Top 180 Elie Wiesel Quotes (2025 Update)
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151. “I was nothing but a body. Perhaps even less: a famished stomach. The stomach alone was measuring time.”

— Elie Wiesel

152. “What is man? Dust turned to hope.”

— Elie Wiesel

153. “Had the situation not been so tragic, we might have laughed.”

— Elie Wiesel

154. “Dead souls have more to say than living ones.”

— Elie Wiesel

155. “Every murder is a suicide.”

— Elie Wiesel

156. “Remember also that it is not knowledge but the yearning for knowledge that makes for a complete, accomplished man. Such a man does not stand still but perseveres in the face of adversity, nor does he remain untouched by the pain cause by absence. On the contrary, he recognizes himself in each cry, uttered or repressed, in the smallest rift, in the most pressing need.”

— Elie Wiesel

157. “Night is purer than day; it is better for thinking and 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. The tragedy of man is that he doesn’t know how to distinguish between day and night. He says things at night that should only be said by day.”

— Elie Wiesel

158. “Man prefers to blame himself for all possible sins and crimes rather than come to the conclusion that God is capable of the most flagrant injustice. I still blush every time I think of the way God makes fun of human beings, his favorite toys.”

— Elie Wiesel

159. “Do you know what that means? ‘Man of God.’ An odd name, isn’t it? It teaches us that what we call angels are only men. There are no real angels. And men? Oh, there are men, all right, unfortunately for the angels and for ourselves. And what is worse is that they are real.”

— Elie Wiesel

160. “The more you ask certain questions, the more dangerous they become.”

— Elie Wiesel

161. “If your suffering splashes others, those around you, those for whom you represent a reason to live, then you must kill it, choke it.”

— Elie Wiesel

162. “Love is this and love is that; man is born to love; he is only alive when he is in the presence of a woman he loves or should love.”

— Elie Wiesel

163. “Once we begin to regard the well-being of others as integral to our own, we overcome the paralysis of competing rights, which rationalizes innocent suffering.”

— Elie Wiesel

164. “But you get used to anything.”

— Elie Wiesel

165. “I learned that man lives differently, depending on whether he is in a horizontal or vertical position.”

— Elie Wiesel

166. “On the other hand, how many secular humanists and intellectuals renounced their value system the moment they grasped its futility and uselessness? Sobered, disoriented, and disillusioned, some allowed themselves to be seduced by the ideology of cruelty. The number was significant. The.”

— Elie Wiesel

167. “Love is worth as much as prayer. Sometimes more.”

— Elie Wiesel

168. “Each man was his own executioner and his own victim.”

— Elie Wiesel

169. “The tragedy of man is that he doesn’t know how to distinguish between day and night. He says things at night that should only be said by day.” He.”

— Elie Wiesel

170. “Dawn is purely a work of fiction, but I wrote it to look at myself in a new way. Obviously I did not live this tale, but I was implicated in its ethical dilemma from the moment that I assumed my character’s place.”

— Elie Wiesel

171. “To live is to betray the dead. We hasten to bury and forget them because we are ashamed; we feel guilty towards them.”

— Elie Wiesel

172. “The ghetto was ruled by neither German nor Jew; it was ruled by delusion.”

— Elie Wiesel

173. “The absolute quality of hate explains any human action even if it throws something inhuman around it.”

— Elie Wiesel

174. “The destiny of people cannot be reduced to a sociological or scientific formula; it contains mysterious, if not mystical factors.”

— Elie Wiesel

175. “Beggars inspired me with mingled feelings of love and fear. I knew that I ought to be kind to them, for they might not be what they seemed.”

— Elie Wiesel

176. “How do I find God?′ you ask. I do not know how, but I do know where-in my fellow man.”

— Elie Wiesel

177. “The individual is not a cog in a monstrous machine; it is within his power to modify the very laws which imprison him and the very relationship maintained by the Judge with the accused and witnesses. If it is true, as the Baal Shem says, that it is possible for man to hide the light of dawn emanating from the forest simply by shielding his eyes with his hands, still it is no less true that he can rediscover it by merely moving his hands.”

— Elie Wiesel

178. “From Jeff Greenfield: “I once asked Elie Wiesel “Are you an optimist or a pessimist?” “An optimist,” he said. “I have to be.”

— Elie Wiesel

179. “The revolver was black and nearly new. I was afraid to even touch it, for in it lay all the whole difference between what I was and what I was going to be.”

— Elie Wiesel

180. “Suddenly he stopped in front of me and asked for a cigarette. I had a package of Players in my pocket and wanted to give them to him. But he refused to take the whole package, saying quite calmly that obviously he didn’t have time to smoke them all.”

— Elie Wiesel