Anne Frank Quotes (1929-1945)

“I simply can't build my hopes on a foundation of confusion, misery and death … I think. peace and tranquillity will return again.”

“In spite of everything I still believe that people are really good at heart. I simply can't build up my hopes on a foundation consisting of confusion, misery and death.”

“Everyone has inside of him a piece of good news. The good news is that you don't know how great you can be! How much you can love! What you can accomplish! And what your potential is!”

“Criticism of the policies of Israeli governments is not necessarily antisemitic. For instance, anyone is free to reject or criticise the political decisions of Israeli governments concerning the Palestinian territories – this is not uncommon in Israel itself. However, denying the State of Israel’s right to exist does constitute antisemitism.”

“[I]n spite of everything, I still believe that people are really good at heart. I simply can’t build up my hopes on a foundation consisting of confusion, misery, and death. I see the world gradually being turned into a wilderness, I hear the ever approaching thunder, which will destroy us too, I can feel the sufferings of millions and yet, if I look up into the heavens, I think that it will all come right, that this cruelty too will end, and that peace and tranquility will return again.”

“Anne Frank is each of us, and beyond what each of us is and will be. Her diary does not contain photographs of trains pulling into the last smoke-filled station. She dared to speak of springtime's light, and the body of a girl becoming a woman. I like Anne Frank because she was no more nor less than ourselves, a schoolgirl. She spoke of awakening to excitement, of the rain in Europe. Even so, there was something more in Anne, beyond that first innocence, as if she were submerged in transparencies.”

“(Have you related to any other stories of children or adolescents, of young people growing up?) There was The Catcher in the Rye, the Diary of Ann Frank... Yes, actually I have, definitely.”

“Anne Frank's legacy is still very much alive and it can address us fully, especially at a time when the map of the world is changing and when dark passions are awakening within people.”

“Here's how much people love dead Jews: Anne Frank's diary, first published in Dutch in 1947 via her surviving father, Otto Frank, has been translated into seventy languages and has sold more than 30 million copies worldwide, and the Anne Frank House now hosts well over a million visitors each year”

“Of the multitude who throughout history have spoken for human dignity in times of great suffering and loss, no voice is more compelling than that of Anne Frank.”

“One single Anne Frank moves us more than the countless others who suffered just as she did, but whose faces have remained in the shadows. Perhaps it is better that way: If we were capable of taking in the suffering of all those people, we would not be able to live.”

“Gail Horalek, the mother of a 7th-grade child in Michigan in the US, has made international headlines by complaining that the unabridged version of Anne Frank's diary is pornographic and should not be taught at her daughter's school. At issue for Horalek is a section detailing Anne's exploration of her own genitalia, material originally omitted by Anne's father, Otto Frank, when he prepared the manuscript for publication in the late 40s I had to look up what age kids are in the 7th grade. They're 12 to 13! They're only about a year younger than Anne was when she wrote of her vagina: "There are little folds of skin all over the place, you can hardly find it. The little hole underneath is so terribly small that I simply can't imagine how a man can get in there, let alone how a whole baby can get out!" There cannot be a 13-year-old girl on the planet who hasn't had a root around and arrived at this exact stage of bafflement.”