More dangerous are…the functionaries ready to believe and act without asking questions.
PRIMO LEVIImagine now a man who is deprived of everyone he loves, and at the same time of his house, his habits, his clothes, in short, of everything he possesses: he will be a hollow man, reduced to suffering and needs, forgetful of dignity and restraint, for he who loses all often loses himself.
More Primo Levi Quotes
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At the origin of physics lay the strenuous clarity of the West-Archimedes and Euclid.
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An enemy who sees the error of his ways ceases to be an enemy.
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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 work of bestial degradation, begun by the victorious Germans, had been carried to its conclusion by the Germans in defeat.
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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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We would not think them so beautiful if they did not fly, or if they flew straight and briskly like bees, or if they stung, or above all if they did not enact the perturbing mystery of metamorphosis: the latter assumes in our eyes the value of a badly decoded message, a symbol, a sign.
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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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They sensed that what had happened around them and in their presence, and in them, was irrevocable.
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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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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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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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We have collectively witnessed a fundamental unexpected event, fundamental precisely because unexpected, not foreseen by anyone.
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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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Did chemistry theorems exist? No: therefore you had to go further, not be satisfied with the quia, go back to the origins, to mathematics and physics.
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But they do not battle: they are bound together by a strong alliance, by the common faith “in the validity of Maxwell’s or Boltzmann’s equations,” and by the common acceptance of Darwinism and the molecular structure of DNA.
PRIMO LEVI