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I have tried to keep memory alive... I have tried to fight those who would forget. Because if we forget, we are guilty, we are accomplices.

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
Keep
Guilty
Would
Memory
Tried
Fight
Memories
Alive
Fighting
Forget
Accomplices

More quotes by Elie Wiesel

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It is up to us to determine whether the years ahead will be for humankind a curse or a blessing. We always must remember that it is given to men and women to choose life and living, not death and destruction.
Elie Wiesel
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Weapons means killing. Weapons is ah, I'm simply sensitive to the word.
Elie Wiesel
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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
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A Jew who converted, who simulated, was, at least in some periods, safe. Hitler in the beginning did not want to kill all the Jews but he wanted us to have a Germany free of Jews. If America had allowed Jews to come in, the British had accepted Jews from Palestine, they were safe.
Elie Wiesel
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The world? The world is not interested in us. Today, everything is possible, even the crematoria.
Elie Wiesel
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It is obvious that the war which Hitler and his accomplices waged was a war not only against Jewish men, women, and children, but also against Jewish religion, Jewish culture, Jewish tradition, therefore Jewish memory.
Elie Wiesel
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Without memory, there is no culture. Without memory, there would be no civilization, no society, no future.
Elie Wiesel
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Each man was his own executioner and his own victim.
Elie Wiesel
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I don't know the real answer, my answer to anything which is essentially human relations is education. Whatever the answer is, education must be its measured component and if you try to educate with generosity not with triumphalism I think sometimes it works, especially young people, that's why I teach, I've been teaching all my life.
Elie Wiesel
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The stars were only sparks of the fire which devoured us. Should that fire die out one day, there would be nothing left in the sky but dead stars, dead eyes.
Elie Wiesel
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When I say it doesn't make much difference, I mean in terms of the importance of the piece of literature.
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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What do all my books have in common? A commitment to memory.
Elie Wiesel
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I never compared Nazis into communism, but communism was the same thing, the end justifies the means. Whatever the means.
Elie Wiesel
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Therefore, all my adult life, since I began my life as an author, or as a teacher, I always try to listen to the victim.
Elie Wiesel
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Do you know what laughter is? I'll tell you. It's God's mistake. When God made man in order to bend him to his wishes he carelessly gave him the gift of laughter.
Elie Wiesel
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I really don't teach the way Professor [Frank Moore] Cross does. I don't teach the text the same way he does. I teach Biblical themes, Biblical events.
Elie Wiesel
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When you listen to a witness, you become a witness.
Elie Wiesel
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My anger rises up within faith and not outside it.
Elie Wiesel
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Fanaticism in many lands has surfaced as the greatest threat to the world. Indifference to its consequences would be a serious mistake.
Elie Wiesel