"If you ask me what I want to achieve, it's to create an awareness, which is already the beginning of teaching."
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Elie Wiesel quotes (page 23 of 27)
533 quotes — follow a thought to its full quote page.
"What I don't like today is, to put it coarsely, the phony Hasidism, the phony mysticism. Many students say, "Teach me mysticism." It's a joke."
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"I have absolutely no problem with the young Germans. I even feel sorry for the young Germans because to be maybe sons or daughters of killers is different than them to be sons and daughters of the victims. And I felt sorry for them. I still do."
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"The Holocaust is the most documented tragedy in recorded history. And therefore, later on, if there will be a later on, anyone wishing to know will know where to go for knowledge."
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"Therefore, all my adult life, since I began my life as an author, or as a teacher, I always try to listen to the victim."
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"I would hesitate to give advice to the Dalai Lama and his people because they are suffering. The Dalai Lama suffered from exile and the people in Tibet suffer from oppression."
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"A disciple came to the celebrated Master of the Good Name with a question. “Rabbi, how are we to distinguish between a true master and a fake?” And the master of the good name said, “When you meet a person who poses as a master, ask him a question: whether he knows how to purify your thoughts. If he says that he knows, then he is a fake."
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"Josiah has a tremendous reputation in the text. He rediscovered the Book of the Law; you remember how Hilkiah the High Priest somehow found it [2 Kings 22:8]."
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"Occasionally, I come to moments of anguish in the text."
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"The story [of the Sacrifice of Isaac ] is much more a part of theology than of history."
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"I think [Sacrifice of Isaac] is the most important event in the Bible except for Sinai."
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"If the Book of the Law could be forgotten for so many years, who knows what was done to it during those years? Maybe it was lost later, too. And another one replaced it, and that one is no longer the original text. These are questions that perturb me much more than whether it's history or not history."
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"Perhaps fate isn't blind after all. Perhaps it's capable of fantasy, even compassion."
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"The sincere Christian knows that what died in Auschwitz was not the Jewish people but Christianity."
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"When our center is strong, everything else is secondary."
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"The term is piqua nevish [?] it means to save a soul, to save a life. And that commandment supersedes all others. It means literally you may violate almost everything except, I think, three commandments of the heart, 613, - you may do anything, violate any commandment and the injunction simply to save a human life. And there are enough lives to be saved in - in Tibet."
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"The whole community must be saved [in Tibet]."
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"There is one right I would not grant anyone. And that is the right to be indifferent."
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"[Moishe] explained to me, with great emphasis, that every question possessed a power that was lost in the answer.... And why do you pray, Moishe?' I asked him. I pray to the God within me for the strength to ask Him the real questions."
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"The sins I regret the most are the one's I didn't commit."
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