Inspirational Quotations

Inspirational Quotes by Elie Wiesel (Romanian-born American Writer)

Eliezer “Elie” Wiesel KBE (b.1928) is a Romanian-born Jewish-American professor and political activist. He is the author of 57 books, including Night, a work based on his experiences as a prisoner in the Auschwitz, Buna, and Buchenwald concentration camps. Wiesel is also the Advisory Board chairman of the newspaper Algemeiner Journal.

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Because of indifference, one dies before one actually dies.
Elie Wiesel

I decided to devote my life to telling the story because I felt that having survived I owe something to the dead. and anyone who does not remember betrays them again.
Elie Wiesel
Topics: Decision

What does mysticism really mean? It means the way to attain knowledge. It’s close to philosophy, except in philosophy you go horizontally while in mysticism you go vertically.
Elie Wiesel

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

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
Topics: Protest, Justice

When you see the abyss, and we have looked into it, then what? There isn’t much room at the edge—one person, another, not many. If you are there, others cannot be there. If you are there, you become a protective wall. What happens? You become part of t
Elie Wiesel
Topics: Knowledge

Man walks the moon but his soul remains riveted to earth. Once upon a time it was the opposite.
Elie Wiesel
Topics: Dreams

This is the duty of our generation as we enter the twenty-first century—solidarity with the weak, the persecuted, the lonely, the sick, and those in despair. It is expressed by the desire to give a noble and humanizing meaning to a community in which all members will define themselves not by their own identity but by that of others.
Elie Wiesel
Topics: Responsibility

If the only prayer you say throughout your life is “Thank You,” then that will be enough.
Elie Wiesel

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

People are united by questions. It is the answers that divide them.
Elie Wiesel

I don’t believe in accidents. There are only encounters in history. There are no accidents.
Elie Wiesel
Topics: Mistakes

Nobody is stronger, nobody is weaker than someone who came back. There is nothing you can do to such a person because whatever you could do is less than what has already been done to him. We have already paid the price.
Elie Wiesel
Topics: Survival

There are victories of the soul and spirit. Sometimes, even if you lose, you win.
Elie Wiesel

It may well be that our means are fairly limited and our possibilities restricted when it comes to applying pressure on our government. But is this a reason to do nothing? Despair is nor an answer. Neither is resignation. Resignation only leads to indifference, which is not merely a sin but a punishment
Elie Wiesel
Topics: Government

Mankind must remember that peace is not God’s gift to his creatures; peace is our gift to each other.
Elie Wiesel
Topics: Peace, Gifts

Words can sometimes, in moments of grace, attain the quality of deeds.
Elie Wiesel

That is my major preoccupation—memory, the kingdom of memory. I want to protect and enrich that kingdom, glorify that kingdom and serve it.
Elie Wiesel
Topics: Memory

I believe that all the survivors are mad. One time or another their madness will explode. You cannot absorb that much madness and not be influenced by it. That is why the children of survivors are so tragic. I see them in school. They don’t know how
Elie Wiesel
Topics: Survival

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 are there. Only you don’t see them.
Elie Wiesel
Topics: Authors & Writing

I rarely speak about God. To God, yes. I protest against Him. I shout at Him. But to open a discourse about the qualities of God, about the problems that God imposes, theodicy, no. And yet He is there, in silence, in filigree.
Elie Wiesel
Topics: God

Because I remember, I despair. Because I remember, I have the duty to reject despair.
Elie Wiesel
Topics: Despair

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.
Elie Wiesel
Topics: Indifference, Apathy

Man, as long as he lives, is immortal. One minute before his death he shall be immortal. But one minute later, God wins.
Elie Wiesel
Topics: Immortality

I remember: it happened yesterday, or eternities ago. A young Jewish boy discovered the Kingdom of Night. I remember his bewilderment, I remember his anguish. It all happened so fast. The ghetto. The deportation. The sealed cattle car. The fiery altar upon which the history of our people and the future of mankind were meant to be sacrificed.
I remember he asked his father: Can this be true? This is the twentieth century, not the Middle Ages. Who would allow such crimes to be committed? How could the world remain silent?
And now the boy is turning to me. Tell me, he asks, what have you done with my future, what have you done with your life? And I tell him that I have tried. That I have tried to keep memory alive, that I have tried to fight those who would forget. Because if we forget, we are guilty, we are accomplices.
And then I explain to him how na
Elie Wiesel

Some stories are true that never happened.
Elie Wiesel
Topics: Imagination

No human race is superior; no religious faith is inferior. All collective judgments are wrong. Only racists make them.
Elie Wiesel
Topics: Racism, Race

Once you bring life into the world, you must protect it. We must protect it by changing the world.
Elie Wiesel
Topics: Children

Writing is not like painting where you add. It is not what you put on the canvas that the reader sees. Writing is more like a sculpture where you remove, you eliminate in order to make the work visible. Even those pages you remove somehow remain.
Elie Wiesel
Topics: Authors & Writing, Writers, Writing

Just as despair can come to one only from other human beings, hope, too, can be given to one only by other human beings.
Elie Wiesel
Topics: Hope

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