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Sometimes we must interfere. When human lives are endangered, when human dignity is in jeopardy, national borders and sensitivities become irrelevant. Whenever men or 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

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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
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Protection
Jeopardy
Women
Moment
Whenever
Persecuted
Human
Universe
Dignity
Sensitivity
Humans
Lives
National
Persecution
Sometimes
Inspirational
Danger
Interfere
Must
Moments
Views
Irrelevant
Men
Political
Race
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Sensitivities

More quotes by Elie Wiesel

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I had to be honest with myself and that I felt hatred then, but as children say I hate you, it's not really hate, you know, it's anger.
Elie Wiesel
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The act of writing is for me often nothing more than the secret or conscious desire to carve words on a tombstone: to the memory of a town forever vanished, to the memory of a childhood in exile, to the memory of all those I loved and who, before I could tell them I loved them, went away.
Elie Wiesel
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The opposite of love is not hate, it's indifference. The opposite of art is not ugliness, it's indifference. The opposite of faith is not heresy, it's indifference. And the opposite of life is not death, it's indifference.
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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I was very, very religious. And of course I wrote about it in 'Night.' I questioned God's silence. So I questioned. I don't have an answer for that. Does it mean that I stopped having faith? No. I have faith, but I question it.
Elie Wiesel
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The opposite of love is not hate, but indifference. Indifference creates evil. Hatred is evil itself. Indifference is what allows evil to be strong, what gives it power.
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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Once you bring life into the world, you must protect it. We must protect it by changing the world.
Elie Wiesel
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Every Jew, somewhere in his being, should set apart a zone of hate - healthy virile hate - for what the German personifies and for what persists in the German.
Elie Wiesel
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I was there when God was put on trial....At the end of the trial, they used the word chayav, rather than 'guilty'. It means 'He owes us something'. Then we went to pray.
Elie Wiesel
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Humanity would never tolerate it
Elie Wiesel
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Today, as yesterday, a nation is judged by its attitude towards refugees.
Elie Wiesel
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Sometimes I think I prefer the storyteller in [Roman Vishniac] to the photographer. But aren't they one and the same?
Elie Wiesel
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The philosophers are wrong: it is not words that kill, it is silence.
Elie Wiesel
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Each man was his own executioner and his own victim.
Elie Wiesel
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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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Some of the men spoke of God: His mysterious ways, the sins of the Jewish people, and the redemption to come. As for me, I had ceased to pray. I concurred with Job! I was not denying His existence, but I doubted His absolute justice.
Elie Wiesel
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The story [of the Sacrifice of Isaac ] is much more a part of theology than of history.
Elie Wiesel
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Go over to Greece with the Iliad and Odyssey. These have elements of history, and they have non-historical elements. It's very difficult to pull them apart. And I think there's not much reason to.
Elie Wiesel
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[Chinese] are a huge empire now, you'll soon be - in a few years two billion people in the world. So, you should be more compassionate, more understanding. And above all, you don't need all their trouble.
Elie Wiesel