but I felt myself to be stronger than this Almighty to whom my life had been bound for so long. In the midst of these men assembled for prayer, I felt like an observer, a stranger.”

Elie Wiesel book Night

Night (1960)

Love , Life , Men , God

“The absent no longer entered our thoughts. One spoke of them who knows what happened to them? but their fate was not on our minds. We were incapable of thinking. Our senses were numbed, everything was fading into a fog. We no longer clung to anything. The instincts of self-preservation, of self-defense, of pride, had all deserted us. In one terrifying moment of lucidity, I thought of us as damned souls wandering through the void, souls condemned to wander through space until the end of time, seeking redemption, seeking oblivion, without any hope of finding either.”

Elie Wiesel book Night

Night (1960)

Fate , Hope , Soul , Thinking

“The barbed wire that encircled us like a wall did not fill us with real fear. In fact, we felt this was not a bad thing: we were entirely among ourselves. A small Jewish republic…”

Elie Wiesel book Night

Night (1960)

Fear

“How are we to reconcile our supreme duty towards memory with the need to forget that is essential to life? No generation has had to confront this paradox with such urgency. The survivors wanted to communicate everything to the living: the victim's solitude and sorrow, the tears of mothers driven to madness, the prayers of the doomed beneath a fiery sky.”

Elie Wiesel

Hope, Despair, and Memory (1986)

Life , Communication , Solitude , Tear

“What I don't like today is, to put it coarsely, the phony Hasidism, the phony mysticism. Many students say, "Teach me mysticism."”

Elie Wiesel

It's a joke.
In a 1978 interview with John S. Friedman, published in The Paris Review 26 (Spring 1984); and in Elie Wiesel : Conversations (2002) edited by Robert Franciosi, p. 86

“The Hungarian lieutenant went around with a basket and retrieved the last possessions from those who chose not to go on tasting the bitterness of fear.
"There are eighty of you in the car," the German officer added. "If anyone goes missing, you will all be shot, like dogs."
The two disappeared. The doors clanked shut. We had fallen into the trap, up to our necks. The doors were nailed, the way back irrevocably cut off. The world had become a hermetically sealed cattle car.”

Elie Wiesel book Night

Night (1960)

World , Fear , Dogs , Cars

“Whenever an angel says "Be not afraid!" you'd better start worrying. A big assignment is on the way.”

Elie Wiesel

As quoted in Spirituality and Liberation : Overcoming the Great Fallacy (1988) by Robert McAfee Brown, p. 136

Angels , Way

“It seemed as impossible to conceive of Auschwitz with God as to conceive of Auschwitz without God. Therefore, everything had to be reassessed because everything had changed. With one stroke, mankind's achievements seemed to have been erased. Was Auschwitz a consequence or an aberration of "civilization"? All we know is that Auschwitz called that civilization into question as it called into question everything that had preceded Auschwitz. Scientific abstraction, social and economic contention, nationalism, xenophobia, religious fanaticism, racism, mass hysteria. All found their ultimate expression in Auschwitz.”

Elie Wiesel

Hope, Despair, and Memory (1986)

God , Question , Change

“Some writings could sometimes, in moments of grace, attain the quality of deeds.”

Elie Wiesel

A statement of 1968, as quoted in "How And Why I Write: An Interview with Elie Wiesel" by Heidi Anne Walker, in Journal of Education, Vol. 162 (1980), p. 57
Variants:
Some words are deeds.
Souls on Fire : Portraits and Legends of Hasidic Masters (1982)
Words can sometimes, in moments of grace, attain the quality of deeds.
As quoted in "Nobelists, Auschwitz, and Survival" by Robert McAfee Brown, in Christianity and Crisis, Vol. 48 (7 March 1988), p. 58

“That place, Mr. President, is not your place. Your place is with the victims of the SS.”

Elie Wiesel

Comments regarding US President Ronald Reagan's proposed visit to a Bitburg cemetery with then German President Helmut Kohl, on receiving the Congressional Gold Medal from Reagan (4/1/1985).

“From time immemorial, people have talked about peace without achieving it. Do we simply lack enough experience? Though we talk peace, we wage war. Sometimes we even wage war in the name of peace.. . . War may be too much a part of history to be eliminated—ever.”

Elie Wiesel

As quoted in "Is World Peace on the Horizon?", in The Watchtower (15 April 1991)

War , People , Peace , History

“The most important question a human being has to face… What is it? The question, Why are we here?”

Elie Wiesel

"“Why Are We Here?”, in The Watchtower (2006) http://wol.jw.org/en/wol/d/r1/lp-e/2006768?q=Elie+Wiesel&p=par

Question

“An SS came toward us wielding a club. He commanded:
"Men to the left! Women to the right!"
Eight words spoken quietly, indifferently, without emotion. Eight simple, short words. Yet that was the moment when I left my mother. There was no time to think, and I already felt my father's hand press against mine: we were alone.”

Elie Wiesel book Night

Night (1960)

Women , Men , Thinking , Time

“No one is as capable of gratitude as one who has emerged from the kingdom of night.”

Elie Wiesel

Nobel acceptance speech (1986)

Night , Gratitude

“The beloved objects that we had carried with us from place to place were now left behind in the wagon and, with them, finally, our illusions.”

Elie Wiesel book Night

Night (1960)

“"The yellow star? So what? It's not lethal…"
(Poor Father! Of what then did you die?)”

Elie Wiesel book Night

Night (1960)

Star

“We thought it would be enough to tell of the tidal wave of hatred which broke over the Jewish people for men everywhere to decide once and for all to put an end to hatred of anyone who is "different" — whether black or white, Jew or Arab, Christian or Moslem — anyone whose orientation differs politically, philosophically, sexually.”

Elie Wiesel

Hope, Despair, and Memory (1986)

Men , People

“If anything can, it is memory that will save humanity.”

Elie Wiesel

Hope, Despair, and Memory (1986)

Memory