Elie Wiesel was born on the 30th of September, 1928 in Sighetu Marmației, Romania. He was a Romanian-born American writer, professor, political activist, Nobel laureate, and Holocaust survivor.
His works provide a sober yet passionate testament of the destruction of European Jewry during World War II. He authored 57 books, written mostly in French and English. Including Night, a work based on his experiences as a Jewish prisoner in the Auschwitz and Buchenwald concentration camps.
He was involved with Jewish causes and human rights causes and helped establish the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D. C. Elie Wiesel died on the 2nd of July, 2016 in Manhattan, New York, United States.
In this article, you will find a collection of popular Elie Wiesel quotes about the holocaust, life, civilization, humanity, faith, hope and God.
80 Elie Wiesel Quotes About The Holocaust, Humanity & Life
“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 Wiesel Quote
“Friendship marks a life even more deeply than love. Love risks degenerating into obsession, friendship is never anything but sharing.” ― Elie Wiesel Quote
“We must always take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented.” ― Elie Wiesel Quote
“When a person doesn’t have gratitude, something is missing in his or her humanity. A person can almost be defined by his or her attitude toward gratitude.” ― Elie Wiesel Quote
“If the only prayer you say throughout your life is “Thank You,” then that will be enough.” ― Elie Wiesel Quote
“I swore never to be silent whenever and wherever human beings endure suffering and humiliation. We must always take sides.” ― Elie Wiesel Quote
“Wherever men and women are persecuted because of their race, religion, or political views, that place must — at that moment — become the center of the universe.” ― Elie Wiesel Quote
“Night is purer than day; it is better for thinking and loving and dreaming. At night everything is more intense, more true. The echo of words that have been spoken during the day takes on a new and deeper meaning. The tragedy of man is that he doesn’t know how to distinguish between day and night. He says things at night that should only be said by day.” ― Elie Wiesel Quote
“He explained to me with great insistence that every question posessed a power that did not lie in the answer.” ― Elie Wiesel Quote
“I told him that I did not believe that they could burn people in our age, that humanity would never tolerate it…” ― Elie Wiesel Quote
“Indifference is the sign of sickness, a sickness of the soul more contagious than any other.”― Elie Wiesel Quote
“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.” ― Elie Wiesel Quote
“Bread, soup – these were my whole life. I was a body. Perhaps less than that even: a starved stomach. The stomach alone was aware of the passage of time.” ― Elie Wiesel Quote
“What all these victims need above all is to know that they are not alone; that we are not forgetting them, that when their voices are stifled we shall lend them ours, that while their freedome depends on ours, the quality of our freedom depends on theirs.” ― Elie Wiesel Quote
“I have tried to keep memory alive… I have tried to fight those who would forget. Because if we forget, we are guilty, we are accomplices.” ― Elie Wiesel Quote
“I needed to know that there was such a thing as love and that it brought smiles and joy in its wake.” ― Elie Wiesel Quote
“We believed in God, trusted in man, and lived with the illusion that every one of us has been entrusted with a sacred spark.” ― Elie Wiesel Quote
“A man can laugh while he suffers.” ― Elie Wiesel Quote
“We’re alone, but we are capable of communicating to one another both our loneliness and our desire to break through it. You say, ‘I’m alone.’ Someone answers, ‘I’m alone too.’ There’s a shift in the scale of power. A bridge is thrown between the two abysses.” ― Elie Wiesel Quote
“It was like a page torn from a history book, from some historical novel about the captivity of babylon or Spanish Inquisition.” ― Elie Wiesel Quote
“I was inspired by the marvelous example of Giacometti, the great sculptor. He always said that his dream was to do a bust so small that it could enter a matchbook, but so heavy that no one could lift it. That’s what a good book should be.” ― Elie Wiesel Quote
“This day I ceased to plead. I was no longer capable of lamentation. On the contrary, I felt very strong. I was the accuser, God the accused.” ― Elie Wiesel Quote
“Certain things, certain events, seem inexplicable only for a time: up to the moment when the veil is torn aside.” ― Elie Wiesel Quote
“Not to transmit an experience is to betray it.” ― Elie Wiesel Quote
“When you listen to a witness, you become a witness.” ― Elie Wiesel Quote
“Remember also that it is not knowledge but the yearning for knowledge that makes for a complete, accomplished man. Such a man does not stand still but perseveres in the face of adversity, nor does he remain untouched by the pain cause by absence. On the contrary, he recognizes himself in each cry, uttered or repressed, in the smallest rift, in the most pressing need.” ― Elie Wiesel Quote
“The stars were only sparks of the fire which devoured us. Should that fire die out one day, there would be nothing left in the sky but dead stars, dead eyes.” ― Elie Wiesel Quote
“Blessed be God’s name? Why, but why would I bless Him? Every fiber in me rebelled. Because He caused thousands of children to burn in His mass graves? Because he kept six crematoria working day and night, including Sabbath and the Holy Days? Because in His great might, He had created Auschwitz, Birkenau, Buna, and so many other factories of death? How could I say to Him: Blessed be Thou, Almighty, Master of the Universe, who chose us among all nations to be tortured day and night, to watch as our fathers, our mothers, our brothers, end up in the furnaces? Praised be Thy Holy Name, for having chosen us to be slaughtered on Thine altar?” ― Elie Wiesel Quote
“Those who kept silent yesterday will remain silent tomorrow.” ― Elie Wiesel Quote
“…I believe it important to emphasize how strongly I feel that books, just like people, have a destiny. Some invite sorrow, others joy, some both.” ― Elie Wiesel Quote
“There are victories of the soul and spirit. Sometimes, even if you lose, you win. ” ― Elie Wiesel Quote
“His cold eyes stared at me. At last, he said wearily: “I have more faith in Hitler than in anyone else. He alone has kept his promises, all his promises, to the Jewish people.” ― Elie Wiesel Quote
“Which is worse? Killing with hate or killing without hate?” ― Elie Wiesel Quote
“For in the end, it is all about memory, its sources and its magnitude, and, of course, its consequences.” ― Elie Wiesel Quote
“I pray to the God within me that He will give me the strength to ask Him the right questions.” ― Elie Wiesel Quote
“For the dead and the living, we must bear witness.” ― Elie Wiesel Quote
“To forget the dead would be akin to killing them a second time.” ― Elie Wiesel Quote
“There may be times when we are powerless to prevent injustice, but there must never be a time when we fail to protest.” ― Elie Wiesel Quote
“Human suffering anywhere concerns men and women everywhere.” ― Elie Wiesel Quote
“Never shall I forget that night, the first night in camp, which has turned my life into one long night, seven times cursed and seven times sealed….Never shall I forget those moments which murdered my God and my soul and turned my dreams to dust. Never shall I forget these things, even if I am condemned to live as long as God Himself. Never.” ― Elie Wiesel Quote
“One person of integrity can make a difference.” ― Elie Wiesel Quote
“Write only if you cannot live without writing. Write only what you alone can write.” ― Elie Wiesel Quote
“Only the guilty are guilty. Their children are not.” ― Elie Wiesel Quote
“One more stab to the heart, one more reason to hate. One less reason to live.” ― Elie Wiesel Quote
“They are committing the greatest indignity human beings can inflict on one another: telling people who have suffered excruciating pain and loss that their pain and loss were illusions. (v)” ― Elie Wiesel Quote
“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 Quote
“Ultimately, the only power to which man should aspire is that which he exercises over himself.” ― Elie Wiesel Quote
“It was pitch dark. I could hear only the violin, and it was as though Juliek’s soul were the bow. He was playing his life. The whole of his life was gliding on the strings–his last hopes, his charred past, his extinguished future. He played as he would never play again…When I awoke, in the daylight, I could see Juliek, opposite me, slumped over, dead. Near him lay his violin, smashed, trampled, a strange overwhelming little corpse.” ― Elie Wiesel Quote
“I am not so naïve as to believe that this slim volume will change the course of history or shake the conscience of the world. Books no longer have the power they once did. Those who kept silent yesterday will remain silent tomorrow.” ― Elie Wiesel Quote
“Bite your lips, little brother…Don’t cry. Keep your anger, your hate, for another day, for later. The day will come but not now…Wait. Clench your teeth and wait…” ― Elie Wiesel Quote
“The sky is so close to the sea that it is difficult to tell which is reflected in the other, which one needs the other, which one is dominating the other.” ― Elie Wiesel Quote
“I have not lost faith in God. I have moments of anger and protest. Sometimes I’ve been closer to him for that reason.” ― Elie Wiesel Quote
“A word is worth a thousand pictures.”― Elie Wiesel Quote
“Just as there are predatory birds, so there are predatory ideas: I came under their spell. . . .Just as the survivors say that no one will ever understand the victims, what I must tell you is that you will never understand the executioners.” ― Elie Wiesel Quote
“We have to go into the despair and go beyond it, by working and doing for somebody else, by using it for something else.” ― Elie Wiesel Quote
“Life is really fascinated only by death. It vibrates only when it comes in contact with death.” ― Elie Wiesel Quote
“Each man was his own executioner and his own victim.” ― Elie Wiesel Quote
“There is a difference between a book of two hundred pages from the very beginning, and a book of two hundred pages, which is the result of an original eight hundred pages. The six hundred pages are there. Only you don’t see them.” ― Elie Wiesel Quote
“You’re at the bottom of the mountain. May you climb up without suffering.” ― Elie Wiesel Quote
“In those dark times, one rose to the very heights of humanity by simply remaining human.”― Elie Wiesel Quote
“Anything you want to say about God you better make sure you can say in front of a pit of burning babies.” ― Elie Wiesel Quote
“Violence is not the answer. Terrorism is the most dangerous of answers.” ― Elie Wiesel Quote
“There are moments when I think it will never end, that it will last indefinitely. It’s like the rain. Here the rain, like everything else, suggests permanence and eternity. I say to myself: it’s raining today and it’s going to rain tomorrow and the next day, the next week and the next century.” ― Elie Wiesel Quote
“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. Or not.” ― Elie Wiesel Quote
“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.”― Elie Wiesel Quote
“To forget a Holocaust is to kill twice” ― Elie Wiesel Quote
“Never again” becomes more than a slogan: It’s a prayer, a promise, a vow. There will never again be hatred, people say. Never again jail and torture. Never again the suffering of innocent people, or the shooting of starving, frightened, terrified children. And never again the glorification of base, ugly, dark violence. It’s a prayer.” ― Elie Wiesel Quote
“Humanity? Humanity is not concerned with us. Today anything is allowed. Anything is possible.” ― Elie Wiesel Quote
“The more you ask certain questions, the more dangerous they become.” ― Elie Wiesel Quote
“Listen to me, kid. Don’t forget that you are in a concentration camp. In this place, it is every many for himself, and you cannot think of others. Not even your father. In this place, there is no such thing as father, brother, friend. Each of us lives and dies alone. Let me give you good advice: stop giving your ration of bread and soup to your old father. You cannot help him anymore. And you are hurting yourself. In fact, you should be getting his rations…” ― Elie Wiesel Quote
“I write to understand as much as to be understood.” ― Elie Wiesel Quote
“In the beginning there was faith – which is childish; trust – which is vain; and illusion – which is dangerous.” ― Elie Wiesel Quote
“Whoever survives a test, whatever it may be, must tell the story. That is his duty.” ― Elie Wiesel Quote
“I don’t want my past to become anyone else’s future.” ― Elie Wiesel Quote
“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.” ― Elie Wiesel Quote
“We must not see any person as an abstraction. Instead, we must see in every person a universe with its own secrets, with its own treasures, with its own sources of anguish, and with some measure of triumph.” ― Elie Wiesel Quote
“I shall always remember that smile. From what world did it come from?” ― Elie Wiesel Quote
“For the survivor who chooses to testify, it is clear: his duty is to bear witness for the dead and for the living. He has no right to deprive future generations of a past that belongs to our collective memory. To forget would be not only dangerous but offensive; to forget the dead would be akin to killing them a second time.” ― Elie Wiesel Quote
“No human race is superior; no religious faith is inferior. All collective judgments are wrong. Only racists make them” ― Elie Wiesel Quote
“There is divine beauty in learning… To learn means to accept the postulate that life did not begin at my birth. Others have been here before me, and I walk in their footsteps. The books I have read were composed by generations of fathers and sons, mothers and daughters, teachers and disciples. I am the sum total of their experiences, their quests. And so are you.” ― Elie Wiesel Quote