who said the opposite of love is indifference

The line “the opposite of love is not hate, it’s indifference” is most famously associated with Nobel Peace Prize–winning writer and Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel.

However, a closely similar phrasing appears earlier in the work of Austrian psychologist Wilhelm Stekel, who wrote: “The opposite of love is not hate, but indifference; the opposite of feeling can only be the absence of feeling.”

So in quick form:

• Today, most people quote it as an Elie Wiesel line.

• Historically, a very similar formulation was in print with Wilhelm Stekel years before Wiesel, so some credit him as the earlier source.

If you’re writing or posting online, it’s safest to attribute the popular version to Elie Wiesel, while noting that scholars trace an earlier version to Wilhelm Stekel.📝

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