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I don't believe in collective guilt. The children of killers are not killers, but children.

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
Collective
Guilt
Children
Believe
Killers
Collectives

More quotes by Elie Wiesel

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Judaism is in a sense a Rabbinic, Talmudic religion, rather than a Biblical religion.
Elie Wiesel
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I've organised for the last years, since I got the Nobel Prize actually, Anatomy of Hate Conferences all over the world, what is hate. Didn't help but at least they explored it.
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Sometimes I think I prefer the storyteller in [Roman Vishniac] to the photographer. But aren't they one and the same?
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Never shall I forget that night, the first night in camp, which has turned my life into one long night, seven times cursed and seven times sealed....Never shall I forget those moments which murdered my God and my soul and turned my dreams to dust. Never shall I forget these things, even if I am condemned to live as long as God Himself. Never.
Elie Wiesel
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We're alone, but we are capable of communicating to one another both our loneliness and our desire to break through it. You say, 'I'm alone.' Someone answers, 'I'm alone too.' There's a shift in the scale of power. A bridge is thrown between the two abysses.
Elie Wiesel
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My teachers [ had the most impact in my life]. Of course, my father and grandfather, but after my family, my teachers.
Elie Wiesel
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I think that human beings are capable of the worst things possible and they show that there were times, and there probably are times, that it is human to be inhuman.
Elie Wiesel
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The only place where I felt at home, on familiar ground, was the Jewish cemetery. And yet I had never set foot in it before. Children had been forbidden to enter.
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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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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Human beings all change. Not what they are but who they are. We have the power to change what we do with our life and turn it into our destiny.
Elie Wiesel
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I do not believe in collective guilt.
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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I think so. 9/11 has been a turning point in American history, there's no doubt about that.
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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It always hurts when you lose a secret.
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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My faith is a wounded faith, but my life is not without faith. I didn't divorce God, but I'm quarrelling and arguing and questioning, it's a wounded faith.
Elie Wiesel
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I write to understand as much as to be understood.
Elie Wiesel
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Only the guilty are guilty: the children of killers are not killers, but children.
Elie Wiesel