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Sometimes I am asked if I know 'the response to Auschwitz I answer that not only do I not know it, but that I don't even know if a tragedy of this magnitude has a response.

Elie Wiesel

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Elie Wiesel
Age: 87 †
Born: 1928
Born: September 30
Died: 2016
Died: July 2
Autobiographer
Humanist
Journalist
Judaic Scholar
Novelist
Philosopher
Political Activist
Professor
Translator
University Teacher
Writer
Sighetu Marmaţiei
Eliezer Wiesel
A-7713
Élie Wiesel
Sometimes
Auschwitz
Even
Magnitude
Holocaust
Tragedy
Response
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More quotes by Elie Wiesel

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Take sides. Neutrality always serves the oppressor and never the oppressed.
Elie Wiesel
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If the Book of the Law could be forgotten for so many years, who knows what was done to it during those years? Maybe it was lost later, too. And another one replaced it, and that one is no longer the original text. These are questions that perturb me much more than whether it's history or not history.
Elie Wiesel
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What would the future of man be if it were devoid of memory?
Elie Wiesel
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Even if people tell me they have historical proof [that it is not historical], that doesn't really bother me.
Elie Wiesel
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Moses was the greatest legislator and the commander in chief of perhaps the first liberation army.
Elie Wiesel
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[Friedrich] Nietzsche said something marvellous, he said Madness is not a consequence of uncertainty but of certainty, and this is fanaticism.
Elie Wiesel
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I remember those faces of people who were good I saw that. I saw a father who gave his bread to his son and his son gave back the bread to his father. That, to me, was such a defeat of the enemies, will of the enemies, theories of the enemies, aspirations, here [in Auschwitz].
Elie Wiesel
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In the face of suffering, one has no right to turn away, not to see. In the face of injustice, one may not look the other way. When someone suffers, and it is not you, that person comes first. One's very suffering gives one priority. . . . To watch over one who grieves is a more urgent duty than to think of God.
Elie Wiesel
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For me, every hour is grace. And I feel gratitude in my heart each time I can meet someone and look at his or her smile.
Elie Wiesel
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Writers write because they cannot allow the characters that inhabit them to suffocate them. These characters want to get out, to breathe fresh air and partake of the wine of friendship were they to remain locked in, they would forcibly break down the walls. It is they who force the writer to tell their stories.
Elie Wiesel
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I've worked with five Presidents in America, all of them I ask the same question always: Why didn't the American allies bomb the railways going to Auschwitz?
Elie Wiesel
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My teachers [ had the most impact in my life]. Of course, my father and grandfather, but after my family, my teachers.
Elie Wiesel
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No one has written the way Isaiah does. The royal style, the majesty of the language. He is called the prince of the prophets. No one has written like that. I've studied ancient literature, Homer, for example, but it's not the same thing.
Elie Wiesel
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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.
Elie Wiesel
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Never shall I forget those moments that murdered my God and my soul and turned my dreams to ashes.
Elie Wiesel
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I personally have no doubt that the Exodus occurred. How it occurred, I don't know.
Elie Wiesel
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Will you join me in hearing the case for keeping weapons from those who preach death to Israel and America?
Elie Wiesel
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Remembering is a noble and necessary act. The call of memory, the call to memory, reaches us from the very dawn of history. No commandment figures so frequently, so insistently, in the Bible. It is incumbent upon us to remember the good we have received, and the evil we have suffered.
Elie Wiesel
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I wanted to come back to Sighet to tell you the story of my death. So that you could prepare yourselves while there was still time. To live? I don't attach any importance to my life any more. I'm alone. No, I wanted to come back, and to warn you. And see how it is, no one will listen to me.
Elie Wiesel
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The whole community must be saved [in Tibet].
Elie Wiesel