The opposite of love is not hate, it's indifference.
Elie WieselRead
My faceless neighbor spoke up: “Don’t be deluded. Hitler has made it clear that he will annihilate all Jews before the clock strikes twelve.” I exploded: “What do you care what he said? Would you want us to consider him a prophet? His cold eyes stared at me. At last he said, wearily: “I have more faith in Hitler than in anyone else. He alone has kept his promises, all his promises, to the Jewish people.
Interpretation
What this quote means
The quote reflects a deep disillusionment with faith in humanity compared to the certainty of evil.
In this quote, Elie Wiesel illustrates a disturbing perspective on faith and trust during a time of great moral crisis. The speaker expresses a profound disappointment in humanity's capacity for good, contrasting it with an unsettling acknowledgment of Adolf Hitler's consistent fulfillment of his deadly promises. This bleak outlook signals a struggle between hope for better leadership and the grim reality of a malevolent ruler’s unyielding commitment to his destructive ideologies.
Themes
FaithEvilDisillusionmentHumanityTruth
In practice
Example use cases
In a speech discussing the importance of confronting injustice, I might quote Wiesel to illustrate the dangers of misplaced faith.
More from Elie Wiesel
All quotes →With every cell of my being and with every fiber of my memory I oppose the death penalty in all forms. I do not believe any civilized society should be at the service of death. I don't think it's human to become an agent of the angel of death.
Elie WieselRead
Certain things, certain events, seem inexplicable only for a time: up to the moment when the veil is torn aside.
Elie WieselRead
We're alone, but we are capable of communicating to one another both our loneliness and our desire to break through it. You say, 'I'm alone.' Someone answers, 'I'm alone too.' There's a shift in the scale of power. A bridge is thrown between the two abysses.
Elie WieselRead
No one is as capable of gratitude as one who has escaped the kingdom of night.
Elie WieselRead
My loyalty to my people, to our people, and to Israel comes first and prevents me from saying anything critical of Israel outside Israel… As a Jew I see my role as a melitz yosher, a defender of Israel: I defend even her mistakes… I must identify with whatever Israel does – even with her errors.
Elie WieselRead
Similar quotes
And then sometimes I think the people to feel saddest for are people who once knew what profoundness was, but who lost or became numb to the sensation of wonder – people who closed the doors that leads us into the secret world – or who had the doors closed for them by time and neglect and decisions made in times of weakness.
Douglas CouplandRead
In relation to God, we are like a thief who has burgled the house of a kindly householder and been allowed to keep some of the gold. From the point of view of the lawful owner this gold is a gift; Form the point of view of the burglar it is a theft. He must go and give it back. It is the same with our existence. We have stolen a little of God's being to make it ours. God has made us a gift of it. But we have stolen it. We must return it.
Simone WeilRead
The Future is, of all things, the thing least like eternity. It is the most temporal part of time--for the Past is frozen and no longer flows, and the Present is all lit up with eternal rays.
C. S. LewisRead
The concept that one ought to restrict one's political involvement to one's own state was deeply antithetical to those who were pursuing the accumulation of capital for its own sake.
Immanuel WallersteinRead
I think philosophers can do things akin to theoretical scientists, in that, having read about empirical data, they too can think of what hypotheses and theories might account for that data. So there's a continuity between philosophy and science in that way.
Robert NozickRead
Civilizations come and go; they conquer the earth and crumble into dust; but faith survives every desolation.
Will DurantRead