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I had my religious crisis after the war, not during the war.

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
Crisis
Religious
War

More quotes by Elie Wiesel

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[Tibet] never sought any territory. All it wanted is the conquest of the soul, that people should attain a kind of inner sovereignty, inner independence, inner freedom. And inner strength to attain the absolute.
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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The story [of the Sacrifice of Isaac ] is much more a part of theology than of history.
Elie Wiesel
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It's not hatred that kills people, it's indifference
Elie Wiesel
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Ultimately, the only power to which man should aspire is that which he exercises over himself.
Elie Wiesel
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Usually I get up early every morning and from 6:00 to 10:00 I write. The rest of the time I study and prepare my work or I do other things. But four hours a day are exclusively devoted to writing.
Elie Wiesel
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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
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I told him that I did not believe that they could burn people in our age, that humanity would never tolerate it . . .
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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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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I have no doubt that faith is only pure when it does not negate the faith of another. I have no doubt that evil can be fought and that indifference is no option. I have no doubt that fanaticism is dangerous. And of all the books in the world on life, I have no doubt that the life of one person weighs more than them all.
Elie Wiesel
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A word is worth a thousand pictures.
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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[Friedrich] Nietzsche said something marvellous, he said Madness is not a consequence of uncertainty but of certainty, and this is fanaticism.
Elie Wiesel
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It is obvious that the war which Hitler and his accomplices waged was a war not only against Jewish men, women, and children, but also against Jewish religion, Jewish culture, Jewish tradition, therefore Jewish memory.
Elie Wiesel
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I want to go back to the child I used to be, and to read with the same naiveté [the Pentateuch]. I want to leave science aside and go back to the pure perception offered to me in the text that is waiting there for me year after year.
Elie Wiesel
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A Jew who converted, who simulated, was, at least in some periods, safe. Hitler in the beginning did not want to kill all the Jews but he wanted us to have a Germany free of Jews. If America had allowed Jews to come in, the British had accepted Jews from Palestine, they were safe.
Elie Wiesel
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Though we talk peace, we wage war. Sometimes we even wage war in the name of peace. Does that seem paradoxical? Well, war is not afraid of paradoxes.
Elie Wiesel
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I was very, very religious. And of course I wrote about it in 'Night.' I questioned God's silence. So I questioned. I don't have an answer for that. Does it mean that I stopped having faith? No. I have faith, but I question it.
Elie Wiesel
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The Holocaust is a sacred subject. One should take off one's shoes when entering its domain, one should tremble each time one pronounces the word.
Elie Wiesel