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
pain endurance humans
The more we know, the more pain we have. But because we are human beings, this must be. Otherwise we become objects rather than subjects.
destiny turns humans
Human beings all change. Not what they are but who they are. We have the power to change what we do with our life and turn it into our destiny.
thinking worst humans
I think that human beings are capable of the worst things possible.
suffering indifference humans
An indifference to suffering makes humans inhuman
tasks turbulent-times jew
The primary task of a Jew in turbulent times is to be Jewish.
pain betrayal people
I don't speak about my pain. My pain is something that doesn't need to be purged. I want to prevent people from suffering. I don't speak about my suffering. Suffering is something personal and discreet. Also, I know it will never leave me. I don't want it to leave me. It would be a betrayal.
understood
My God was never happiness, but to understand and be understood.
men childhood age
Drawn to childhood, the old man will seek it in a thousand different ways.
believe past spite
I believe in God--in spite of God! I believe in Mankind--in spite of Mankind! I believe in the Future--in spite of the Past!
memories tombstone writing
The act of writing is for me often nothing more than the secret or conscious desire to carve words on a tombstone: to the memory of a town forever vanished, to the memory of a childhood in exile, to the memory of all those I loved and who, before I could tell them I loved them, went away.
cities paris discovery
Paris: city of encounters, of furtive and painful discoveries. All isms converge there, including the anti-isms, all the revolutionaries too, including the counterrevolutionaries .
secret immortality stills
We still are looking for someone who knows the secret of immortality. Only God is immortal; we are not.
children believe guilt
I don't believe in collective guilt. The children of killers are not killers, but children.
pain believe heart
But because of his telling, many who did not believe have come to believe, and some who did not care have come to care. He tells the story, out of infinite pain, partly to honor the dead, but also to warn the living - to warn the living that it could happen again and that it must never happen again. Better than one heart be broken a thousand times in the retelling, he has decided, if it means that a thousand other hearts need not be broken at all. (vi)