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:.
PRIMO LEVIFor me chemistry represented an indefinite cloud of future potentialities which enveloped my life to come in black volutes torn by fiery flashes, like those which had hidden Mount Sinai. Like Moses, from that cloud I expected my law.
More Primo Levi Quotes
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More dangerous are…the functionaries ready to believe and act without asking questions.
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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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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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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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If a writer is convinced that he is honest, then it is very difficult for him to be a bad writer.
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The future of humanity is uncertain, even in the most prosperous countries, and the quality of life deteriorates; and yet I believe that what is being discovered about the infinitely large and infinitely small is sufficient to absolve this end of the century and millennium.
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A man who would mutilate himself is well damned, isn’t he?
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Darwin was not afraid to look deeply into the void. His bold view can be seen as either noble and pessimistic or noble and admirable.
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Everybody is somebody’s Jew.
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The living are more demanding; the dead can wait.
PRIMO LEVI -
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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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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Each of us bears the imprint of a friend met along the way; In each the trace of each.
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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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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.
PRIMO LEVI






