The opposite of love is not hate, it's indifference.
Elie WieselRead
The Holocaust is a sacred subject. One should take off one's shoes when entering its domain, one should tremble each time one pronounces the word.
Interpretation
The Holocaust should be treated with deep reverence and respect, recognizing its profound impact.
Elie Wiesel emphasizes the sanctity of the Holocaust, urging people to approach discussions about it with utmost seriousness and reverence. By likening the act of discussing the Holocaust to entering a sacred space, he highlights the importance of remembrance and the weight of the memories associated with this tragic event in human history.
In practice
During a memorial event for Holocaust victims, one might quote Wiesel to emphasize the significance of remembrance.
The opposite of love is not hate, it's indifference.
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.
Certain things, certain events, seem inexplicable only for a time: up to the moment when the veil is torn aside.
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.
No one is as capable of gratitude as one who has escaped the kingdom of night.
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.
Can any one be so indifferent or idle as not to care to know by what means, and under what kind of polity, almost the whole inhabited world was conquered and_x000D_ brought under the dominion of the single city of Rome, and that too within a period of not quite fifty-three years?
I speak for the colored women of the South, because it is there that the millions of blacks in this country have watered the soil with blood and tears, and it is there too that the colored woman of America has made her characteristic history and there her destiny is evolving.
World War II made prosperous the United States, which had been undergoing a depression for a dozen years, and made very rich those magnates and their managers who govern the republic - with many a wink - in the people's name.
History is the queen of the humanities. It teaches wisdom and humility, and it tells us how things change through time.
Fellow-citizens, we cannot escape history. We of this Congress and this administration, will be remembered in spite of ourselves. No personal significance, or insignificance, can spare one or another of us. The fiery trial through which we pass, will light us down, in honor or dishonor, to the latest generation.
We dare not forget that we are the heirs of that first revolution.
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