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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
Death
Past
Imparting
Frightens
Impossibility
Meaning
More quotes by Elie Wiesel
did everything I could in my life to be immune to hatred, because hatred is a cancer.
Elie Wiesel
Better that one heart be broken a thousand times in the retelling, he has decided, if it means that a thousand other hearts need not be broken at all.
Elie Wiesel
For me democracy is the only way of life. The opposite is dictatorship or anarchy.
Elie Wiesel
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
There is not anti-semitism as an ideology. The civilized world must think that anti-semitism is stupid.
Elie Wiesel
Life is not a fist. Life is an open hand waiting for some other hand to enter it.
Elie Wiesel
It may well be that our means are fairly limited and our possibilities restricted when it comes to applying pressure on our government But is this a reason to do nothing? Despair is nor an answer Neither is resignation Resignation only leads to indifference, which is not merely a sin but a punishment.
Elie Wiesel
There are real people behind the [Bible] stories.
Elie Wiesel
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
I developed an anger at [Moses] Mendelssohn. Later, I read the book. I realized there was nothing subversive in it.
Elie Wiesel
I never compared Nazis into communism, but communism was the same thing, the end justifies the means. Whatever the means.
Elie Wiesel
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
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
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.
Elie Wiesel
Just as there are predatory birds, so there are predatory ideas: I came under their spell. . . .Just as the survivors say that no one will ever understand the victims, what I must tell you is that you will never understand the executioners.
Elie Wiesel
I was 15, not 14, when I was inside there [Auschwitz], 15, and for me both were actually a surprise.
Elie Wiesel
My students are very special. They are my source of pride, my source of joy, my source of hope. I am terribly fond of my students.
Elie Wiesel
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
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
Now, when I hear that Christians are getting together in order to defend the people of Israel, of course it brings joy to my heart. And it simply says, look, people have learned from history.
Elie Wiesel
