Top 180 Elie Wiesel Quotes (2025 Update)
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51. “Life is really fascinated only by death. It vibrates only when it comes in contact with death.”

— Elie Wiesel

52. “I shall always remember that smile. From what world did it come from?”

— Elie Wiesel

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

— Elie Wiesel

54. “Music does not replace words, it gives tone to the words.”

— Elie Wiesel

55. “Love makes everything complicated.”

— Elie Wiesel

56. “I did not deny God’s existence, but I doubted his absolute justice.”

— Elie Wiesel

57. “We must take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented. Sometimes we must interfere. When human lives are endangered, when human dignity is in jeopardy, national borders and sensitivities become irrelevant. 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.”

— Elie Wiesel

58. “We must take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented. Sometimes we must interfere. When human lives are endangered, when human dignity is in jeopardy, national borders and sensitivities become irrelevant.”

— Elie Wiesel

59. “I write to understand as much as to be understood.”

— Elie Wiesel

60. “For in the end, it is all about memory, its sources and its magnitude, and, of course, its consequences.”

— Elie Wiesel

61. “The gates of the camp opened. It seemed as though an even darker night was waiting for us on the other side. The.”

— Elie Wiesel

62. “In the beginning there was faith – which is childish; trust – which is vain; and illusion – which is dangerous. We believed in God, trusted in man, and lived with the illusion that every one of us has been entrusted with a sacred spark from the Shekhinah’s flame; that every one of us carries in his eyes and in his soul a reflection of God’s image. That was the source if not the cause of all our ordeals.”

— Elie Wiesel

63. “Which is worse? Killing with hate or killing without hate?”

— Elie Wiesel

64. “How was it possible that men, women, and children were being burned and that the world kept silent?”

— Elie Wiesel

65. “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.”

— Elie Wiesel

66. “Someone who hates one group will end up hating everyone – and, ultimately, hating himself or herself.”

— Elie Wiesel

67. “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!”

— Elie Wiesel

68. “What is abnormal is that I am normal. 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.”

— Elie Wiesel

69. “The silence of two people is deeper than the silence of one.”

— Elie Wiesel

70. “Certain things, certain events, seem inexplicable only for a time: up to the moment when the veil is torn aside.”

— Elie Wiesel

71. “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.”

— Elie Wiesel

72. “The main theme remains constant: man owes it to himself to reject despair; better to rely on miracles than opt for resignation. By changing himself, man can change the world.”

— Elie Wiesel

73. “A man who is fighting for the future of mankind is not waiting for torture, he’s waiting for – the Revolution.”

— Elie Wiesel

74. “Where is God to be found? In suffering or in rebellion? When is a man most truly a man? When he submits or when he refuses? Where does suffering lead him? To purification or to bestiality?”

— Elie Wiesel

75. “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.”

— Elie Wiesel

76. “YOM KIPPUR. The Day of Atonement. Should we fast? The question was hotly debated. To fast could mean a more certain, more rapid death. In this place, we were always fasting. It was Yom Kippur year-round. But there were those who said we should fast, precisely because it was dangerous to do so. We needed to show God that even here, locked in hell, we were capable of singing His praises. I.”

— Elie Wiesel

77. “My hands were aching, I was clenching them so hard. To strangle the doctor and the others! To set the whole world on fire! My father’s murderers! But even the cry stuck in my throat.”

— Elie Wiesel

78. “I was twelve. I believed profoundly. During the day I studied the Talmud, and at night I ran to the synagogue to weep over the destruction of the Temple.”

— Elie Wiesel

79. “What are You, my God? I thought angrily. How do You compare to this stricken mass gathered to affirm to You their faith, their anger, their defiance? What does Your grandeur mean, Master of the Universe, in the face of all this cowardice, this decay, and this misery? Why do you go on troubling these poor people’s wounded minds, their ailing bodies?”

— Elie Wiesel

80. “Then he smiled. I shall always remember that smile. What world did it come from? Heavy snow continued to fall over the corpses.”

— Elie Wiesel

81. “Don’t be deluded. Hitler has made it clear that he will annihilate all Jews before the clock strikes twelve.” I exploded: “What do you care what he said? Would you want us to consider him a prophet?”

— Elie Wiesel

82. “But now, I no longer pleaded for anything. I was no longer able to lament. On the contrary, I felt very strong. I was the accuser, God the accused.”

— Elie Wiesel

83. “We were the masters of nature, the masters of the world. We had transcended everything – death, fatigue, our natural needs. We were stronger than cold and hunger, stronger than the guns and the desire to die, doomed and rootless, nothing but numbers, we were the only men on earth. At.”

— Elie Wiesel

84. “I looked up at my father’s face, trying to glimpse a smile or something like it on his stricken face. But there was nothing. Not the shadow of an expression. Defeat.”

— Elie Wiesel

85. “One day when I was able to get up, I decided to look at myself in the mirror on the opposite wall. I had not seen myself since the ghetto. From the depths of the mirror, a corpse was contemplating me. The look in his eyes as he gazed at me has never left me.”

— Elie Wiesel

86. “I knew that I was no longer arguing with him but with Death itself, with Death that he had already chosen.”

— Elie Wiesel

87. “There are a thousand and one gates leading into the orchard of mystical truth. Every human being has his own gate. We must never make the mistake of wanting to enter the orchard by any gate but our own. To do this is dangerous for the one who enters and also for those who are already there.”

— Elie Wiesel

88. “Did I write it so as not to go mad or, on the contrary, to go mad in order to understand the nature of madness?”

— Elie Wiesel

89. “I stood petrified. What had happened to me? My father had just been struck, in front of me, and I had not even blinked. I had watched and kept silent. Only yesterday, I would have dug my nails into this criminal’s flesh. Had I changed that much? So fast? Remorse began to gnaw at me. All I could think was: I shall never forgive them for this. My father must have guessed my thoughts, because he whispered in my ear: “It doesn’t hurt.” His cheek still bore the red mark of the hand.”

— Elie Wiesel

90. “His last word had been my name. A summons. And I had not responded.”

— Elie Wiesel

91. “How much longer would our lives be lived from one “last night” to the next?”

— Elie Wiesel

92. “As for me, I had ceased to pray. I concurred with Job! I was not denying His existence, but I doubted His absolute justice. Akiba.”

— Elie Wiesel

93. “Anything you want to say about God you better make sure you can say in front of a pit of burning babies.”

— Elie Wiesel

94. “In this place, there is no such thing as father, brother, friend. Each of us lives and dies alone.”

— Elie Wiesel

95. “Man comes closer to God through the questions he asks Him, he liked to say. Therein lies true dialogue. Man asks and God replies. But we don’t understand His replies. We cannot understand them. Because they dwell in the depths of our souls and remain there until we die. The real answers, Eliezer, you will find only within yourself.”

— Elie Wiesel

96. “This was it; the end of the road. A silent death, suffocation. No way to scream, to call for help.”

— Elie Wiesel

97. “Our backyard looked like a marketplace. Valuable objects, precious rugs, silver candlesticks, Bibles and other ritual objects were strewn over the dusty grounds- pitiful relics that seemed never to have had a home. All this under a magnificent blue sky.”

— Elie Wiesel

98. “There are those who tell me that I survived in order to write this text. I am not convinced. I don’t know how I survived; I was weak, rather shy; I did nothing to save myself. A miracle? Certainly not. If heaven could or would perform a miracle for me, why not for others more deserving than myself? It was nothing more than chance. However, having survived, I needed to give some meaning to my survival.”

— Elie Wiesel

99. “Man asks and God replies. But we don’t understand His replies. We cannot understand them. Because they dwell in the depths of our souls and remain there until we die.”

— Elie Wiesel

100. “I didn’t know that this was the moment in time and the place where I was leaving my mother and Tzipora forever.”

— Elie Wiesel