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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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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
Went
Word
Owes
Rather
Holocaust
Means
Trial
Ends
Trials
Used
Guilty
Mean
Pray
Something
Praying

More quotes by Elie Wiesel

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If the Book of the Law could be forgotten for so many years, who knows what was done to it during those years? Maybe it was lost later, too. And another one replaced it, and that one is no longer the original text. These are questions that perturb me much more than whether it's history or not history.
Elie Wiesel
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If you read Exodus 15 carefully, it describes a storm at sea. This is the old Yahwistic source. In the retelling of the story in the later Priestly source, it is more miraculous: The water stands up on either side like a wall. There are walls of water standing up. As you move back in time, oddly enough, the story becomes more historical.
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When I see a child who is hungry, I see a person who is humiliated.
Elie Wiesel
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Music does not replace words, it gives tone to the words
Elie Wiesel
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[The Bible] is been my passion almost from my youth.
Elie Wiesel
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And action is the only remedy to indifference, the most insidious danger of all.
Elie Wiesel
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In Jewish tradition the Talmud is said to have been given on Sinai.
Elie Wiesel
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Writing is like a sculpture where you remove, you eliminate, in order to make the work visible. Even those pages you remove somehow remain
Elie Wiesel
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I developed an anger at [Moses] Mendelssohn. Later, I read the book. I realized there was nothing subversive in it.
Elie Wiesel
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I have not lost faith in God. I have moments of anger and protest. Sometimes I've been closer to him for that reason.
Elie Wiesel
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Will you join me in hearing the case for keeping weapons from those who preach death to Israel and America?
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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Granted that every war is madness-civil war, fratricide, is the worst of all it reaches deeper into ugliness, cruelty and absurdity.
Elie Wiesel
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Tibet, why is it occupied? For political reasons maybe they have a reason. I don't know. But religiously, why? The fact that the religious community is being oppressed and persecuted is something that every single person in the world who has any religious faith and religious feeling for - for people who have faith should speak up.
Elie Wiesel
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Sometimes I am asked if I know 'the response to Auschwitz I answer that not only do I not know it, but that I don't even know if a tragedy of this magnitude has a response.
Elie Wiesel
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It was the beginning of the war. I was twelve years old, my parents were alive, and God still dwelt in our town.
Elie Wiesel
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Next to him lay his violin, trampled, an eerily poignant little corpse.
Elie Wiesel
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Each man was his own executioner and his own victim.
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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Man prefers to blame himself for all possible sins and crimes rather than come to the conclusion that God is capable of the most flagrant injustice. I still blush every time I think of the way God makes fun of human beings, his favorite toys.
Elie Wiesel