black
grey
blue
red
brown
white

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.

Primo Levi

Imagine now a man who is deprived of everyone he loves, and at the same time of his house, his habits, his clothes, in short, of everything he possesses: he will be a hollow man, reduced to suffering and needs, forgetful of dignity and restraint, for he who loses all often loses himself.
PRIMO LEVI

Cloth Deprive Everyone Everything Habit Imagine Love Man Same Short Time House
The work of bestial degradation, begun by the victorious Germans, had been carried to its conclusion by the Germans in defeat.
PRIMO LEVI

Bestial Carry Conclusion Country Defeat Degradation Victorious Work
They sensed that what had happened around them and in their presence, and in them, was irrevocable.
PRIMO LEVI

Around Happen Inevocable Presence Sense Them
A man who would mutilate himself is well damned, isn’t he?
PRIMO LEVI

Dammed Himself Man Mutitate Well
In history and in life one sometimes seems to glimpse a ferocious law which states: to he that has, will be given; from he that has not, will be taken away.
PRIMO LEVI

Ferocious Given Glimpse History Life Sometimes State
I have many times been praised for my lack of animosity towards the Germans. It’s not a philosophical virtue. It’s a habit of having my second reactions before the first.
PRIMO LEVI

Animosity Country Lack Many Praise Time Towards
Everybody is somebody’s Jew.
PRIMO LEVI

Everybody Jew Somebody
The 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.
PRIMO LEVI

Abominable Alchemist Chemistry Hodgepodge Idea Ignorable Instead Interest Language Least Magician Organ Swindles Wuiivocal
Each of us bears the imprint of a friend met along the way; In each the trace of each.
PRIMO LEVI

Along Bear Each Friend Imprint Met Trace Way
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 LEVI

Creation Deny Dignity Hero Intellectual Man People Place Proiledge Science Source
To be considered stupid and to be told so is more painful than being called gluttonous, mendacious, violent, lascivious, lazy, cowardly: every weakness, every vice, has found its defenders, its rhetoric, its ennoblement and exaltation, but stupidity hasn’t.
PRIMO LEVI

Call Consider Coward Defender Ennoblement Exatiation Lascivious Lazy Mendacious More Painful Stupidity Told Vice Violent Weakness
Monsters exist, but they are too few in numbers to be truly dangerous.
PRIMO LEVI

Dangerous Exist Few Monster Number Too Truly
The aims of life are the best defense against death.
PRIMO LEVI

Against Aim Best Death Defense Life
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.
PRIMO LEVI

Greater Sorrow Happy Misery Profound Remember Satisfactory State Time True
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

Assume Badly Beautiful Brisky Decide Fly Message Mystery Perturbing Sign Straight Stung Think Value
I am not even alive enough to know how to kill myself
PRIMO LEVI

Enough Kill Known Live Myself

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.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

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.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

More Primo Levi Quotes