Elie Wiesel
Elie Wiesel
Eliezer "Elie" Wiesel KBEwas a Romanian-born American Jewish writer, professor, political activist, Nobel Laureate and Holocaust survivor. He was the author of 57 books, written mostly in French and English, including Night, a work based on his experiences as a prisoner in the Auschwitz and Buchenwald concentration camps...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionActivist
Date of Birth30 September 1928
CountryUnited States of America
canvas eliminate order pages painting reader remove sculpture somehow work writers-and-writing
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.
continue learn matter people shall
We are still here. And no matter what, we shall continue to be here to tell people so they can learn from our history.
hurt bystanders silence
What hurts the victim most is not the cruelty of the oppressor, but the silence of the bystander.
inspirational men race
Sometimes we must interfere. When human lives are endangered, when human dignity is in jeopardy, national borders and sensitivities become irrelevant. Whenever men or women are persecuted because of their race, religion, or political views, that place must - at that moment - become the center of the universe.
new-beginnings positivity moments
Every moment is a new beginning.
children hate hatred
I had to be honest with myself and that I felt hatred then, but as children say "I hate you", it's not really hate, you know, it's anger.
bystanders silence holocaust
Take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim.
children men offering
... True, we are often too weak to stop injustices; but the least we can do is to protest against them. True, we are too poor to eliminate hunger; but in feeding one child, we protest against hunger. True, we are too timid and powerless to take on all the guards of all the political prisons in the world; but in offering our solidarity to one prisoner we denounce all the tormentors. True, we are powerless against death; but as long as we help one man, one woman, one child live one hour longer in safety and dignity, we affirm man's [woman's] right to live.
believe men enemy
I still believe in man in spite of man. I believe in language even though it has been wounded, deformed, and perverted by the enemies of mankind. And I continue to cling to words because it is up to us to transform them into instruments of comprehension rather than contempt. It is up to us to choose whether we wish to use them to curse or to heal, to wound or to console.
greatness israel east
I imagine, like all his predecessors, Barak Obama would like to achieve greatness in bringing peace in the Middle East. I hope it will not be at the expense of Israel.
suffering indifference humans
An indifference to suffering makes humans inhuman
love inspirational life
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.
inspirational graduation good-friend
My good friends, we are all waiting. We are waiting, if not for the Messiah, as such, we are waiting for the messianic moment. And the messianic moment is what each and every one of us tries to build, meaning a certain area of humanity that links us to all those who are human and, therefore, desperately trying to fight despair as humanly as possible and-I hope-with some measure of success.
world desperate reason
You know how many reasons we have to be desperate and despairing, the world is not learning anything. We have seen that.