Elie Wiesel Quotes
you can do something. You can, even for one person Don't turn away; help. Because those who suffer, often suffer not because of the person or the group that inflicts the suffering; they seem to suffer because nobody cares.
Wiesel, Elie. Interview. Academy of Achievement, 29 June 1996, Washington, D.C.
Normally, this would not be a particularly noteworthy quotation. However, at the time the Republican Party had shifted far to the right–more so than at any other time since its inception. The primary election he was in brought out the most right wing members of the party, which was for gutting the social safety net, did not see health care as a right, and even wanted to terminate Obamacare and Social Security as it existed. Yet when asked in a nationwide TV interview, what the government should do for the poor and destitute who could not afford health care or other necessities. His courageous answer and position doomed his bid for the presidential nomination.
Elie Wiesel was a Romanian-born American writer, professor, political activist, Nobel laureate, and Holocaust survivor. He authored 57 books, written mostly in French and English, including Night, a work based on his experiences as a Jewish prisoner in the Auschwitz and Buchenwald concentration camps.