Elie Wiesel Quotes

Only one enemy is worse than despair: indifference. In every area of human creativity, indifference is the enemy; indifference of evil is worse than evil, because it is also sterile.

My big struggle is how people can not care, erase, not remember.

The fact is, violence is not only not a beautiful thing, but it's also very painful and not without consequences for the perpetrator as well as the victim.

The ultimate crime is not to care.

Indifference pretends to create peace, but it is based on not caring, a silent resignation. It is a movement away, a separation fed by a subtle fear of the heart. We pull back, believing that what happens to others is not our concern. Our courage leaves us. Indifference is a misguided way of defending ourselves.

I have neither curiosity, interest, pain nor pleasure, in anything, good or evil, they can say of me. I feel only a slight disgust, and a sort of wonder that they presume to write my name.

Indifference and neglect often do much more damage than outright dislike ...We wizards have mistreated and abused our fellows for too long, and we are now reaping our reward.

Cruelty is fed, not weakened, by tears.

There is one right I would not grant anyone. And that is the right to be indifferent.

For one who is indifferent, life itself is a prison. Any sense of community is external or, even worse, nonexistent. Thus, indifference means solitude. Those who are indifferent do not see others. They feel nothing for others and are unconcerned with what might happen to them. They are surrounded by a great emptiness. Filled by it, in fact. They are devoid of all hope as well as imagination. In other words, devoid of any future.

After that [father's death] I never cried with any real conviction, nor expected much of anyone's God except indifference, nor loved deeply without fear that it would cost me dearly in pain. At the age of five I had become a skeptic and began to sense that any happiness that came my way might be the prelude to some grim cosmic joke.

Each step is more difficult than the last; the heaviness fills me and turns my limbs to stone. You must hurt or be hurt.

What is an evil man? The man is evil who coerces obedience to his private ends, destroys beauty, produces pain, extinguishes life.

I couldn't give a rat's tutu about your emotional distress

Killing makes me feel good.

Man hurts man, time and time again. As we drown in the wake of our power, somebody tell me why?

I've been accused of being very vain about my apathy.

Toleration is often just indifference in disguise.

I don't want to care. If I care about things, it'll just be worse, it'll just be another thing to worry about. It's less painful if I don't care.

That's the thing: We didn't really care. A world without love is also a world without stakes.

Apathy is the self-defense of the powerless.

Indifference is more truly the opposite of love than hate is, for we can both love and hate the same person at the same time, but we cannot both love and be indifferent to the same person at the same time.

Hate isn’t the most dangerous thing, he’d said. Indifference is.

To the children and the innocent it's all the same.

Some people can very easily switch off and be guilt free, not that what I'm doing is about guilt, but they can completely disconnect and not care because it doesn't affect them. I've always really cared about what happens and felt a certain responsibility.