"I'm not a political person. I usually beware of political persons. I know many, but I'm not one of them. I have no political ambitions."
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Quote collection
Elie Wiesel quotes (page 12 of 27)
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"The Holocaust is not a cheap soap opera. The Holocaust is not a romantic novel. It is something else."
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"I do not believe in collective guilt."
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"Man walks the moon but his soul remains riveted to earth. Once upon a time it was the opposite."
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"The criminal is not alone when he returns to the scene of the crime; he is joined there by his victim, and both are driven by the same curiosity: to relive that moment which stamped past and future for each."
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"My faceless neighbor spoke up: “Don’t be deluded. Hitler has made it clear that he will annihilate all Jews before the clock strikes twelve.” I exploded: “What do you care what he said? Would you want us to consider him a prophet? 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."
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"We were masters of nature, masters of the world. We had forgotten everything--death, fatigue, our natural needs. Stronger than cold or hunger, stronger than the shots and the desire to die, condemned and wandering, mere numbers, we were the only men on earth."
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"The world? The world is not interested in us. Today, everything is possible, even the crematoria."
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"Every nation has its prestigious military academies - or so few of them - that reach not only the virtues of peace but also the art of attaining it? I mean attaining and protecting it by means other than weapons, the tools of war. Why are we surprised whenever war recedes and yields to peace?"
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"The deeper the nostalgia and the more complete the fear, the purer, the richer the word and the secret."
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"Only one enemy is worse than despair: indifference. In every area of human creativity, indifference is the enemy; indifference of evil is worse than evil, because it is also sterile."
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"Philosophy is a slow process of logic and logical discourse: A bringing B bringing C and so forth. In mysticism you can jump from A to Z. But the ultimate objective is the same. It's knowledge. It's truth."
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"Every Jew, somewhere in his being, should set apart a zone of hate - healthy virile hate - for what the German personifies and for what persists in the German."
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"I don't know the real answer, my answer to anything which is essentially human relations is education. Whatever the answer is, education must be its measured component and if you try to educate with generosity not with triumphalism I think sometimes it works, especially young people, that's why I teach, I've been teaching all my life."
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"Memory feeds a culture, nourishes hope and makes a human, human."
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"You shouldn’t act as a spokesperson for someone who’s trying to impose his will on you."
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"Now, when I hear that Christians are getting together in order to defend the people of Israel, of course it brings joy to my heart. And it simply says, look, people have learned from history."
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"We must choose between the violence of adults and the smiles of children."
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"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."
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"A man who is fighting for the future of mankind is not waiting for torture, he's waiting for -- the Revolution."
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