If you and your child were going to be killed tomorrow, would you not give him to eat today?
PRIMO LEVIPerhaps one cannot, what is more one must not, understand what happened, because to understand [the Holocaust] is almost to justify.
More Primo Levi Quotes
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The butterfly’s attractiveness derives not only from colors and symmetry: deeper motives contribute to it.
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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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It happened, therefore it can happen again: this is the core of what we have to say. It can happen, and it can happen everywhere.
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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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Monsters exist, but they are too few in numbers to be truly dangerous.
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The problem to be solved, the mystery to be clarified. It is never a matter of civil war; even though of different opinions, or of different political leanings, scientists dispute each other, they compete.
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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.
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Rejection of human solidarity, obtuse and cynical indifference to the suffering of others, abdication of the intellect and of moral sense to the principle of authority, and above all, at the root of everything, a sweeping tide of cowardice, a colossal cowardice which masks itself as warring virtue, love of country and faith in an idea.
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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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There is Auschwitz, and so there cannot be God.
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For he who loses all often easily loses himself.
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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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This is the most immediate fruit of exile, of uprooting: the prevalence of the unreal over the real.
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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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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