Quotes from Elie Wiesel

To learn is to receive, and then it is to give, and then it is to give again.

We were not afraid. And yet, if a bomb had fallen on the blocks, it alone would have claimed hundreds of victims on the spot. But we were no longer afraid of death; at any rate, not of that death. Every bomb that exploded filled us with joy and gave us new confidence in life.

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.

Suffering confers no privileges; it is what one does with suffering that matters.

One day I was able to get up, after gathering all my strength. I wanted to see myself in the mirror hanging on the opposite wall. I had not seen myself since the ghetto. From the depths of the mirror, a corpse gazed back at me. The look in his eyes, as they stared into mine, has never left me.

Why do you pray? he asked me, after a moment. Why did I pray? A strange question. Why did I live? Why did I breathe?

Religion is a very personal thing for me. Religion has its good moments and its poor moments.

I do not recall a Jewish home without a book on the table.

Religion is not man's relationship to God, it is man's relationship to man.

Only fanatics — in religion as well as in politics — can find a meaning in someone else's death.

I think those governments who resent religion, they're afraid of religion because religion may be in their eyes, in their views be seen as a counter government or a parallel government.

I respect scholarship. But I don't like to do things half-heartedly.