Indifference to me, is the epitome of all evil.

Indifference, to me, is the epitome of evil.

Violence is not the answer. Terrorism is the most dangerous of answers.

If there is a crisis in the world, the U.N. should send a task force immediately, within 24 hours,

Once you bring life into the world, you must protect it. We must protect it by changing the world.

At this moment, Israel fights for her existence,

We are here to let the Jewish state and its brave, beleaguered citizens and its valiant soldiers know that they are not alone.

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...

War is like night, she said. It covers everything.

Mankind must remember that peace is not God’s gift to his creatures; peace is our gift to each other.

I had a teacher that always told me, ‘Don’t promise, because if you promise, you must keep it.’ I promised, so here I am.

We must choose between the violence of adults and the smiles of children, between the ugliness of hate and the will to oppose it. Between inflicting suffering and humiliation on our fellow man and offering...

Man, as long as he lives, is immortal. One minute before his death he shall be immortal. But one minute later, God wins.

I do not recall a Jewish home without a book on the table.

True enemies aren’t always the ones who hate each other.

That is my major preoccupation, memory, the kingdom of memory. I want to protect and enrich that kingdom, glorify that kingdom and serve it.

I have to wonder about people who compare Israelis to Nazis.

I have more faith in Hitler than in anyone else. He alone has kept his promises, all his promises, to the Jewish people.

Bread, soup – these were my whole life. I was a body. Perhaps less than that even: a starved stomach. The stomach alone was aware of the passage of time.

There are victories of the soul and spirit. Sometimes, even if you lose, you win.

Peace is not God’s gift to his creatures. It is our gift to each other.

We are all brothers and we are all suffering the same fate. The same smoke floats over all our heads. Help one another. It is the only way to survive. (pg. 39)

Better than one heart be broken a thousand times in the retelling, if it means that a thousand other hearts need not be broken at all.

I believe that all the survivors are mad. One time or another their madness will explode. You cannot absorb that much madness and not be influenced by it. That is why the children of survivors...

A mn ages hs enemy because he hates his own hate. He says to himself: I hate him not because he’s my enemy, not because he hates me, but because he arouses me to hate.

Our obligation is to give meaning to life and in doing so to overcome the passive, indifferent life

The Time of the Uprooted

I still believe in man in spite of man. I believe in language even though it has been wounded, deformed, and perverted by the enemies of mankind. And I continue to cling to words because...

We must always take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented.

Because of indifference, one dies before one actually dies.

In any case, he had bungled his life. Bad husband, bad father, bad lover: failure all along the line . . . All the springs were broken. No more light anywhere . . . Everything...

Humanity? Humanity is not concerned with us. Today anything is allowed. Anything is possible.

I swore never to be silent whenever and wherever human beings endure suffering and humiliation. We must always take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented.

In Jewish history there are no coincidences.

Never shall I forget those moments which murdered my God and my soul and turned my dreams to dust. Never shall I forget these things, even if I am condemned to live as long as...

Nobody is stronger, nobody is weaker than someone who came back. There is nothing you can do to such a person because whatever you could do is less than what has already been done to...

He had so examined his past that he could no longer look at it with enough detachment to tell what was true and what wasn’t,

Even in darkness it is possible to create light and encourage compassion. That it is possible to feel free inside a prison. That even in exile, friendship exists and can become an anchor. That one...

If life is not a celebration, why remember it ? If life — mine or that of my fellow man — is not an offering to the other, what are we doing on this earth?

Peace is our gift to each other.

I rarely speak about God. To God, yes. I protest against Him. I shout at Him. But to open a discourse about the qualities of God, about the problems that God imposes, theodicy, no. And...

Ultimately, the only power to which man should aspire is that which he exercises over himself.

Not to transmit an experience is to betray it.

What does mysticism really mean? It means the way to attain knowledge. It’s close to philosophy, except in philosophy you go horizontally while in mysticism you go vertically.

We were masters of nature, masters of the world. We had forgotten everything–death, fatigue, our natural needs. Stronger than cold or hunger, stronger than the shots and the desire to die, condemned and wandering, mere...

I have not lost faith in God. I have moments of anger and protest. Sometimes I’ve been closer to him for that reason.

When you see the abyss, and we have looked into it, then what? There isn’t much room at the edge — one person, another, not many. If you are there, others cannot be there. If...

Write only if you cannot live without writing. Write only what you alone can write.

We have to go into the despair and go beyond it, by working and doing for somebody else, by using it for something else.

No one is as capable of gratitude as one who has emerged from the kingdom of night.