Important Anne Frank Quotes

Ever since I was a little girl and could barely talk, the word 'why' has lived and grown along with me. It's a well-known fact that children ask questions about anything and everything, since almost everything is new to them. That is especially true of me, and not just as a child. Even when I was older, I couldn't stop asking questions. I have to admit that it can be annoying sometimes, but I comfort myself with the thought that "You won't know until you ask," though by now I've asked so much that they ought to have made me a professor. When I got older, I noticed that not all questions can be asked and that many whys can never be answered. As a result, I tried to work things out for myself by mulling over my own questions. And I came to the important discovery that questions which you either can't or shouldn't ask in public, or questions which you can't put into words, can easily be solved in your own head. So the word 'why' not only taught me to ask, but also to think. And thinking has never hurt anyone. On the contrary, it does us all a world of good.

When I got older, I noticed that not all questions can be asked and that many whys can never be answered. As a result, I tried to work things out for myself by mulling over my own questions. And I came to the important discovery that questions which you either can't or shouldn't ask in public, or questions which you can't put into words, can easily be solved in your own head. So the word “why” not only taught me to ask, but also to think. And thinking has never hurt anyone. On the contrary, it does us all a world of good.

When I write, I feel relief, my pain disappears, the courage returns. But I wonder: will I ever write anything of importance? Will I become a journalist or writer? I hope so, I hope with all my heart! By writing I can clarify everything, my thoughts, my ideals, my fantasies.

Margot and I started packing our most important belongings into a satchel. The first thing I stuck in was this diary, and then curlers, handkerchiefs, schoolbooks, a comb and some old letters. Preoccupied by the thought of going into hiding, I stuck the craziest things in the satchel, but I’m not sorry. Memories mean more to me than dresses.

Rauter, some German bigwig, recently gave a speech. “All Jews must be out of the German-occupied territories before July 1. The province of Utrecht will be cleansed of Jews [as if they were cockroaches] between April 1 and May 1, and the provinces of North and South Holland between May 1 and June 1.” These poor people are being shipped off to filthy slaughterhouses like a herd of sick and neglected cattle. But I’ll say no more on the subject. My own thoughts give me nightmares! One good piece of news is that the Labor Exchange was set on fire in an act of sabotage. A few days later the County Clerk’s Office also went up in flames. Men posing as German police bound and gagged the guards and managed to destroy some important documents.

When Benjamin Bloom studied his 120 world-class concert pianists, sculptors, swimmers, tennis players, mathematicians, and research neurologists, he found something fascinating. For most of them, their first teachers were incredibly warm and accepting. Not that they set low standards. Not at all, but they created an atmosphere of trust, not judgment. It was, “I’m going to teach you,” not “I’m going to judge your talent.” As you look at what Collins and Esquith demanded of their students—all their students—it’s almost shocking. When Collins expanded her school to include young children, she required that every four-year-old who started in September be reading by Christmas. And they all were. The three- and four-year-olds used a vocabulary book titled Vocabulary for the High School Student. The seven-year-olds were reading The Wall Street Journal. For older children, a discussion of Plato’s Republic led to discussions of de Tocqueville’s Democracy in America, Orwell’s Animal Farm, Machiavelli, and the Chicago city council. Her reading list for the late-grade-school children included The Complete Plays of Anton Chekhov, Physics Through Experiment, and The Canterbury Tales. Oh, and always Shakespeare. Even the boys who picked their teeth with switchblades, she says, loved Shakespeare and always begged for more. Yet Collins maintained an extremely nurturing atmosphere. A very strict and disciplined one, but a loving one. Realizing that her students were coming from teachers who made a career of telling them what was wrong with them, she quickly made known her complete commitment to them as her students and as people. Esquith bemoans the lowering of standards. Recently, he tells us, his school celebrated reading scores that were twenty points below the national average. Why? Because they were a point or two higher than the year before. “Maybe it’s important to look for the good and be optimistic,” he says, “but delusion is not the answer. Those who celebrate failure will not be around to help today’s students celebrate their jobs flipping burgers.… Someone has to tell children if they are behind, and lay out a plan of attack to help them catch up.” All of his fifth graders master a reading list that includes Of Mice and Men, Native Son, Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee, The Joy Luck Club, The Diary of Anne Frank, To Kill a Mockingbird, and A Separate Peace. Every one of his sixth graders passes an algebra final that would reduce most eighth and ninth graders to tears. But again, all is achieved in an atmosphere of affection and deep personal commitment to every student. “Challenge and nurture” describes DeLay’s approach, too. One of her former students expresses it this way: “That is part of Miss DeLay’s genius—to put people in the frame of mind where they can do their best.… Very few teachers can actually get you to your ultimate potential. Miss DeLay has that gift. She challenges you at the same time that you feel you are being nurtured.

BUYING OFF THE ENVIRONMENTALISTS Where are the environmentalists? For fifty years, they’ve been carrying on about overpopulation; promoting family planning, birth control, abortion; and saying old people have a “duty to die and get out of the way”—in Colorado’s Democratic Governor Richard Lamm’s words. In 1971, Oregon governor and environmentalist Tom McCall told a CBS interviewer, “Come visit us again. . . . But for heaven’s sake, don’t come here to live.” How about another 30 million people coming here to live? The Sierra Club began sounding the alarm over the country’s expanding population in 1965—the very year Teddy Kennedy’s immigration act passed65—and in 1978, adopted a resolution expressly asking Congress to “conduct a thorough examination of U.S. immigration laws.” For a while, the Club talked about almost nothing else. “It is obvious,” the Club said two years later, “that the numbers of immigrants the United States accepts affects our population size and growth rate,” even more than “the number of children per family.”66 Over the next three decades, America took in tens of millions of legal immigrants and illegal aliens alike. But, suddenly, about ten years ago, the Sierra Club realized to its embarrassment that importing multiple millions of polluting, fire-setting, littering immigrants is actually fantastic for the environment! The advantages of overpopulation dawned on the Sierra Club right after it received a $100 million donation from hedge fund billionaire David Gelbaum with the express stipulation that—as he told the Los Angeles Times—“if they ever came out anti-immigration, they would never get a dollar from me.”67 It would be as if someone offered the Catholic Church $100 million to be pro-abortion. But the Sierra Club said: Sure! Did you bring the check? Obviously, there’s no longer any reason to listen to them on anything. They want us to get all excited about some widening of a road that’s going to disturb a sandfly, but the Sierra Club is totally copasetic with our national parks being turned into garbage dumps. Not only did the Sierra Club never again say another word against immigration, but, in 2004, it went the extra mile, denouncing three actual environmentalists running for the Club’s board, by claiming they were racists who opposed mass immigration. The three “white supremacists” were Dick Lamm, the three-time Democratic governor of Colorado; Frank Morris, former head of the Black Congressional Caucus Foundation; and Cornell professor David Pimentel, who created the first ecology course at the university in 1957 and had no particular interest in immigration.68 But they couldn’t be bought off, so they were called racists.

I’m sorry. About earlier.” I took another bite. Another sip. “You’ve nothing to be sorry for.” Yet I wondered what he meant. Three quick bites and my pie disappeared, my fork clattering into the empty pan. “It’s not any of my business what you do with your life.” “No, it isn’t.” I wrapped one hand around my warm cup and lifted it to my lips. “But do you mind if I ask what you intend to do with it?” Uncertainty colored his voice. Was he afraid to hear my answer or afraid he couldn’t restrain comment on it? I cleared my throat, uncomfortable now, even with the cover of night over our faces. Yet something in me needed to talk. And Frank might understand. He’d lost his love, even if part of his dream remained intact. “I’m not sure, exactly. I thought God had made it very plain. Now I don’t know.” Quiet filled the room. Then his chair creaked. I took a deep breath. “I’ve lived on a farm my whole life. But I’ve always wanted to live somewhere else. Somewhere big, with lots going on. My brother, Will, he got to see the world, to do something important. Like you did. I want the same opportunity.” More silence. “The world is changing so fast. I don’t want to miss it.” His boots shuffled against the floor. “I can see how you’d feel that way. But I guess it depends on how you define ‘important.’ ” I shrugged. “Same as everyone, I guess. Something big. Something lasting.” His shadow leaned against the Wilson cabinet now. “I think tending my farm and raising my children are the most worthwhile things I can do. So did Clara. That’s why we agreed I should go to France. To make the world a safer place for them.” My insides jiggled. Perhaps a late-night snack hadn’t been such a good idea. I pushed back my chair. “I’d better get some sleep. The children will be up early.” “I’ll be praying for you, Rebekah.” His voice rumbled from nearby. I could feel the heat from his body, smell the scent of fresh hay on his clothes. He took the dishes from my hand. “I’ll clean up.” I nodded, even though I doubted he could see my response.

Anne Frank was only one of the Nazi’s victims. But her fate helps us grasp the immense loss the world suffered because of the Holocaust. Anne has touched the hearts and minds of millions; she has enriched all of our lives. Let us hope she has also enlarged our horizons. It is important for all of us to realize how much Anne and the other victims, each in his or her own way, would have contributed to our society had they been allowed to live. To my great and abiding sorrow, I was not able to save Anne’s life. But I was able to help her live two years longer. In those two years she wrote the diary that gives hope to people all over the world and calls for understanding and tolerance. It confirms my conviction that any attempt at action is better than inaction. An attempt can go wrong, but inaction inevitably results in failure. I was able to save Anne’s diary and thus make her greatest wish come true. “I want to be useful or give pleasure to the people around me yet who don’t really know me,” she wrote in her diary on March 25, 1944, about one year before her death. “I want to go on living, even after my death!” And on May 11, she noted: “You’ve known for a long time that my greatest wish is to become a journalist someday and later on a famous writer.” Through her diary Anne really does live on. She stands for the triumph of the spirit over evil and death. A note by Miep Gies, Amsterdam, January 1998