Elie Wiesel Quotes

I'm fascinated by how much has changed from one generation to another. There are young people growing up now for whom apartheid is just a distant memory and the idea of military service is an abstract notion.

I think people look at revolution too much in terms of power. I think revolution has to be seen more anthropologically, in terms of transitions from one mode of life to another.

I feel blessed in the knowledge that I probably belong to the last generation that will remember what we call "traditional America."

Every generation wants to be the last.

Any change in customs ... takes generations to accomplish, and must come about by general consent. Even a superficial study of sociology shows the futility of past efforts to make a lasting change in manners by an act of will or authority.

Now more than ever the world has to come together to make changes. Just because certain cultures have had long-standing traditions does not mean that in today's world they are acceptable any longer. The world and the environment are evolving and that means we must change our ways as human beings as well.

If you want change, it has to be generational.

Societal transformation isn't going to happen in one month, one year, or even one lifetime. But we see it happen person by person in front of us, and we don't have to worry about the future if we're taking care of the present. In some sense, that's the best insurance policy we can have.

Change occurs slowly. Very often a legal change might take place but the cultural shift required to really accept its spirit lingers in the wings for decades.

But a law, however venerable be the sanction, cannot suddenly transform the temper of the times . . .

It's all that the young can do for the old, to shock them and keep them up to date.

Changing the world doesn't happen all at once. It isn't a big bang. It's an evolution, the sum of a billion tiny sparks. And some of those sparks will have to come from you.

It's important to begin to even consider whether countries can become something that looks very different because people tend to take their countries for granted.

Once social change begins, it cannot be reversed.

When I look at certain aspects of popular culture - not everything because I like a lot of things - sometimes my heart breaks a little bit, just a little bit. I begin to ponder what happened to this generation, I don't know.

The business of finding a nation's soul is a long and slow one at the best and a great many prophets must be slain in the course of it. Perhaps when we have slain enough prophets future generations will begin to build their tombs.

Every advance in civilization has been denounced as unnatural while it was recent

Artists... disappeared long ago as social forces. So did the church.

The heterodoxy of one generation is the orthodoxy of the next.

Every revolution begins as consciousness because some group of people has to imagine change. You have to have the idea of change or at least have a hope before you can proceed. And that stage goes very quickly because a contagion of consciousness is within your control. But when you get to the stage of institutional change, it becomes a much slower process.

We are accustomed to say, that the mass of men are unprepared; but improvement is slow, because the few are not materially wiser or better than the many.

If my goal is to change Colombia, which it is because I really think Columbia has to change in many, many ways - I think it has to be a very profound, nearly spiritual maturing process in the Colombian society because I think you have to first be aware of what's happening and it's not easy because many people don't want to see what's happening.

The footsteps of a pioneer become ultimately the highway of a nation.

All times are changing times, but ours is one of massive, rapid moral and mental transformation. Archetypes turn into millstones, large simplicities get complicated, chaos becomes elegant, and what everybody knows is true turns out to be what some people used to think.

Times change. The vices of your age are stylish today.