In the concentration camps, we discovered this whole universe where everyone had his place. The killer came to kill, and the victims came to die.
— Elie Wiesel
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.
Our obligation is to give meaning to life and in doing so to overcome the passive, indifferent life.
Peace is our gift to each other.
We must take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented.
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.
Because I remember, I despair. Because I remember, I have the duty to reject despair.
We have to go into the despair and go beyond it, by working and doing for somebody else, by using it for something else.
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.
Friendship marks a life even more deeply than love. Love risks degenerating into obsession, friendship is never anything but sharing.
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.
Just as despair can come to one only from other human beings, hope, too, can be given to one only by other human beings.
That I survived the Holocaust and went on to love beautiful girls, to talk, to write, to have toast and tea and live my life - that is what is abnormal.
That is my major preoccupation, memory, the kingdom of memory. I want to protect and enrich that kingdom, glorify that kingdom and serve it.
Once you bring life into the world, you must protect it. We must protect it by changing the world.
I write to understand as much as to be understood.
Because of indifference, one dies before one actually dies.
Mankind must remember that peace is not God's gift to his creatures; peace is our gift to each other.
Indifference, to me, is the epitome of evil.
In Jewish history there are no coincidences.
Not to transmit an experience is to betray it.
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.
The opposite of love is not hate, it's indifference.
I marvel at the resilience of the Jewish people. Their best characteristic is their desire to remember. No other people has such an obsession with memory.
Man, as long as he lives, is immortal. One minute before his death he shall be immortal. But one minute later, God wins.
Words can sometimes, in moments of grace, attain the quality of deeds.
Hope is like peace. It is not a gift from God. It is a gift only we can give one another.
There are victories of the soul and spirit. Sometimes, even if you lose, you win.
A destruction, an annihilation that only man can provoke, only man can prevent.
I have not lost faith in God. I have moments of anger and protest. Sometimes I've been closer to him for that reason.
I do not recall a Jewish home without a book on the table.
Some stories are true that never happened.
No human race is superior; no religious faith is inferior. All collective judgments are wrong. Only racists make them.
There may be times when we are powerless to prevent injustice, but there must never be a time when we fail to protest.
