ELIE WIESEL

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

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

I decided to devote my life to telling the story because I felt that having survived I owe something to the dead. and anyone who does not remember betrays them again.

I remember, May 1944: I was 15-and-a-half, and I was thrown into a haunted universe where the story of the human adventure seemed to swing irrevocably between horror and malediction.

Once you bring life into the world, you must protect it. We must protect it by changing the world.

Without memory, there is no culture. Without memory, there would be no civilization, no society, no future.

That I survived the Holocaust and went on to love beautiful girls, to talk, to write, to have toast and tea and live my life - that is what is abnormal.

In the concentration camps, we discovered this whole universe where everyone had his place. The killer came to kill, and the victims came to die.

The opposite of love is not hate, it's indifference.

When a person doesn't have gratitude, something is missing in his or her humanity.

For me, every hour is grace. And I feel gratitude in my heart each time I can meet someone and look at his or her smile.

Because I remember, I despair. Because I remember, I have the duty to reject despair.

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.

I have to be self-conscious of what I'm trying to do with my life.

No human race is superior; no religious faith is inferior. All collective judgments are wrong. Only racists make them.

I write to understand as much as to be understood.

Mankind must remember that peace is not God's gift to his creatures; peace is our gift to each other.

Someone who hates one group will end up hating everyone - and, ultimately, hating himself or herself.

Some stories are true that never happened.

Man, as long as he lives, is immortal. One minute before his death he shall be immortal. But one minute later, God wins.

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

Look, if I were alone in the world, I would have the right to choose despair, solitude and self-fulfillment. But I am not alone.

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

Because of indifference, one dies before one actually dies.

Wherever men and women are persecuted because of their race, religion, or political views, that place must - at that moment - become the center of the universe.