Quote

Be careful with words, they're dangerous. Be wary of them. They begat either demons or angels. It's up to you to give life to one or the other. Be careful, I tell you, nothing is as dangerous as giving free rein to words

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
Either
Reins
Free
Demons
Words
Demon
Tell
Angels
Give
Careful
Nothing
Angel
Begat
Giving
Teaching
Rein
Life
Dangerous
Wary

More quotes by 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.
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I don't speak about my pain. My pain is something that doesn't need to be purged. I want to prevent people from suffering. I don't speak about my suffering. Suffering is something personal and discreet. Also, I know it will never leave me. I don't want it to leave me. It would be a betrayal.
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Never shall I forget that night, the first night in camp, which has turned my life into one long night, seven times cursed and seven times sealed.
Elie Wiesel
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It always hurts when you lose a secret.
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We didn't really differ [with Frank Moore Cross] because we have the same love of the text. We share that love.
Elie Wiesel
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did everything I could in my life to be immune to hatred, because hatred is a cancer.
Elie Wiesel
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There is a difference between a book of two hundred pages from the very beginning, and a book of two hundred pages which is the result of an original eight hundred pages. The six hundred are there. Only you don't see them.
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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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I want to go back to the child I used to be, and to read with the same naiveté [the Pentateuch]. I want to leave science aside and go back to the pure perception offered to me in the text that is waiting there for me year after year.
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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What hurts the victim most is not the cruelty of the oppressor, but the silence of the bystander.
Elie Wiesel
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every question possessed a power that was lost in the answer . . .
Elie Wiesel
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The opposite of faith is not heresy but indifference
Elie Wiesel
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I belong to a tradition that believes that the death of a single child is a blemish on creation.
Elie Wiesel
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A word is worth a thousand pictures.
Elie Wiesel
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Whoever survives a test, whatever it may be, must tell the story. That is his duty.
Elie Wiesel
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Only the guilty are guilty: the children of killers are not killers, but children.
Elie Wiesel
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A man who is fighting for the future of mankind is not waiting for torture, he's waiting for -- the Revolution.
Elie Wiesel
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He wants to see whether we are capable of overcoming out base instincts, of killing the Satan within ourselves. We have no right to despair. And if he punishes us mercilessly, it is a sign that He loves us that much more.
Elie Wiesel
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Indifference is the sign of sickness, a sickness of the soul more contagious than any other.
Elie Wiesel