I am none of these; I’m a normal man with a good memory who fell into a maelstrom and got out of it more by luck than by virtue, and who from that time on has preserved a certain curiosity about maelstroms large and small, metaphorical and actual.
PRIMO LEVIThe 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.
More Primo Levi Quotes
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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.
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Nothing can be said: nothing sure, nothing probable, nothing honest. Better to err through omission than through commission: better to refrain from steering the fate of others, since it is already so difficult to navigate one’s own.
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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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The aims of life are the best defense against death.
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The butterfly’s attractiveness derives not only from colors and symmetry: deeper motives contribute to it.
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There is Auschwitz, and so there cannot be God.
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The sea’s only gifts are harsh blows and, occasionally, the chance to feel strong.
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One is tempted to turn away with a grimace and close one’s mind: this is a temptation one must resist.
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Today I think that if for no other reason than that an Auschwitz existed, no one in our age should speak of Providence.
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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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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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A man who would mutilate himself is well damned, isn’t he?
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We must be listened to: above and beyond our personal experience.
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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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My number is 174517; we have been baptized, we will carry the tattoo on our left arm until we die.
PRIMO LEVI