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[Memory] is a passion no less powerful or pervasive than love. It is [the ability] to live in more than one world, to prevent the past from fading, and to call upon the future to illuminate it.

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
Upon
Fading
Future
Prevent
Less
Memory
Past
Memories
Live
Passion
Love
Call
World
Powerful
Illuminate
Ability
Pervasive

More quotes by Elie Wiesel

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For nearly 3,500 years Exodus has left such an imprint on people's memories that I cannot imagine it had been invented just as a legend or a tale.
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Human beings should be held accountable. Leave God alone. He has enough problems.
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But where was I to start? The world is so vast, I shall start with the country I knew best, my own. But my country is so very large. I had better start with my town. But my town, too, is large. I had best start with my street. No, my home. No, my family. Never mind, I shall start with myself.
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A man who is fighting for the future of mankind is not waiting for torture, he's waiting for -- the Revolution.
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Look, if I were alone in the world, I would have the right to choose despair, solitude and self-fulfillment. But I am not alone.
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A word is worth a thousand pictures.
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What do all my books have in common? A commitment to memory.
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The opposite of life is not death, it's indifference.
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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.
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Each man was his own executioner and his own victim.
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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.
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I describe incidents which may or may not have happened but which are true.
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When has religion ever been unifying? Religion has introduced many wars in this world, enough bloodshed and violence.
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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.
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How can a human being be illegal?
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After all, God is God because he remembers.
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The philosophers are wrong: it is not words that kill, it is silence.
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He wants to see whether we are capable of overcoming out base instincts, of killing the Satan within ourselves. We have no right to despair. And if he punishes us mercilessly, it is a sign that He loves us that much more.
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What hurts the victim most is not the cruelty of the oppressor, but the silence of the bystander.
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When I began teaching you hardly could find a university in America or a college where they would teach either Jewish studies or Holocaust studies.
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