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.
PRIMO LEVII’m a libertine, but it’s not my specialty.
More Primo Levi Quotes
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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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We must be listened to: above and beyond our personal experience.
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There is Auschwitz, and so there cannot be God.
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Those who deny Auschwitz would be ready to remake it.
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Perhaps one cannot, what is more one must not, understand what happened, because to understand [the Holocaust] is almost to justify.
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One is tempted to turn away with a grimace and close one’s mind: this is a temptation one must resist.
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This is the most immediate fruit of exile, of uprooting: the prevalence of the unreal over the real.
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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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The living are more demanding; the dead can wait.
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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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A man who would mutilate himself is well damned, isn’t he?
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A scientist’s life, the author says, is indeed conflictual, formed by battles, defeats, and victories: but the adversary is always and only the unknown.
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Perfection belongs to narrated events, not to those we live.
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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.
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Anyone who has obeyed nature by transmitting a piece of gossip experiences the explosive relief that accompanies the satisfying of a primary need.
PRIMO LEVI