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

More quotes by Elie Wiesel

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Only fanatics — in religion as well as in politics — can find a meaning in someone else’s death.
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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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The only way for us to help ourselves is to help others and to listen to each other's stories.
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I wrote my first book, I published it in 1955, it was in Yiddish and it was called And The World Was Silent.
Elie Wiesel
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Today there isn't a university where they don't have special courses [Jewish studies or Holocaust studies], hundreds and hundreds of universities, young people today want to know more than their elders did, much more, and therefore I am very optimistic about young people.
Elie Wiesel
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I don't think I should accept other people's suffering because I suffered. Just the opposite, because I suffered I don't want others to suffer.
Elie Wiesel
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Man prefers to blame himself for all possible sins and crimes rather than come to the conclusion that God is capable of the most flagrant injustice. I still blush every time I think of the way God makes fun of human beings, his favorite toys.
Elie Wiesel
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I write to understand as much as to be understood.
Elie Wiesel
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Of course, afterward, I studied [commentary on the Bible by a Rabbi Moshe Dessauer] more closely. But, in truth, it doesn't touch me. It doesn't change my attitude toward the text.
Elie Wiesel
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I'll tell you what: I believe mysticism is a very serious endeavor. One must be equipped for it.
Elie Wiesel
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Will you join me in hearing the case for keeping weapons from those who preach death to Israel and America?
Elie Wiesel
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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.
Elie Wiesel
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Everybody around us was weeping. Someone began to recite Kaddish, the prayer for the dead. I don't know whether, during the history of the Jewish people, men have ever before recited Kaddish for themselves.
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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No one has written the way Isaiah does. The royal style, the majesty of the language. He is called the prince of the prophets. No one has written like that. I've studied ancient literature, Homer, for example, but it's not the same thing.
Elie Wiesel
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Music does not replace words, it gives tone to the words
Elie Wiesel
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I'm not a political person. I usually beware of political persons. I know many, but I'm not one of them. I have no political ambitions.
Elie Wiesel
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When you die and go to heaven our maker is not going to ask, 'why didn't you discover the cure for such and such? why didn't you become the Messiah?' The only question we will be asked in that precious moment is 'why didn't you become you?'
Elie Wiesel
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Once you bring life into the world, you must protect it. We must protect it by changing the world.
Elie Wiesel
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I have not lost faith in God. I have moments of anger and protest. Sometimes I've been closer to him for that reason.
Elie Wiesel