Elie Wiesel Quotes

He's not the finest character that ever lived. But he's a human being, and a terrible thing is happening to him. So attention must be paid.

By showing hunger, deprivation, starvation and brutality, as well as endurance and nobility, documentaries inform, prod our memories, even stir us to action. Such films do battle for our very soul.

If you feel more emotion looking at a picture of queuing lorries than a picture of desperate humans living in a lay-by, you need to check your bedtime routine for someone beating you round the head with a meat tenderiser.

I believe that to knowingly commit actions that cause or condone suffering is reprehensible in the extreme. I call upon you to be compassionate and treat others as you want to be treated. If you don't want to be beaten, imprisoned, mutilated, killed or tortured then you shouldn't condone such behavior towards anyone, be they human or not.

I see myself as a witness to humanity.

Man is not the enemy here, but the fellow victim.

I had grown up in a humanist atmosphere, and war to me was never anything but horror, mutilation and senseless destruction, and I knew that many great and wise people felt the same way about it.

'Hell in a Handbasket' is not dealing with the political nature of the country. It's dealing with the humanity and the compassion of the world.

The closer you are to people, the more you realise what has happened to them.

Only when the sense of the pain of others begins does man begin.

When will our consciences grow so tender that we will act to prevent human misery rather than avenge it?

It's not always easy to stand aside and be unable to do anything except record the sufferings around one.

The other half is to dramatize the fact that we still 'are' human beings, now. Or can be.

Pity addresses the perceived suffering, not the whole individual.

Everyone is different. We all suffer from the disease of being human. There are a thousand cures but no antidotes.

I was not insensitive to these mutilations.

I'm actually a humanist, believe it or not, and I believe even when people are corrupted, even when they've gone to the dark side, they are still human beings.

I believe Jews are compassionate people because of what we've suffered. We must not put that suffering onto others.

We have to be a nation of compassion and some sort of humanity when it comes to the treatment of other human beings.

Even with the most horrendous things that happen and the tremendous pain that people have to deal with, they still laugh, because I think that's what it means to be human.

The more power that we have, the less human we are.

Human beings can be awful cruel to one another.

She is Living and I'm Dead, but I'd like to believe we're both human. Call me an idealist.

You know, when real trouble comes your humanity is awakened. The fundamental human experience is that of compassion.

Compassion can be described as letting ourselves be touched by the vulnerability and suffering that is within ourselves and all beings. The full flowering of compassion also includes action: Not only do we attune to the presence of suffering, we respond to it.