The opposite of love is not hate, it's indifference.
Elie WieselRead
The Holocaust is a sacred subject. One should take off one's shoes when entering its domain, one should tremble each time one pronounces the word.
Interpretation
What this quote means
The Holocaust should be treated with deep reverence and respect, recognizing its profound impact.
Elie Wiesel emphasizes the sanctity of the Holocaust, urging people to approach discussions about it with utmost seriousness and reverence. By likening the act of discussing the Holocaust to entering a sacred space, he highlights the importance of remembrance and the weight of the memories associated with this tragic event in human history.
Themes
HolocaustRememberanceSacredRespectHistory
In practice
Example use cases
During a memorial event for Holocaust victims, one might quote Wiesel to emphasize the significance of remembrance.
More from Elie Wiesel
All quotes →With every cell of my being and with every fiber of my memory I oppose the death penalty in all forms. I do not believe any civilized society should be at the service of death. I don't think it's human to become an agent of the angel of death.
Elie WieselRead
Certain things, certain events, seem inexplicable only for a time: up to the moment when the veil is torn aside.
Elie WieselRead
We're alone, but we are capable of communicating to one another both our loneliness and our desire to break through it. You say, 'I'm alone.' Someone answers, 'I'm alone too.' There's a shift in the scale of power. A bridge is thrown between the two abysses.
Elie WieselRead
No one is as capable of gratitude as one who has escaped the kingdom of night.
Elie WieselRead
My loyalty to my people, to our people, and to Israel comes first and prevents me from saying anything critical of Israel outside Israel… As a Jew I see my role as a melitz yosher, a defender of Israel: I defend even her mistakes… I must identify with whatever Israel does – even with her errors.
Elie WieselRead
Similar quotes
When historians consider the significance of the Berlin crises of the mid-20th century, I do not believe that they will record it as an incident in the encirclement of freedom. The true view, in my judgment, will be to see it rather as a major episode in the recession of communism.
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If history starts as a guest list, it has a tendency to end like the memory of a drunken party: misheard, blurred, fragmentary.
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There are a whole lot of historical factors that have played a part in our being where we are today, and I think that to even to begin to understand our contemporary issues and contemporary problems, you have to understand a little bit about that history.
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We know from our recent history that English did not come to replace U.S. Indian languages merely because English sounded musical to Indians' ears. Instead, the replacement entailed English-speaking immigrants' killing most Indians by war, murder, and introduced diseases, and the surviving Indians' being pressured into adopting English, the new majority language.
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Happily for America, happily, we trust, for the whole human race, they pursued a new and more noble course. They accomplished a revolution which has no parallel in the annals of human society.
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If the history of England be ever written by one who has the knowledge and the courage,-and both qualities are equally requisite for the undertaking, - the world will be more astonished than when reading the Roman annals by Niebuhr.
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