One is tempted to turn away with a grimace and close one’s mind: this is a temptation one must resist.
PRIMO LEVIHuman memory is a marvelous but fallacious instrument.
More Primo Levi Quotes
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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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Perfection belongs to narrated events, not to those we live.
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We must be listened to: above and beyond our personal experience.
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At the origin of physics lay the strenuous clarity of the West-Archimedes and Euclid.
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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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This is the most immediate fruit of exile, of uprooting: the prevalence of the unreal over the real.
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They sensed that what had happened around them and in their presence, and in them, was irrevocable.
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A scientist’s life, the author says, is indeed conflictual, formed by battles, defeats, and victories: but the adversary is always and only the unknown.
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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.
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Human memory is a marvelous but fallacious instrument.
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An enemy who sees the error of his ways ceases to be an enemy.
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I’m a libertine, but it’s not my specialty.
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The sea’s only gifts are harsh blows and, occasionally, the chance to feel strong.
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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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I am constantly amazed by man’s inhumanity to man.
PRIMO LEVI