Elie Wiesel's Most Powerful Quotes

BY KATIE REILLY , TIME MAGAZINE

JULY 2, 2016 5:39 PM EDT

Elie Wiesel, a Nobel Peace Prize winner and Holocaust survivor who wrote the
internationally acclaimed memoir Night, died Saturday at the age of 87.

He was an outspoken human rights activist whose words informed and inspired
millions around the world, as he advocated for social justice and implored people to
remember the Holocaust.

Below are some of his most memorable words of wisdom:

1. “Whoever listens to a witness, becomes a witness,” he said at the Legacy of

Holocaust Survivors conference at Yad Vashem’s Valley of the Communities in
April 2002.
2. “We must always take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim.
Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented. Sometimes we must
interfere. When human lives are endangered, when human dignity is in
jeopardy, national borders and sensitivities become irrelevant. Wherever men
or women are persecuted because of their race, religion, or political views, that
place must—at that moment—become the center of the universe,” he said in
his Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech on Dec. 10, 1986.
3. “Action is the only remedy to indifference: the most insidious danger of
all,” he said in the same speech.
4. “For in the end, it is all about memory, its sources and its magnitude, and, of
course, its consequences,” he wrote in Night, his internationally acclaimed
memoir, published in 1960.
5. “For the survivor who chooses to testify, it is clear: his duty is to bear witness
for the dead and for the living. He has no right to deprive future generations of
 a past that belongs to our collective memory. To forget would be not only
dangerous but offensive; to forget the dead would be akin to killing them a
second time,” he also wrote in the memoir.
6. “[Albert] Camus said, ‘Where there is no hope, one must invent hope.’ It is
only pessimistic if you stop with the first half of the sentence and just say,
There is no hope. Like Camus, even when it seems hopeless, I invent reasons
to hope,” he said in an interview with TIME in 2006.

Instructions:

1. Star the quote that stood out to you the most and explain why below:
I nd Alfred Camus’ quote that Wiesel used to be standing out to me. It is important to me
because it partially shows the philosophy of absurdism, as well as the importance of
staying hopeful through di cult times. The lack of hope is very a ecting, and we can even
see it in modern day society. Many people move through their day-to-day after having
their dreams crushed simply like a robot, and they do not seek to restore themselves or
their hope, even in small things.
2. How does Winston take action in this section?
Winston takes action mentally in this section, with him thinking many rebellious thoughts.
He also writes down rebellious ideas and counter-government theories on his journal,
where he usually vents.

3. What is the important of the past and “collective memory”?

The past is important to remember so that we can commemorate the sacri ces of those
that came before, and so that we as humans can know what not to do in the future, to
result in less su ering.