The opposite of love is not hate, it's indifference.
Elie WieselRead
We must choose between the violence of adults and the smiles of children. Between the ugliness of hate and the will to oppose it. Between inflicting suffering and humiliation on our fellow man and offering him the solidarity and hope he deserves.
Interpretation
What this quote means
The quote emphasizes the moral choices we face between negativity and compassion.
Elie Wiesel's quote highlights the essential human choice between perpetuating violence and hatred or embracing compassion and hope. It calls for a conscious decision to choose solidarity with those who suffer, particularly children, advocating for a world where kindness prevails over conflict.
Themes
ViolenceCompassionHopeChildrenHateSolidarity
In practice
Example use cases
This quote can be used in a speech advocating for children's rights and social justice initiatives.
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
Joy, rather than happiness, is the goal of life, for joy is the emotion which accompanies our fulfilling our natures as human beings. It is based on the experience of one's identity as a being of worth and dignity.
Rollo MayRead
The American elite is almost beyond redemption. . . . Moral relativism has set in so deeply that the gilded classes have become incapable of discerning right from wrong. Everything can be explained away, especially by journalists. Life is one great moral mush--sophistry washed down with Chardonnay. The ordinary citizens, thank goodness, still adhere to absolutes.... It is they who have saved the republic from creeping degradation while their 'betters' were derelict.
Charles DickensRead
VOCATUS ATQUE NON VOCATUS DEUS ADERIT.
Carl JungRead
It is only when human beings see themselves simply as human beings, no longer as gods, that they are in a position to perceive the wholly other nature of God.
Jrgen MoltmannRead
Lying under an acacia tree with the sound of the dawn around me, I realized more clearly the facts that man should never overlook: that the construction of an airplane, for instance, is simple when compared [with] a bird; that airplanes depend on an advanced civilization, and that were civilization is most advanced, few birds exist. I realized that If I had to choose, I would rather have birds than airplanes.
Charles LindberghRead
Every good man progressively becomes God. To become God, to be man, and to educate oneself, are expressions that are synonymous.
Karl Wilhelm Friedrich SchlegelRead