The aims of life are the best defense against death.
PRIMO LEVIWe 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.
More Primo Levi Quotes
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I beg the reader not to go in search of messages. It is a term that I detest because it distresses me greatly, for it forces on me clothes that are not mine, which in fact belong to a human type that I distrust; the prophet, the soothsayer, the seer.
PRIMO LEVI -
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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Those who deny Auschwitz would be ready to remake it.
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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.
PRIMO LEVI -
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.
PRIMO LEVI -
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.
PRIMO LEVI -
The principle of order in me, around me, and in the world… I would watch the buds swell in spring, the mica glint in the granite, my own hands, and I would say to myself: “I will understand this, too, I will understand everything.
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Perfection belongs to narrated events, not to those we live.
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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 -
If a writer is convinced that he is honest, then it is very difficult for him to be a bad writer.
PRIMO LEVI -
Anyone who has obeyed nature by transmitting a piece of gossip experiences the explosive relief that accompanies the satisfying of a primary need.
PRIMO LEVI -
A man who would mutilate himself is well damned, isn’t he?
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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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There is Auschwitz, and so there cannot be God.
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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