Elie Wiesel

"Hope is like peace. It is not a gift from God. It is a gift only we can give one another."

"Just as despair can come to one only from other human beings, hope, too, can be given to one only by other human beings."

"When a person doesn't have gratitude, something is missing in his or her humanity. A person can almost be defined by his or her attitude toward gratitude."

"We must always take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented."

"Friendship marks a life even more deeply rhan love. Love risks degenerating into obsession friendship is never anything but sharing."

"Not to transmit an experience is to betray it."

"There may be times when we are powerless to prevent injustice, but there must never be a time when we fail to protest."

"The opposite of love is not hate, it's indifference. The opposite of art is not ugliness, it's indifference. The opposite of faith is not heresy, it's indifference. And the opposite of life is not death, it's indifference."

"We marched. Gates opened and closed. We continued to march between the barbed wire. At every step, white signs with black skulls looked down on us. The inscription: WARNING! DANGER OF DEATH. What irony. Was there here a single place where one was NOT in danger of death?"

"Man asks and God replies but we don't understand his replies because they dwell in the depths of our souls and remain there until we die."

"We must take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silent encourages the tormentor, never the tormented."

"Our first act as free men was to throw ourselves onto the provisions. thats all we thought about. No thought of revenge, or of parents. Only of bread."

"We have to go into the despair and go beyond it, by working and doing for somebody else, by using it for something else."

"From Jeff Greenfield: "I once asked Elie Wiesel "Are you an optimist or a pessimist" "An optimist," he said. "I have to be."

"Indifference to me, is the epitome of all evil."

"I no longer ask You for either happiness or paradise; all I ask of You is to listen and let me be aware and worthy of Your listening. I no longer ask You to resolve my questions, only to receive them and make them part of You. I no longer ask You for either rest or wisdom, I only ask You not to close me to gratitude, be it of the most trivial kind, or to surprise and friendship. Love? Love is not Yours to give. As for my enemies, I do not ask You to punish them or even to enlighten them; I only ask You not to lend them Your mask and Your powers. If You must relinquish one or the other, give them Your powers, but not Your countenance. They are modest, my prayers, and humble. I ask You what I might ask a stranger met by chance at twilight in a barren land. I ask You, God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, to enable me to pronounce these words without betraying the child that transmitted them to me. God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, enable me to forgive You and enable the child I once was to forgive me too. I no longer ask You for the life of that child, nor even for his faith. I only implore You to listen to him and act in such a way that You and I can listen to him together"

"“There may be times when we are powerless to prevent injustice, but there must never be a time when we fail to protest.”"

"“The opposite of love is not hate, it's indifference. The opposite of art is not ugliness, it's indifference. The opposite of faith is not heresy, it's indifference. And the opposite of life is not death, it's indifference.”"

"In the beginning there was faith-which is childish; trust-which is vain; and illusion-which is dangerous. We believed in God; trusted in man, and lived with the illusion that every one of us has been entrusted with a sacred spark from the Shekhinah's flame; that every one of us carries in his eyes and in his soul a reflection of God's image. THAT was the source if not the cause of all our ordeals."

"Ultimately, the only power to which man should aspire is that which he exercises over himself."