Elie Wiesel Quotes

36 quotes

Romanian-born American writer, professor, political activist, Nobel laureate, and Holocaust survivor (1928-2016)

“The opposite of love is not hate, it's indifference.”

"We must take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silent encourages the tormentor, never the tormented."

on Activism

"Not to transmit an experience is to betray it."

on Wisdom

"No human race is superior no religious faith is inferior. All collective judgments are wrong. Only racists make them."

on Racism

"Without memory, there is no culture. Without memory, there would be no civilization, no society, no future."

on Culture

"There may be times when we are powerless to prevent injustice, but there must never be a time when we fail to protest."

on Wisdom

"Because I remember, I despair. Because I remember, I have the duty to reject despair."

on Life

"We must always take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented."

on Activism

"For the dead and the living, we must bear witness."

on Life

"Man asks and God replies but we don't understand his replies because they dwell in the depths of our souls and remain there until we die."

on Faith

"Write only if you cannot live without writing. Write only what you alone can write."

on Writing

"Ultimately, the only power to which man should aspire is that which he exercises over himself."

on Power

"True enemies aren't always the ones who hate each other."

on Truth

"Friendship marks a life even more deeply than love. Love risks degenerating into obsession, friendship is never anything but sharing."

on Love

"In any society, fanatics who hate don't hate only me - they hate you, too. They hate everybody."

on Philosophy

"Religion is not man's relationship to God, it is man's relationship to man."

on Religion

"From Jeff Greenfield: "I once asked Elie Wiesel "Are you an optimist or a pessimist?" "An optimist," he said. "I have to be."

on Life

"We have to go into the despair and go beyond it, by working and doing for somebody else, by using it for something else."

on Hope

"Just as despair can come to one only from other human beings, hope, too, can be given to one only by other human beings."

on Hope

"Friendship marks a life even more deeply rhan love. Love risks degenerating into obsession friendship is never anything but sharing."

on Love

"I write to understand as much as to be understood."

on Writing