"Whenever an angel says "Be not afraid!" you'd better start worrying. A big assignment is on the way."
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Quote collection
Elie Wiesel quotes (page 15 of 27)
533 quotes — follow a thought to its full quote page.
"Eternity is the place where questions and answers become one."
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"But where was I to start? The world is so vast, I shall start with the country I knew best, my own. But my country is so very large. I had better start with my town. But my town, too, is large. I had best start with my street. No, my home. No, my family. Never mind, I shall start with myself."
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"For nearly 3,500 years Exodus has left such an imprint on people's memories that I cannot imagine it had been invented just as a legend or a tale."
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"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 you 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."
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"My God was never happiness, but to understand and be understood."
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"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."
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"Often I say to myself "Really, what are we doing on this planet?" We are passing the message as well as we can, communicating our fears, our hopes ... Day in day out, week after week and year after year, people kill each other."
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"Fanaticism in many lands has surfaced as the greatest threat to the world. Indifference to its consequences would be a serious mistake."
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"I think that human beings are capable of the worst things possible."
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"We cannot indefinitely avoid depressing subject matter, particularly it it is true, and in the subsequent quarter century the world has had to hear a story it would have preferred not to hear - the story of how a cultured people turned to genocide, and how the rest of the world, also composed of cultured people, remained silent in the face of genocide. (v)"
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"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."
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"Of course, afterward, I studied [commentary on the Bible by a Rabbi Moshe Dessauer] more closely. But, in truth, it doesn't touch me. It doesn't change my attitude toward the text."
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"Which is better, truth that is a lie or the lie that is truth?"
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"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."
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"I'd rather speak as a student of philosophy. Philosophically it makes no sense, absolutely makes no sense. Why should people inherit evil things when their memories could contain and should invoke good things?"
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"'Indifference to evil is equal to evil' because it strengthens people."
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"Today again the teacher is the important thing, but on the other hand anti-Semitism is growing today. No doubt about it. All over the world, especially in Europe, and it's true they begin with anti-Israeli attitudes and then it's so strong that it runs over and becomes anti-Semitic."
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"I think [teacher] is the noblest profession."
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"I remember one day I came home and shouted to my grandmother, "Grandma, Sarah is pregnant!" Poor Sarah! For weeks before I had read how difficult it was for her to get pregnant. "Grandma! I have news for you!" "What did you learn?" "I have news, Grandma: Sarah is pregnant!" [Genesis 16 - 21]."
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