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

Wiesel: "The enemy wanted to be the one who speaks. I felt, and still feel, we must see to it that the victim should be the one who speaks and be heard. Therefore, all my adult life, I always try to listen to the victim."

Wiesel: "Always question. Do not accept answers as definitive. Answers change, questions don't. Always question those who are certain of what they're saying."

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

Wiesel: "There is a difference between a book of two hundred pages from the very beginning, and a book of two hundred pages which is the result of an original eight hundred pages. The six hundred are there. Only you don't see them."

Wiesel: "Because I remember, I despair. Because I remember, I have the duty to reject despair."

Wiesel: "Be sensitive. In every way possible, about everything in life. Insensitivity brings indifference. And nothing is worse than indifference."

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

Wiesel: "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."

Wiesel: "I will say, with memoir, you must be honest. You must be truthful."

Wiesel: "What does mysticism really mean? It means the way to attain knowledge. It's close to philosophy, except in philosophy you go horizontally while in mysticism you go vertically."

Wiesel: "A destruction, an annihilation that only man can provoke, only man can prevent."

Wiesel: "If I remain silent, I may help my own soul. But because I don't help other people, I poison my soul."

Wiesel: "Most people think that shadows follow, precede or surround beings or objects. The truth is that they also surround words, ideas, desires, deeds, impulses and memories."

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

Wiesel: "I'm a teacher and a writer; my life is words. When I see the denigration of language, it hurts me, and it's easy to denigrate a word by trivializing it."

Wiesel: "That is my major preoccupation, memory, the kingdom of memory. I want to protect and enrich that kingdom, glorify that kingdom and serve it."

Wiesel: "I have not lost faith in God. I have moments of anger and protest. Sometimes I've been closer to him for that reason."

Wiesel: "Our obligation is to give meaning to life and in doing so to overcome the passive, indifferent life."

Wiesel: "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."

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

Wiesel: "Words can sometimes, in moments of grace, attain the quality of deeds."

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

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

Wiesel: "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."

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

Wiesel: "My greatest disappointment is that I believe that those of us who went through the war and tried to write about it, about their experience, became messengers. We have given the message, and nothing changed."

Wiesel: "I would like to see real peace and a state of Israel living peacefully alongside a state of Palestine."

Wiesel: "I was very, very religious. And of course I wrote about it in 'Night.' I questioned God's silence. So I questioned. I don't have an answer for that. Does it mean that I stopped having faith? No. I have faith, but I question it."

Wiesel: "I believe in superstitions. You don't talk about a child who hasn't been born."

Wiesel: "Not to transmit an experience is to betray it."

Wiesel: "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."

Wiesel: "When language fails, violence becomes a language; I never had that feeling."

Wiesel: "When did I learn the Bible? When I was four or five years old. It's still the pull of my childhood, a fascination with the vanished world, and I can find everything except that world."

Wiesel: "Some stories are true that never happened."

Wiesel: "It all happened so fast. The ghetto. The deportation. The sealed cattle car. The fiery altar upon which the history of our people and the future of mankind were meant to be sacrificed."

Wiesel: "After all, God is God because he remembers."

Wiesel: "There are victories of the soul and spirit. Sometimes, even if you lose, you win."