Elie Wiesel Quotes

If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor. If an elephant has its foot on the tail of a mouse and you say that you are neutral, the mouse will not appreciate your neutrality.

You are either on the side of the oppressed or on the side of the oppressor. You can't be neutral.

Take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim.

If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor.

I don't fear death; I fear remaining silent in the face of injustice. I am young and I want to live. But I say to those that would eliminate my voice: I am ready, wherever and whenever you might strike. You can cut down the flower, but nothing can stop the coming of the spring.

Never befriend the oppressed unless you are prepared to take on the oppressor.

I just don't believe that when people are being unjustly oppressed that they should let someone else set rules for them by which they can come out from under that oppression.

There may be times when we are powerless to prevent injustice, but there must never be a time when we fail to protest.

Oppression costs the oppressor too much if the oppressed stand up and protest.

As I grew older and got into the late teens and early 20s, I wanted to be a voice of the people. You know, getting locked up all the time and going through so much oppression and seeing it all around myself, I wanted to be a voice for it.

I know we have to have people of good conscience who stand up against oppression. I know we have to have people who understand that social justice belongs to us all. And that wakes me up every morning, and that makes me fight even harder.

There are men put on this earth to make laws designed to break the spirits of men. There are those put here to have their spirits broken by those put here to break them. Then there are those who are here to break the laws that break the men who break the spirits of other men. I am one of those men. - Harry West

Fear is the greatest form of oppression. The best way to rise up in protest is to live your life to its fullest!

The answer to injustice is not to silence the critic but to end the injustice.

I seek … the means to fight injustice. To turn fear against those who prey on the fearful.

I'm not going to sit around and be peace and love with somebody's boot on my neck.

If given a choice, I would have certainly selected to be what I am: one of the oppressed instead of one of the oppressors.

You can only watch injustice go on for so long until you're compelled to say something. To speak out against it.

The most important thing my grandfather taught me was that the most noble way to use your skills, intellect and energy is to defend the marginalized against those with the greatest power - and that the resulting animosity from those in power is a badge of honor.

Where I come from, if you see your family and friends' civil rights being taken away, you speak up and do everything you can to keep that from happening!

No other offense has ever been visited with such severe penalties as seeking to help the oppressed.

No one who passively endures an injustice against himself has the material in him to struggle for the rights of others. The one who patiently forbears becomes an accessory to the injustice done to others. He who resists the injustice which he himself meets can open up the way to a higher right for others.

I don't mind expressing my opinions and speaking out against injustice. I would be doing this even if I wasn't a writer. I grew up in a household that believed in social justice. I have always understood myself as having an obligation to stand on the side of the silenced, the oppressed, and the mistreated.

If I get incensed about some injustice, you can't make me - I will not just going to sit at my desk, at my computer all the time. I - I might want to march out on that.

Acceptance does not mean that you placidly acquiesce to the myriad injustices that are all around you. In fact, that you are incensed about these injustices is the very reason you need to try your level best to 'right' these 'wrongs.'