I remember: it happened yesterday, or eternities ago. A young Jewish boy discovered the Kingdom of Night. I remember his bewilderment, I remember his anguish. It all happened so fast. The ghetto. The deportation. The sealed cattle car. The fiery altar upon which the history of our people and the future of mankind were meant to be sacrificed. I remember he asked his father: Can this be true? This is the twentieth century, not the Middle Ages. Who would allow such crimes to be committed? How could the world remain silent? And now the boy is turning to me. Tell me, he asks, what have you done with my future, what have you done with your life? And I tell him that I have tried. That I have tried to keep memory alive, that I have tried to fight those who would forget. Because if we forget, we are guilty, we are accomplices. And then I explain to him how na
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There is divine beauty in learning, just as there is human beauty in tolerance. To learn means to accept the postulate that life did not begin at my birth. Others have been here before me, and I walk in their footsteps. The books I have read were composed by generations of fathers and sons, mothers and daughters, teachers and disciples. I am the sum total of their experiences, their quests. And so are you.
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They were going to die. They knew it, and their last words were I love you. Even in great pain, their last words were of love... People who could have saved themselves and they ran back in to save others instead. If humanity is capable of that, how can I lose hope in humanity?
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Education in the key to preventing the cycle of violence and hatred that marred the 20th century from repeating itself in the 21st century.
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Memory feeds a culture, nourishes hope and makes a human, human.
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There are victories of the soul and spirit. Sometimes, even if you lose, you win.
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And, therefore, indifference is always the friend of the enemy, for it benefits the aggressor -- never its victim, whose pain is magnified when he or she feels forgotten.
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Man, as long as he lives, is immortal. One minute before his death he shall be immortal. But one minute later, God wins.
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The opposite of love is not hate, it's indifference. The opposite of art is not ugliness, it's indifference. The opposite of faith is not heresy, it's indifference. And the opposite of life is not death, it's indifference.
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Indifference, then, is not only a sin, it is a punishment.
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I have no doubt that faith is only pure when it does not negate the faith of another. I have no doubt that evil can be fought and that indifference is no option. I have no doubt that fanaticism is dangerous. And of all the books in the world on life, I have no doubt that the life of one person weighs more than them all.
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Take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented.
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There is a difference between a book of two hundred pages from the very beginning, and a book of two hundred pages which is the result of an original eight hundred pages. The six hundred are there. Only you don't see them.
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Ultimately, the only power to which man should aspire is that which he exercises over himself.
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Only one enemy is worse than despair: indifference. In every area of human creativity, indifference is the enemy; indifference of evil is worse than evil, because it is also sterile.
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I don't believe in accidents. There are only encounters in history. There are no accidents.
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Man can live far from God -- not outside God. God is wherever we are. Even in suffering? Even in suffering.
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Mankind must remember that peace is not God's gift to his creatures; peace is our gift to each other.
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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.
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God made man because He loves stories.
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Once you bring life into the world, you must protect it. We must protect it by changing the world.
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