A Nobel laureate writer, professor and political activist, Eliezer ‘Elie’ Wiesel was a Romanian-born American Jewish who jumped to fame after his work,a memoir ‘Night’ that gave a first-hand account of his life as a survivor of Holocaust and as a prisoner in the Auschwitz and Buchenwald concentration camps. In the book, he gave a detailed account recounting his experiences of surviving Holocaust. Post the overwhelming success of ‘Night’, Wiesel took to writing professionally. In his lifetime, he penned more than 57 books, mostly in French and English. He also became an active activist, orator and teacher, speaking out against persecution and injustice across the globe. When bestowed the Nobel Peace Prize, Wiesel was introduced as a ‘messenger to mankind’. He not just came to terms with his own personal experience of total humiliation and of the utter contempt for humanity shown in Hitler's death camps but organized practical work in the cause of peace. Post the honor, Wiesel became a founding board member of the New York Human Rights Foundation and remained active throughout his life. Just as his work, his quotes have been equally life-changing that touch various aspects of life and give readers a new perception and outlook.
When a person doesn’t have gratitude, something is missing in his or her humanity. A person can almost be defined by his or her attitude toward gratitude.
Elie Wiesel
For the dead and the living, we must bear witness.
For in the end, it is all about memory, its sources and its magnitude, and, of course, its consequences.
Elie Wiesel
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.
We must not see any person as an abstraction. Instead, we must see in every person a universe with its own secrets, with its own treasures, with its own sources of anguish, and with some measure of triumph.
Elie Wiesel
One more stab to the heart, one more reason to hate. One less reason to live.
His cold eyes stared at me. At last, he said wearily: "I have more faith in Hitler than in anyone else. He alone has kept his promises, all his promises, to the Jewish people.
They are committing the greatest indignity human beings can inflict on one another: telling people who have suffered excruciating pain and loss that their pain and loss were illusions. (v)
Elie Wiesel
He explained to me with great insistence that every question posessed a power that did not lie in the answer.
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.
Bread, soup - these were my whole life. I was a body. Perhaps less than that even: a starved stomach. The stomach alone was aware of the passage of time.
I've been fighting my entire adult life for men and women everywhere to be equal and to be different. But there is one right I would not grant anyone. And that is the right to be indifferent.
The world? The world is not interested in us. Today, everything is possible, even the crematoria...
Elie Wiesel
Suffering pulls us farther away from other human beings. It builds a wall made of cries and contempt to separate us.
Elie Wiesel
Not all games are innocent. Some come dangerously close to cruelty.
Elie Wiesel
Bite your lips, little brother...Don't cry. Keep your anger, your hate, for another day, for later. The day will come but not now...Wait. Clench your teeth and wait...
Everybody around us was weeping. Someone began to recite Kaddish, the prayer for the dead. I don't know whether, during the history of the Jewish people, men have ever before recited Kaddish for themselves.
The stars were only sparks of the fire which devoured us. Should that fire die out one day, there would be nothing left in the sky but dead stars, dead eyes.
Elie Wiesel
The sky is so close to the sea that it is difficult to tell which is reflected in the other, which one needs the other, which one is dominating the other.
Elie Wiesel
And action is the only remedy to indifference, the most insidious danger of all.
Elie Wiesel
I have not lost faith in God. I have moments of anger and protest. Sometimes I've been closer to him for that reason.
The darkness enveloped us. All I could hear was the violin and it was as if Juliek's soul had become the bow. He was playing his life...He played that which he would never play again.
We are all brothers and we are all suffering the same fate. The same smoke floats over all our heads. Help one another. It is the only way to survive. (pg. 39)
Elie Wiesel
Each man was his own executioner and his own victim.
Humanity? Humanity is not concerned with us. Today anything is allowed. Anything is possible.
Elie Wiesel
Night is purer than day; it is better for thinking, loving and dreaming. At night everything is more intense, more true. The echo of words that have been spoken during the day takes on a new and deeper meaning.
Elie Wiesel
You’re shaking … so am I. It’s because of Jerusalem, isn’t it? One doesn’t go to Jerusalem, one returns to it. That’s one of its mysteries.
Next to him lay his violin, trampled, an eerily poignant little corpse.
Elie Wiesel
If life is not a celebration, why remember it ? If life --- mine or that of my fellow man --- is not an offering to the other, what are we doing on this earth?
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