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Men Quotes by Elie Wiesel

44 Men quotes by Elie Wiesel

All Men quotes Elie Wiesel’s page

Juliek's final concert, played for an audience of the dead, shows how memory can keep loss alive. Wiesel also writes that a yearning for knowledge, not just facts, drives a person to keep moving forward. He reminds us that even in darkness we can create light, compassion and friendship.

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What would the future of man be if it were devoid of memory?

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Life belongs to man, but the meaning of life is beyond him.

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Human suffering anywhere concerns men and women everywhere.

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A man can laugh while he suffers.

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Each man was his own executioner and his own victim.

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

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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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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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What is man? Ally of God or simply his toy? His triumph or his fall?

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I'm not a military man. I wish I were, then maybe I could give some advice.

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What is man? Hope turned to dust. No. What is man? Dust turned to hope.

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It is by his freedom that a man knows himself, by his sovereignty over his own life that a man measures himself.

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We believed in God, trusted in man, and lived with the illusion that every one of us has been entrusted with a…

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Man prefers to blame himself for all possible sins and crimes rather than come to the conclusion that God is capable of…

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Everybody around us was weeping. Someone began to recite Kaddish, the prayer for the dead. I don't know whether, during the history…

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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,…

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I've been fighting my entire adult life for men and women everywhere to be equal and to be different. But there is…

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Perhaps some day someone will explain how, on the level of man, Auschwitz was possible; but on the level of God, it…

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The knowledge that I have acquired must not remain imprisoned in my brain. I owe it to many men and women to…

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I was the accuser, God the accused. My eyes were open and I was alone - terribly alone in a world without…

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Mankind needs peace more than ever, for our entire planet, threatened by nuclear war, is in danger of total destruction. A destruction…

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Remember also that it is not knowledge but the yearning for knowledge that makes for a complete, accomplished man. Such a man…

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I still believe in man in spite of man. I believe in language even though it has been wounded, deformed, and perverted…

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How can one explain the attraction terror holds for some minds — and why for intellectuals? . . .In a totalitarian and…

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Night is purer than day; it is better for thinking and loving and dreaming. At night everything is more intense, more true.…

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Sometimes we must interfere. When human lives are endangered, when human dignity is in jeopardy, national borders and sensitivities become irrelevant. Whenever…

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Man’s strength resides in his capacity and desire to elevate himself, so as to attain the good. To travel step by step…

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And I, the former mystic, was thinking: Yes, man is stronger, greater than God. When Adam and Eve deceived You, You chased…

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In the beginning was belief, foolish belief, and faith, empty faith, and illusion, the terrible illusion. ... We believed in God, had…

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... True, we are often too weak to stop injustices; but the least we can do is to protest against them. True,…

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Drawn to childhood, the old man will seek it in a thousand different ways.

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If life is not a celebration, why remember it ? If life --- mine or that of my fellow man --- is…

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Wherever men and women are persecuted because of their race, religion, or political views, that place must - at that moment -…

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Man, by definition, is born a stranger: coming from nowhere, he is thrust into an alien world which existed before him-a world…

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At Auschwitz, not only man died, but also the idea of man. To live in a world where there is nothing anymore,…

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Even in darkness it is possible to create light and encourage compassion. That it is possible to feel free inside a prison.…

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We must choose between the violence of adults and the smiles of children. Between the ugliness of hate and the will to…

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It is obvious that the war which Hitler and his accomplices waged was a war not only against Jewish men, women, and…

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Some of the men spoke of God: His mysterious ways, the sins of the Jewish people, and the redemption to come. As…

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Man asks and God replies but we don't understand his replies because they dwell in the depths of our souls and remain…

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More by Elie Wiesel

A religious person answers to God, not to the elected or non-elected official.

One more stab to the heart, one more reason to hate. One less reason to live.

“What all these victims need above all is to know that they are not alone; that we are not forgetting them, that when their…

I feel that books, just like people, have a destiny. Some invite sorrow, others joy, some both.

[Chinese] are a huge empire now, you'll soon be - in a few years two billion people in the world. So, you should be…

Did I write it so as not to go mad or, on the contrary, to go mad in order to understand the nature of…

Take the story of Cain and Abel. Why were we given that story? Scientifically, you may have an explanation for it, but I'm not…

Mankind must remember that peace is not God's gift to his creatures; peace is our gift to each other.

The world? The world is not interested in us. Today, everything is possible, even the crematoria...

every question possessed a power that was lost in the answer . . .

I think this century more than any other really has seen the phenomenon of people being uprooted in such numbers, such a degree. They…

His cold eyes stared at me. At last, he said wearily: "I have more faith in Hitler than in anyone else. He alone has…

As you know, I describe Shirat ha-Yam as part of an epic story that has qualities of history and which also has qualities of…

Every Jew, somewhere in his being, should set apart a zone of hate -healthy virile hate- for what the German personifies and for what…

“Did hope help us to survive, or not? Too many families clung to it all through the war, thus falling into the enemy's trap.…