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.
PRIMO LEVIThe sea’s only gifts are harsh blows and, occasionally, the chance to feel strong.
More Primo Levi Quotes
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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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Human memory is a marvelous but fallacious instrument.
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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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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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An enemy who sees the error of his ways ceases to be an enemy.
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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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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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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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What a very few are acquiring in knowledge of the physical world will perhaps cause this period not to be judged as a pure return of barbarism.
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The butterfly’s attractiveness derives not only from colors and symmetry: deeper motives contribute to it.
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At the origin of physics lay the strenuous clarity of the West-Archimedes and Euclid.
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Man is a centaur, a tangle of flesh and mind, divine inspiration and dust.
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Conquering matter is to understand it, and understanding matter is necessary to understanding the universe and ourselves: and that therefore Mendeleev’s Periodic Table, which just during those weeks we were learning to unravel, was poetry.
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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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More dangerous are…the functionaries ready to believe and act without asking questions.
PRIMO LEVI