Elie Wiesel Quotes

One expects decent people to stand up for the good of all. Decent people shut their doors and hide behind them as decent people do. Massacres could never happen if it weren't for decent people.

Those who choose not to empathize enable real monsters, for without ever committing an act of outright evil ourselves we collude with it through our apathy.

The silence of the good people is more dangerous than the brutality of the bad people

I make little distinction between those who commit evil and those who stand by and do nothing.

The worst people on earth are not only those who commit evil, but those who stand by and turn a blind eye

To ignore evil is to become an accomplice to it.

We will have to repent in this generation not merely for the vitriolic words and actions of the bad people, but for the appalling silence of the good people.

For evil to take place, the acts of a few people are not sufficient; the great majority also has to remain indifferent. That is something of which we are all quite capable.

Bad men need nothing more to compass their ends, than that good men should look on and do nothing.

Throughout history, it has been the inaction of those who could have acted, the indifference of those who should have known better, the silence of the voice of justice when it mattered most, that has made it possible for evil to triumph.

For evil to take place, the acts of a few people are not sufficient; the great majority also has to remain indifferent.

Passivity is a tacit endorsement of evil we are too afraid to oppose actively.

The world will not be destroyed by those who do evil, but by those who watch them without doing anything.

Silence in the face of atrocity is not neutrality; silence in the face of atrocity is acquiescence.

To see evil and not call it evil is evil.

To remain silent in the face of evil is itself a form of evil.

Evil prevails when good people do nothing.

Most evil in the world is only partly because of an evil person. Most of it is because of the complicity of bystanders.

I think it's a sacrifice that you have to make, because you lay yourself open for people to accuse and disrespect you. But it's worth it. It's worth it because not too many people are too honest anymore.

Be thou good thyself, and let people speak evil of thee; it is better than to be wicked, and that they should consider thee as good.

The truth is that people who pull triggers are ultimately responsible, whether they're following orders or not. An army of people making individual moral choices may be inefficient, but an army of people ignoring their morality is horrifying.

What is the price-current of an honest man and patriot to-day? They hesitate, and they regret, and sometimes they petition; but they do nothing in earnest and with effect. They will wait, well disposed, for others to remedy the evil, that they may no longer have it to regret. At most, they give only a cheap vote, and a feeble countenance and Godspeed, to the right, as it goes by them.

The world is in greater peril from those who tolerate or encourage evil than from those who actually commit it.

Christians have no business thinking that the good life consists mainly in not doing bad things. We have no business thinking that to do evil in this world you have to be a Bengal tiger, when, in fact, it is enough to be a tame tabby—a nice person but not a good one. In short, Pentecost makes it clear that nothing is so fatal to Christianity as indifference.

What is the most precious thing in the world? I see now that it is the knowledge that you have no part in injustice. Injustice is stronger than you, it always was and always will be, but let it not be done through you.