There are few men who know how to go to their deaths with dignity, and often they are not those whom one would expect.
PRIMO LEVIThe sea’s only gifts are harsh blows and, occasionally, the chance to feel strong.
More Primo Levi Quotes
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We have collectively witnessed a fundamental unexpected event, fundamental precisely because unexpected, not foreseen by anyone.
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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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Those who deny Auschwitz would be ready to remake it.
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There is Auschwitz, and so there cannot be God.
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We must be listened to: above and beyond our personal experience.
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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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In 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:.
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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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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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Perfection belongs to narrated events, not to those we live.
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I am not even alive enough to know how to kill myself
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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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The aims of life are the best defense against death.
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We who survived the Camps are not true witnesses.
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Everyone dreamed past and future dreams, of slavery and redemption, of improbable paradises, of equally mythical and improbable enemies; cosmic enemies, perverse and subtle, who pervade everything like the air.
PRIMO LEVI