I am constantly amazed by man’s inhumanity to man.
PRIMO LEVIWe 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.
More Primo Levi Quotes
-
-
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.
PRIMO LEVI -
After the planet becomes theirs, many millions of years will have to pass before a beetle particularly loved by God, at the end of its calculations will find written on a sheet of paper in letters of fire that energy is equal to the mass multiplied by the square of the velocity of light.
PRIMO LEVI -
The memories which lie within us are not carved in stone; not only do they tend to become erased as the years go by, but often they change, or even increase by incorporating extraneous features.
PRIMO LEVI -
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.
PRIMO LEVI -
For people of science, he is a hero. Denying man a privileged place in creation, .. he reaffirms with his own intellectual courage the dignity of man.
PRIMO LEVI -
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.
PRIMO LEVI -
Perhaps Kafka laughed when he told stories [. . . ] because one isn’t always equal to oneself.
PRIMO LEVI -
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.
PRIMO LEVI -
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.
PRIMO LEVI -
They sensed that what had happened around them and in their presence, and in them, was irrevocable.
PRIMO LEVI -
One is tempted to turn away with a grimace and close one’s mind: this is a temptation one must resist.
PRIMO LEVI -
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.
PRIMO LEVI -
I too entered the Lager as a nonbeliever, and as a nonbeliever I was liberated and have lived to this day.
PRIMO LEVI -
The new kings of the world will live tranquilly for a long time, confining themselves to devouring each other and being parasites among each other on a cottage industry scale.
PRIMO LEVI -
I’m a libertine, but it’s not my specialty.
PRIMO LEVI