For people of science, he is a hero. Denying man a privileged place in creation, .. he reaffirms with his own intellectual courage the dignity of man.
PRIMO LEVIThe living are more demanding; the dead can wait.
More Primo Levi Quotes
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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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I’m a libertine, but it’s not my specialty.
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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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I am constantly amazed by man’s inhumanity to man.
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He could hardly read or write but his heart spoke the language of the good
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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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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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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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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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Fascism does not want them, forbids them, and that’s why you’re not a Fascist; it wants everybody to be the same, and you are not. But immaculate virtue does not exist either, or if it exists it is detestable.
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The principle of order in me, around me, and in the world… I would watch the buds swell in spring, the mica glint in the granite, my own hands, and I would say to myself: “I will understand this, too, I will understand everything.
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The living are more demanding; the dead can wait.
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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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The butterfly’s attractiveness derives not only from colors and symmetry: deeper motives contribute to it.
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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.
PRIMO LEVI






