The opposite of love is not hate, it's indifference.
Once you bring life into the world, you must protect it. We must protect it by changing the world.
Interpretation
What this quote means
This quote emphasizes the responsibility that comes with bringing new life into the world, urging us to protect and improve the world for future generations.
Elie Wiesel's quote highlights the profound duty parents and caregivers have towards the life they bring into the world. It suggests that the act of bringing a child into existence is intertwined with the responsibility of safeguarding that life, not just through personal protection but also by advocating for a better world. This involves engaging in efforts to create societal changes that foster safety, opportunity, and justice for all beings.
Themes
In practice
Example use cases
During a speech at a parenting conference, one might use this quote to inspire attendees on the importance of activism.
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.
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.
Similar quotes
When I go back to the core of my childhood, my cousin Lucy seems always to be in the peripheral vision of my memories. She is off to one side, always off to one side, with a book, with a scheme or a project or an enterprise.
I am most anxious to give my own children enough love and understanding so that they won't grow up with an aching void in them--like you and I and Harold and Martha. That can never be filled, and one goes around all one's life trying, trying to make up for what one didn't get that was one's birthright, asking the wrong people for it.
We grew up probably having as hard a life as anybody. A lot of times, we didn't have any food on the table. At Christmas, everybody else would always get something nice, but we'd get one T-shirt or one shirt... So I want to take care of Mom and Dad... and I'm having a damn good time doing it.
Parents remain our touchstones, fellow travelers, even after death. They are both missing and present.
Not only would I say that the family is important for the evangelization of the new world. The family is important, and it is necessary for the survival of humanity. Without the family, the cultural survival of the human race would be at risk. The family, whether we like it or not, is the foundation.
When my children wake up in the morning they know they will eat breakfast, get hugs from their parents, go to a good, safe school. Plates are full and store windows are glittering. But at the same time the great majority of the world's children and women stand - no - shiver on the precipice