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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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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
Children
Leave
Years
Child
Waiting
Naivet
Year
Text
Read
Offered
Science
Aside
Used
Perception
Back
Pure

More quotes by Elie Wiesel

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Young people want to learn, they are thirsty for knowledge, they want to understand and remember. The main thing is to teach them where not to go. Oppression, not to go dictatorship, not to go racism and prejudice, absolutely not to go. This is a moral plan [for society].
Elie Wiesel
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I belong to a tradition that believes that the death of a single child is a blemish on creation.
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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I believe in God--in spite of God! I believe in Mankind--in spite of Mankind! I believe in the Future--in spite of the Past!
Elie Wiesel
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Politicians, they give the visible aspect of the change, but the change, the root, the anchor are in young people.
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.
Elie Wiesel
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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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Oh, it is not death that frightens me, but the impossibility of imparting some meaning to my past.
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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Moses was the greatest legislator and the commander in chief of perhaps the first liberation army.
Elie Wiesel
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Remembering is a noble and necessary act. The call of memory, the call to memory, reaches us from the very dawn of history. No commandment figures so frequently, so insistently, in the Bible. It is incumbent upon us to remember the good we have received, and the evil we have suffered.
Elie Wiesel
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Eternity is the place where questions and answers become one.
Elie Wiesel
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That is my major preoccupation, memory, the kingdom of memory. I want to protect and enrich that kingdom, glorify that kingdom and serve it.
Elie Wiesel
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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.
Elie Wiesel
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I marvel at the resilience of the Jewish people. Their best characteristic is their desire to remember. No other people has such an obsession with memory.
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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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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I learned to trust the threats of enemies before the promises of friends.
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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Friendship marks a life even more deeply than love. Love risks degenerating into obsession, friendship is never anything but sharing.
Elie Wiesel