Quotes from Elie Wiesel

I am much more afraid of my good deeds that please me than of my bad deeds that repel me.

If life is not a celebration, why remember it ? If life --- mine or that of my fellow man --- is not an offering to the other, what are we doing on this earth?

Each man was his own executioner and his own victim.

God made man because He loves stories.

It is not always events that have touched us personally that affect us the most.

In those dark times, one rose to the very heights of humanity by simply remaining human.

In the beginning was belief, foolish belief, and faith, empty faith, and illusion, the terrible illusion. ... We believed in God, had faith in man, and lived with the illusion that in each one of us is a sacred spark from the fire of the shekinah, that each one carried in his eyes and in his soul the sign of God. This was the source—if not the cause—of all our misfortune.

Anything you want to say about God you better make sure you can say in front of a pit of burning babies.

The silence of two people is deeper than the silence of one.

Had the situation not been so tragic, we might have laughed.

For the good of all, I say: Be careful, the brutality of the world must not be more powerful or attractive than love and friendship.

How can one explain the attraction terror holds for some minds — and why for intellectuals? . . .In a totalitarian and terrorist regime, man is no longer a unique being with infinite possibilities and limitless choices but a number, a puppet, with just this difference — numbers and puppets are not susceptible to fear.