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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 him the solidarity and hope he deserves.
Elie Wiesel
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Interpretation

What this quote means

The quote emphasizes the moral choices we face between negativity and compassion.

Elie Wiesel's quote highlights the essential human choice between perpetuating violence and hatred or embracing compassion and hope. It calls for a conscious decision to choose solidarity with those who suffer, particularly children, advocating for a world where kindness prevails over conflict.

Themes

ViolenceCompassionHopeChildrenHateSolidarity

In practice

Example use cases

This quote can be used in a speech advocating for children's rights and social justice initiatives.

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The opposite of love is not hate, it's indifference.
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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.
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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.
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No one is as capable of gratitude as one who has escaped the kingdom of night.
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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.
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Quote by Elie Wiesel | QuoteProject