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How can one explain the attraction terror holds for some minds — and why for intellectuals? . . .In a totalitarian and terrorist regime, man is no longer a unique being with infinite possibilities and limitless choices but a number, a puppet, with just this difference — numbers and puppets are not susceptible to fear.

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
Difference
Terrorist
Intellectuals
Longer
Explain
Susceptible
Numbers
Terror
Limitless
Differences
Minds
Regime
Choices
Infinite
Regimes
Fear
Unique
Holds
Puppet
Mind
Number
Possibilities
Totalitarian
Men
Possibility
Attraction
Puppets

More quotes by Elie Wiesel

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Young people want to learn, they are thirsty for knowledge, they want to understand and remember. The main thing is to teach them where not to go. Oppression, not to go dictatorship, not to go racism and prejudice, absolutely not to go. This is a moral plan [for society].
Elie Wiesel
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Whatever you think in life... think higher and feel deeper.
Elie Wiesel
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Just as there are predatory birds, so there are predatory ideas: I came under their spell. . . .Just as the survivors say that no one will ever understand the victims, what I must tell you is that you will never understand the executioners.
Elie Wiesel
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We must not see any person as an abstraction. Instead, we must see in every person a universe with its own secrets, with its own treasures, with its own sources of anguish, and with some measure of triumph.
Elie Wiesel
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Just as man cannot live without dreams, he cannot live without hope. If dreams reflect the past, hope summons the future.
Elie Wiesel
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Am I my brother's keeper? There you have the whole Biblical understanding that you are your brother's keeper. You also have a whole other understanding in which you are not your brother's keeper. And I've heard some extremely bright people take this position.
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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Perhaps some day someone will explain how, on the level of man, Auschwitz was possible but on the level of God, it will forever remain the most disturbing of mysteries.
Elie Wiesel
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I thought that culture and education are the shield. An educated person cannot do certain things and, and be educated, you cannot, and there they were, killing children day after day.
Elie Wiesel
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They are committing the greatest indignity human beings can inflict on one another: telling people who have suffered excruciating pain and loss that their pain and loss were illusions. (v)
Elie Wiesel
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Even in darkness it is possible to create light.
Elie Wiesel
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If life is not a celebration, why remember it ? If life --- mine or that of my fellow man --- is not an offering to the other, what are we doing on this earth?
Elie Wiesel
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If there is one person on the planet who still is suffering from loneliness and from pain or despair, and we don't know about it, or we don't want to know about it, then something is wrong with the world.
Elie Wiesel
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If there is a single theme that dominates all my writings, all my obsessions, it is that of memory-because I fear forgetfulness as much as hatred and death.
Elie Wiesel
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My faith is a wounded faith, but my life is not without faith. I didn't divorce God, but I'm quarrelling and arguing and questioning, it's a wounded faith.
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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I think that human beings are capable of the worst things possible and they show that there were times, and there probably are times, that it is human to be inhuman.
Elie Wiesel
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I don't believe in collective guilt. The children of killers are not killers, but children.
Elie Wiesel
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The opposite of life is not death, it's indifference.
Elie Wiesel
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No one may speak for the dead, no one may interpret their mutilated dreams and visions.
Elie Wiesel