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Oh, it is not death that frightens me, but the impossibility of imparting some meaning to my past.

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
Past
Imparting
Frightens
Impossibility
Meaning
Death

More quotes by Elie Wiesel

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There are moments when I think it will never end, that it will last indefinitely. It's like the rain. Here the rain, like everything else, suggests permanence and eternity. I say to myself: it's raining today and it's going to rain tomorrow and the next day, the next week and the next century.
Elie Wiesel
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Words can sometimes, in moments of grace, attain the quality of deeds.
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
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It all happened so fast. The ghetto. The deportation. The sealed cattle car. The fiery altar upon which the history of our people and the future of mankind were meant to be sacrificed.
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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No one may speak for the dead, no one may interpret their mutilated dreams and visions.
Elie Wiesel
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In Talmudic literature, certainly in the beginning, he was like a human being - except he was a serpent. But he was talking and walking and probably dreaming.
Elie Wiesel
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Whether every story that's there [in the Bible] is a historic truth ... Again, I'm not concerned.
Elie Wiesel
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I came to the conclusion that I am free to choose my own suffering. But I am not free to consent to someone else's suffering.
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
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If you make a determination that [story of Abraham and the sacrifice of Isaac] is not historical, do you throw it away? I don't think we can say whether it's precisely, scientifically historical.
Elie Wiesel
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You’re shaking … so am I. It’s because of Jerusalem, isn’t it? One doesn’t go to Jerusalem, one returns to it. That’s one of its mysteries.
Elie Wiesel
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None of us is in a position to eliminate war, but it is our obligation to denounce it and expose it in all its hideousness. War leaves no victors, only victims.
Elie Wiesel
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When a person doesn't have gratitude, something is missing in his or her humanity.
Elie Wiesel
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God made (human beings) because he loves stories.
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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It is by his freedom that a man knows himself, by his sovereignty over his own life that a man measures himself.
Elie Wiesel
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[Tibet] never sought any territory. All it wanted is the conquest of the soul, that people should attain a kind of inner sovereignty, inner independence, inner freedom. And inner strength to attain the absolute.
Elie Wiesel
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Nevertheless, we are led to believe that true words can communicate more than truth, they communicate what life is all about, that it's threatened, when it's threatened, when it's in danger, then it becomes a curse or a blessing.
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.
Elie Wiesel