Elie Wiesel Quotes

As I watch what is happening in the Middle East and the carnage that comes over our television screens every evening, I cannot help but ask myself, what is wrong with humankind that we cannot stop the killing?

That is the explanation of war, an outrage by humanity upon humanity in despite of humanity.

There have been only 268 of the past 3,421 years free of war.

The history of mankind is a history of war.

The history of our civilization has been one of intermittent war.

The truth, of course, is that the only necessary and sufficient condition for human beings to murder one another is the simple fact of being human.

Daily Herald this morning described burning Berlin on Saturday night as having looked “like an oven”. I wonder who really gets the satisfaction out of this terrible deterioration in human values.

The first accounts we have of mankind are but so many accounts of their butcheries. All empires have been cemented in blood; and, in those early periods, when the race of mankind began first to form themselves into parties and combinations, the first effect of the combination, and indeed the end for which it seems purposely formed, and best calculated, was their mutual destruction.

Mankind has conceived history as a series of battles; hitherto it has considered fighting as the main thing in life.

What is human warfare but just this; an effort to make the laws of God and nature take sides with one party.

What were the phenomena of the world today? If I knew little else, I knew the answer - war, and the preparations for new war.

They were glued down, every last one of them. A packet of souls. Was it fate?Misfortune?Is that what glued them down like that?Of course not.Let's not be stupid.It probably had more to do with the hurled bombs, thrown down by humans hiding in the clouds.

During my lifetime, America has been constantly waging war against much of humanity: impoverished people mostly, in stricken places.

War: that mad game the world so loves to play.

War: A wretched debasement of all the pretenses of civilization.

Powder is but a thing of yesterday, and war is as old as the human race--unhappily.

"Those who fought know a secret about themselves, and it is not very nice." ... They have experienced secretly and privately their natural human impulse toward sadism and brutality... Not merely did I learn to kill with a noose of piano wire put around somebody's neck from behind, but I learned to enjoy the prospect of killing that way.

And, you see, we are living in a world in which all wars are wars of defense.

War is the trade of Kings.

To all those who walk the path of human cooperation war must appear loathsome and inhuman.

War is a game that is played with a smile. If you can't smile, grin. If you can't grin, keep out of the way till you can.

When humans behave murderously, such as inflicting senseless slaughter of innocents in warfare, we like to blame it on some dark, 'animalistic' instinct.

History has been the history of warfare.

The more bombers, the less room for doves of peace.

War dehumanizes everyone.