I have many times been praised for my lack of animosity towards the Germans. It’s not a philosophical virtue. It’s a habit of having my second reactions before the first.
PRIMO LEVII am constantly amazed by man’s inhumanity to man.
More Primo Levi Quotes
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Even in this place one can survive, and therefore one must want to survive, to tell the story, to bear witness; and that to survive we must force ourselves to save at least the skeleton, the scaffolding, the form of civilization.
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There are few men who know how to go to their deaths with dignity, and often they are not those whom one would expect.
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I’m a libertine, but it’s not my specialty.
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In history and in life one sometimes seems to glimpse a ferocious law which states: to he that has, will be given; from he that has not, will be taken away.
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I am none of these; I’m a normal man with a good memory who fell into a maelstrom and got out of it more by luck than by virtue, and who from that time on has preserved a certain curiosity about maelstroms large and small, metaphorical and actual.
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Sooner or later in life everyone discovers that perfect happiness is unrealizable, but there are few who pause to consider the antithesis: that perfect unhappiness is equally unattainable.
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Dawn came on us like a betrayer; it seemed as though the new sun rose as an ally of our enemies to assist in our destruction.
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Each of us bears the imprint of a friend met along the way; In each the trace of each.
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Today I think that if for no other reason than that an Auschwitz existed, no one in our age should speak of Providence.
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This cell belongs to a brain, and it is my brain, the brain of me who is writing; and the cell in question, and within it the atom in question, is in charge of my writing, in a gigantic minuscule game which nobody has yet described.
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In order for the wheel to turn, for life to be lived, impurities are needed, and the impurities of impurities in the soil, too, as is known, if it is to be fertile. Dissension, diversity, the grain of salt and mustard are needed:.
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A man who would mutilate himself is well damned, isn’t he?
PRIMO LEVI -
Everybody is somebody’s Jew.
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Conquering matter is to understand it, and understanding matter is necessary to understanding the universe and ourselves: and that therefore Mendeleev’s Periodic Table, which just during those weeks we were learning to unravel, was poetry.
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He could hardly read or write but his heart spoke the language of the good
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The principle of order in me, around me, and in the world… I would watch the buds swell in spring, the mica glint in the granite, my own hands, and I would say to myself: “I will understand this, too, I will understand everything.
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But they do not battle: they are bound together by a strong alliance, by the common faith “in the validity of Maxwell’s or Boltzmann’s equations,” and by the common acceptance of Darwinism and the molecular structure of DNA.
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We are those who, through prevarication, skill or luck, never touched bottom. Those who have, and who have seen the face of the Gorgon, did not return, or returned wordless.
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For he who loses all often easily loses himself.
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I live in my house as I live inside my skin: I know more beautiful, more ample, more sturdy and more picturesque skins: but it would seem to me unnatural to exchange them for mine.
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We collected in a group in front of their door, and we experienced within ourselves a grief that was new for us, the ancient grief of the people that has no land, the grief without hope of the exodus which is renewed in every century.
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It is neither easy nor agreeable to dredge this abyss of viciousness, and yet I think it must be done, because what could be perpetrated yesterday could be attempted again tomorrow, could overwhelm us and our children.
PRIMO LEVI -
If you and your child were going to be killed tomorrow, would you not give him to eat today?
PRIMO LEVI -
Nothing can be said: nothing sure, nothing probable, nothing honest. Better to err through omission than through commission: better to refrain from steering the fate of others, since it is already so difficult to navigate one’s own.
PRIMO LEVI -
We have collectively witnessed a fundamental unexpected event, fundamental precisely because unexpected, not foreseen by anyone.
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To give a name to a thing is as gratifying as giving a name to an island, but it is also dangerous: the danger consists in one’s becoming convinced that all is taken care of and that once named, the phenomenon has also been explained.
PRIMO LEVI