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Yet another last night. The last night at home, the last night in the ghetto, the last night in the train, and, now, the last night in Buna. How much longer were our lives to be dragged out from one 'last night' to another?

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
Longer
Lasts
Last
Lives
Night
Another
Dragged
Home
Ghetto
Much
Train

More quotes by Elie Wiesel

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I think so. 9/11 has been a turning point in American history, there's no doubt about that.
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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.
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Even in darkness it is possible to create light.
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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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In my tradition, one must wait until one has learned a lot of Bible and Talmud and the Prophets to handle mysticism. This isn't instant coffee. There is no instant mysticism.
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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.
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The night was gone. The morning star was shining in the sky. I too had become a completely different person. The student of the Talmud, the child that I was, had been consumed in the flames. There remained only a shape that looked like me. A dark flame had entered into my soul and devoured it.
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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.
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Nobody is stronger, nobody is weaker than someone who came back. There is nothing you can do to such a person because whatever you could do is less than what has already been done to him. We have already paid the price.
Elie Wiesel
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It's not hatred that kills people, it's indifference
Elie Wiesel
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We were masters of nature, masters of the world. We had forgotten everything--death, fatigue, our natural needs. Stronger than cold or hunger, stronger than the shots and the desire to die, condemned and wandering, mere numbers, we were the only men on earth.
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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Only the guilty are guilty: the children of killers are not killers, but children.
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 am looking for the word which is there and shouldn't be there. I wonder, why is it there? Or I look for problems: the Akedah [the Binding of Isaac - Genesis 22]. It still baffles me. Each time I read it - and I read it at least twice a year - each time I discover new layers in it. Always. So this is of more concern to me than the minimalists.
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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Today there isn't a university where they don't have special courses [Jewish studies or Holocaust studies], hundreds and hundreds of universities, young people today want to know more than their elders did, much more, and therefore I am very optimistic about young people.
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.
Elie Wiesel
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When I have my manuscript finished, more or less, I type it myself, with two fingers. I type fast with two fingers. And then when it's ready, I reread, recorrect, and retype it. Everything is my own work. I do not give it to secretaries or to typists.
Elie Wiesel
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Holy War is a contradiction of terms.
Elie Wiesel