Elie Wiesel: Trending quotes

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Elie Wiesel: 310 quotes12 likes

“What is abnormal is that I am normal. That I survived the Holocaust and went on to love beautiful girls, to talk, to write, to have toast and tea and live my life — that is what is abnormal.”

Elie Wiesel

After being asked "What does it take to be normal again, after having your humanity stripped away by the Nazis?" in an interview in O : The Oprah Magazine (November 2000)

“After the war we reassured ourselves that it would be enough to relate a single night in Treblinka, to tell of the cruelty, the senselessness of murder, and the outrage born of indifference: it would be enough to find the right word and the propitious moment to say it, to shake humanity out of its indifference and keep the torturer from torturing ever again.”

Elie Wiesel

Hope, Despair, and Memory (1986)

“"Yisgadal, veyiskadash, shmey raba… May His name be celebrated and sanctified…" whispered my father.
For the first time, I felt anger rising within me. Why should I sanctify His name? The Almighty, the eternal and terrible Master of the Universe, chose to be silent. What was there to thank Him for?”

Elie Wiesel book Night

Night (1960)

“None of us is in a position to eliminate war, but it is our obligation to denounce it and expose it in all its hideousness. War leaves no victors, only victims.”

Elie Wiesel

Hope, Despair, and Memory (1986)

“No one was praying for the night to pass quickly. The stars were but sparks of the immense conflagration that was consuming us. Were this conflagration to be extinguished one day, nothing would be left in the sky but extinct stars and unseeing eyes.”

Elie Wiesel book Night

Night (1960)

“Of course some wars may have been necessary or inevitable, but none was ever regarded as holy. For us, a holy war is a contradiction in terms. War dehumanizes, war diminishes, war debases all those who wage it. The Talmud says, "Talmidei hukhamim marbin shalom baolam" (It is the wise men who will bring about peace). Perhaps, because wise men remember best.”

Elie Wiesel

Hope, Despair, and Memory (1986)

“We were outside. The icy wind whipped my face. I was constantly biting my lips so that they wouldn't freeze. All around me, what appeared to be a dance of death. My head was reeling. I was walking through a cemetery. Among the stiffened corpses, there were logs of wood. Not a sound of distress, not a plaintive cry, nothing but mass agony and silence. Nobody asked anyone for help. One died because one had to. No point in making trouble.”

Elie Wiesel book Night

Night (1960)

“Waking among the dead, one wondered if one was still alive. And yet real despair only seized us later. Afterwards. As we emerged from the nightmare and began to search for meaning.”

Elie Wiesel

Hope, Despair, and Memory (1986)

“When a Jew visits Jerusalem for the first time, it is not the first time; it is a homecoming.”

Elie Wiesel

As quoted in "Elie Wiesel: Jerusalem is Above Politics" in Arutz Sheva (17 April 2010) http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/137057#.VwlePdcYoxA

“One day when I was able to get up, I decided to look at myself in the mirror on the opposite wall. I had not seen myself since the ghetto.
From the depths of the mirror, a corpse was contemplating me.
The look in his eyes as he gazed at me has never left me.”

Elie Wiesel book Night

Night (1960)

“MARIA: Hell? Is he talking about hell? Good. For a moment I was afraid he was making sense.”

Elie Wiesel The Trial of God

Act II (p. 93)
The Trial of God (1979)

“MENDEL: Once you’re on your knees, you can’t stand up straight again.”

Elie Wiesel The Trial of God

Act I (p. 48)
The Trial of God (1979)

“BERISH: I distrust miracles. They exist only in books, and books say anything.”

Elie Wiesel The Trial of God

Act I (p. 40)
The Trial of God (1979)

“Yisgadal, veyiskadash, shmey raba…May His name be celebrated and sanctified…”

Elie Wiesel book Night

whispered my father.
For the first time, I felt anger rising within me. Why should I sanctify His name? The Almighty, the eternal and terrible Master of the Universe, chose to be silent. What was there to thank Him for?
Night (1960)

“The yellow star? So what? It's not lethal…”

Elie Wiesel book Night

Poor Father! Of what then did you die?
Night (1960)