Quotes about Belief

I was twelve. I believed profoundly. During the day I studied the Talmud, and at night I ran to the synagogue to weep over the destruction of the Temple.

From Jeff Greenfield: I once asked Elie Wiesel Are you an optimist or a pessimist? An optimist, he said. I have to be.

I speak from experience that even in darkness, it is possible to create light and encourage compassion. There it is: I still believe in man in spite of man.

He spoke only of what he had seen. But people not only refused to believe his tales, they refused to listen. Some even insinuated that he only wanted their pity, that he was imagining things. Others flatly said that he had gone mad.

One must not rely on the dead," he said. "One must rely on the living—and on God who gives life to the living.

One that most horrible day, even among all those other bad days, when the child witnessed the hanging (yes!) of another child who, he tells us, had the face of a sad angel, he heard someone behind him groan: For God's sake, where is God? And from within me, I heard a voice answer: Where He is? This is where - hanging here from this gallows.

My father, an enlightened spirit, believed in man. My grandfather, a fervent Hasid, believed in God. The one taught me to speak, the other to sing. Both loved stories. And when I tell mine, I hear their voices. Whispering from beyond the silenced storm, they are what links the survivor to their memory.

One of his [Rebbe Mikhal of Zlotchev] prayers: I have but one request; may I never use my reason against truth.

most of us turn to religion for our ethics because we don't know where else to find them.

Do not make fun of God, even if He is making fun of you.

And throughout those evenings a conviction grew in me that [he] would draw me with him into eternity, into that time where question and answer would become one.

For God's sake, where is God?" And from within me, I heard a voice answer: "Where He is? This is where — hanging here from this gallows.