One is tempted to turn away with a grimace and close one’s mind: this is a temptation one must resist.
PRIMO LEVIThe origins of chemistry were ignoble, or at least equivocal: the dens of the alchemists, their abominable hodgepodge of ideas and language, their confessed interest in gold, their Levantine swindles typical of charlatans and magicians; instead.
More Primo Levi Quotes
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We must be listened to: above and beyond our personal experience.
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What a very few are acquiring in knowledge of the physical world will perhaps cause this period not to be judged as a pure return of barbarism.
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An enemy who sees the error of his ways ceases to be an enemy.
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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.
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Is anything sadder than a trainThat leaves when it’s supposed to,That has only one voice,Only one route?There’s nothing sadder.Except perhaps a cart horse,Shut between two shaftsAnd unable even to look sideways.
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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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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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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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The obstacles preventing the realization of both these extreme states are of the same nature: they derive from our human condition which is opposed to everything infinite.
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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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There is Auschwitz, and so there cannot be God.
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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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The living are more demanding; the dead can wait.
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After the planet becomes theirs, many millions of years will have to pass before a beetle particularly loved by God, at the end of its calculations will find written on a sheet of paper in letters of fire that energy is equal to the mass multiplied by the square of the velocity of light.
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Man is a centaur, a tangle of flesh and mind, divine inspiration and dust.
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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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The sea’s only gifts are harsh blows and, occasionally, the chance to feel strong.
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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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At the origin of physics lay the strenuous clarity of the West-Archimedes and Euclid.
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Our ignorance allowed us to live, as you are in the mountains, and your rope is frayed and about to break, but you don’t know it and feel safe.
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If you and your child were going to be killed tomorrow, would you not give him to eat today?
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If it is true that there is no greater sorrow than to remember a happy time in a state of misery, it is just as true that calling up a moment of anguish in a tranquil mood, seated quietly at one’s desk, is a source of profound satisfaction.
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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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A man who would mutilate himself is well damned, isn’t he?
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It is the duty of righteous men to make war on all undeserved privilege, but one must not forget that this is a war without end.
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It is this refrain that we hear repeated by everyone: you are not at home, this is not a sanatorium, the only exit is by way of the Chimney. (What did it mean? Soon we were all to learn what it meant.)
PRIMO LEVI