The work of bestial degradation, begun by the victorious Germans, had been carried to its conclusion by the Germans in defeat.
PRIMO LEVIMonsters exist, but they are too few in numbers to be truly dangerous.
More Primo Levi Quotes
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I’m a libertine, but it’s not my specialty.
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Everybody is somebody’s Jew.
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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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A country is considered the more civilised the more the wisdom and efficiency of its laws hinder a weak man from becoming too weak and a powerful one too powerful.
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We are those who, through prevarication, skill or luck, never touched bottom. Those who have, and who have seen the face of the Gorgon, did not return, or returned wordless.
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Those who deny Auschwitz would be ready to remake it.
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At the origin of physics lay the strenuous clarity of the West-Archimedes and Euclid.
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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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Is anything sadder than a trainThat leaves when it’s supposed to,That has only one voice,Only one route?There’s nothing sadder.Except perhaps a cart horse,Shut between two shaftsAnd unable even to look sideways.
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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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It is this refrain that we hear repeated by everyone: you are not at home, this is not a sanatorium, the only exit is by way of the Chimney. (What did it mean? Soon we were all to learn what it meant.)
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We collected in a group in front of their door, and we experienced within ourselves a grief that was new for us, the ancient grief of the people that has no land, the grief without hope of the exodus which is renewed in every century.
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Darwin was not afraid to look deeply into the void. His bold view can be seen as either noble and pessimistic or noble and admirable.
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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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The sea’s only gifts are harsh blows and, occasionally, the chance to feel strong.
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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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Never again could it be cleansed; it would prove that man, the human species – we, in short – had the potential to construct an enormity of pain, and that pain is the only force created from nothing, without cost and without effort. It is enough not to see, not to listen, not to act.
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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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Perhaps Kafka laughed when he told stories [. . . ] because one isn’t always equal to oneself.
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We who survived the Camps are not true witnesses.
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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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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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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.
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The living are more demanding; the dead can wait.
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Monsters exist, but they are too few in numbers to be truly dangerous.
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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.
PRIMO LEVI