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.
PRIMO LEVIIn 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:.
More Primo Levi Quotes
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The work of bestial degradation, begun by the victorious Germans, had been carried to its conclusion by the Germans in defeat.
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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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Dawn came on us like a betrayer; it seemed as though the new sun rose as an ally of our enemies to assist in our destruction.
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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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My number is 174517; we have been baptized, we will carry the tattoo on our left arm until we die.
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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.
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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.
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We are slaves, deprived of every right, exposed to every insult, condemned to certain death, but we still possess one power, and we must defend it with all our strength for it is the last – the power to refuse our consent.
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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 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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They sensed that what had happened around them and in their presence, and in them, was irrevocable.
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Even in this place one can survive, and therefore one must want to survive, to tell the story, to bear witness; and that to survive we must force ourselves to save at least the skeleton, the scaffolding, the form of civilization.
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The living are more demanding; the dead can wait.
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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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I too entered the Lager as a nonbeliever, and as a nonbeliever I was liberated and have lived to this day.
PRIMO LEVI