Quotes from Elie Wiesel

In an inn somewhere, a wealthy guest mistakes [Rebbe Zusia] for a beggar and treats him accordingly. Later he learns his identity and comes to cry his remorse: Forgive me, Rebbe, you must - for I didn't know! Why do you ask Zusia to forgive you? Rebbe Zusia said, shaking his head and smiling. You haven't done anything bad to him; it is not Zusia you insulted but a poor beggar, so go and ask the beggars, everywhere, to forgive you!

The main theme remains constant: man owes it to himself to reject despair; better to rely on miracles than opt for resignation. By changing himself, man can change the world.

YOM KIPPUR. The Day of Atonement. Should we fast? The question was hotly debated. To fast could mean a more certain, more rapid death. In this place, we were always fasting. It was Yom Kippur year-round. But there were those who said we should fast, precisely because it was dangerous to do so. We needed to show God that even here, locked in hell, we were capable of singing His praises.

To forget a holocaust is to kill twice.

I was twelve. I believed profoundly. During the day I studied the Talmud, and at night I ran to the synagogue to weep over the destruction of the Temple.

The tragedy of man is that he doesn't know how to distinguish between day and night. He says things at night that should only be said by day."

If your suffering splashes others, those around you, those for whom you represent a reason to live, then you must kill it, choke it.

After trampling over many bodies and corpses, we succeeded in getting inside. We let ourselves fall to the ground.

How do I find God?' you ask. I do not know how, but I do know where-in my fellow man.

Dawn is purely a work of fiction, but I wrote it to look at myself in a new way. Obviously I did not live this tale, but I was implicated in its ethical dilemma from the moment that I assumed my character's place.

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

One person of integrity can make a difference, a difference of life and death. As long as one dissident is in prison, our freedom will not be true. As long as one child is hungry, our life will be filled with anguish and shame. What all these victims need above all is to know that they are not alone; that we are not forgetting them, that when their voices are stifled we shall lend them ours, that while their freedom depends on ours, the quality of our freedom depends on theirs.