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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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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
Cruelty
Civil
Madness
Granted
Deeper
Worst
Reaches
War
Ugliness
Every
Absurdity

More quotes by 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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I make a difference between genocide and Holocaust. Holocaust was mainly Jewish, that was the only people, to the last Jew, sentenced to die for one reason, for being Jewish, that's all.
Elie Wiesel
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Perhaps some day someone will explain how, on the level of man, Auschwitz was possible but on the level of God, it will forever remain the most disturbing of mysteries.
Elie Wiesel
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One person of integrity can make a difference.
Elie Wiesel
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Words can sometimes, in moments of grace, attain the quality of deeds.
Elie Wiesel
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What is man? Hope turned to dust. No. What is man? Dust turned to hope.
Elie Wiesel
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I believe in the story [ of Adam and Eve]. For me, it's a story.
Elie Wiesel
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Go over to Greece with the Iliad and Odyssey. These have elements of history, and they have non-historical elements. It's very difficult to pull them apart. And I think there's not much reason to.
Elie Wiesel
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The Jewish tradition of learning-is learning. Adam chose knowledge instead of immortality.
Elie Wiesel
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[Shirat ha-Yam ] is one of the earliest, if not the earliest, pieces of Biblical literature that we possess. It is much closer to history than later traditions of the Exodus.
Elie Wiesel
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I never compared Nazis into communism, but communism was the same thing, the end justifies the means. Whatever the means.
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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The whole community must be saved [in Tibet].
Elie Wiesel
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In the face of suffering, one has no right to turn away, not to see.
Elie Wiesel
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Every Jew, somewhere in his being, should set apart a zone of hate - healthy virile hate - for what the German personifies and for what persists in the German.
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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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.
Elie Wiesel
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Tibet's a tragedy. It's an insult to human decency.
Elie Wiesel
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[ Rabbi Shlomo ben Isaac] was the greatest commentator [of the Bible] we ever had.
Elie Wiesel
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You cross a border and the policeman or the frontier policeman look at you, What are you doing here? Why are you coming? How long will you stay? Well, if I had nearly enough years, I would write a novel about being a refugee.
Elie Wiesel