Each of us bears the imprint of a friend met along the way; In each the trace of each.
PRIMO LEVIEveryone dreamed past and future dreams, of slavery and redemption, of improbable paradises, of equally mythical and improbable enemies; cosmic enemies, perverse and subtle, who pervade everything like the air.
More Primo Levi Quotes
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To accuse another of having weak kidneys, lungs, or heart, is not a crime; on the contrary, saying he has a weak brain is a crime.
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Man is a centaur, a tangle of flesh and mind, divine inspiration and dust.
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Perfection belongs to narrated events, not to those we live.
PRIMO LEVI -
To destroy a man is difficult, almost as difficult as to create one: it has not been easy, nor quick, but you Germans have succeeded. Here we are, docile under your gaze; from our side you have nothing more to fear; no acts of violence, no words of defiance, not even a look of judgment.
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We would not think them so beautiful if they did not fly, or if they flew straight and briskly like bees, or if they stung, or above all if they did not enact the perturbing mystery of metamorphosis: the latter assumes in our eyes the value of a badly decoded message, a symbol, a sign.
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I am constantly amazed by man’s inhumanity to man.
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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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The sea’s only gifts are harsh blows and, occasionally, the chance to feel strong.
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There is Auschwitz, and so there cannot be God.
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Everybody is somebody’s Jew.
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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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Auschwitz is outside of us, but it is all around us, in the air. The plague has died away, but the infection still lingers and it would be foolish to deny it.
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Those who deny Auschwitz would be ready to remake it.
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The new kings of the world will live tranquilly for a long time, confining themselves to devouring each other and being parasites among each other on a cottage industry scale.
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Did chemistry theorems exist? No: therefore you had to go further, not be satisfied with the quia, go back to the origins, to mathematics and physics.
PRIMO LEVI