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Primo Levi

Primo Levi Quotes

Chemist

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Famous Primo Levi Quotes

“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. One is tempted to turn away with a grimace and close one's mind: this is a temptation one must resist. In fact, the existence of the death squads had a meaning, a message: 'We, the master race, are your destroyers, but you are no better than we are; if we so wish, and we do so wish, we can destroy not only your bodies, but also your souls, just as we have destroyed ours.”

IfsThinkingMindChildrenSoulDoneFactsBodyTurnsWishEasyRaceExistenceMastersTomorrowMessagesOur ChildrenYour BodyYesterdayTemptationDestroyedYour SoulAbyssTemptedDestroyersSquadGrimace
Author:Primo Levi
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“This is the most immediate fruit of exile, of uprooting: the prevalence of the unreal over the real. Everyone dreamed past and future dreams, of slavery and redemption, of improbable paradises, of equally mythical and improbable enemies; cosmic enemies, perverse and subtle, who pervade everything like the air.”

RealDreamPastEnemyAirSlaveryFruitRedemptionParadiseSubtleCosmicExileUnrealImprobableFuture DreamsUprooting
Book:If this is a Man: Remembering Auschwitz
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“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. The obstacles preventing the realization of both these extreme states are of the same nature: they derive from our human condition which is opposed to everything infinite.”

HumansStatesJoyPerfectConditionsInfiniteObstaclesExtremesRealizationUnhappinessHuman ConditionSooner Or LaterPausesPreventingUnattainableAntithesisAuschwitzLater In LifePerfect Happiness
Book:Survival In Auschwitz
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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. 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.”

WantStillsStoriesLastsFormCertainForceBearsCivilizationSlaveRefuseWitnessInsultExposedConsentDeprivedSkeletonsScaffoldingCertain Death
Book:Survival In Auschwitz
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“We must be listened to: above and beyond our personal experience, we have collectively witnessed a fundamental unexpected event, fundamental precisely because unexpected, not foreseen by anyone. It happened, therefore it can happen again: this is the core of what we have to say. It can happen, and it can happen everywhere.”

HappensHappenedEventsFundamentalsCoreUnexpectedPersonal ExperiencesAuschwitzAbove And BeyondForeseenUnexpected Events
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“Auschwitz is outside of us, but it is all around us, in the air. The plague has died away, but the infection still lingers and it would be foolish to deny it. 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.”

HumansStillsIdeasCountryWould BeSufferingMoralPrinciplesVirtueAirAuthorityRootsDiedDenyIntellectFoolishIndifferenceRejectionMaskCynicalCowardiceTidesSolidarityPlagueSweepingInfectionColossalAuschwitzSuffering Of OthersAbdication
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“Imagine 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.”

MenNeedsSufferingHouseLosesJusticeImagineHabitDiversityClothesDignitySocial JusticeRestraintDeprivedHollowForgetfulHollow Man
Book:Survival In Auschwitz
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“The butterfly's attractiveness derives not only from colors and symmetry: deeper motives contribute to it. 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.”

IfsThinkingEyeBeautifulValuesMysteryColorMessagesAssumingDeeperSymbolsMotiveLatterButterflyBeesFlewMetamorphosisSymmetryAttractivenessLike A ButterflyMonarch ButterflyBeautiful Butterfly
Author:Primo Levi
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“They sensed that what had happened around them and in their presence, and in them, was irrevocable. 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.”

MenHumansEnoughPainForceEffortHappenedCostProveSpeciesConstructsDeath PenaltyHuman SpeciesIrrevocable
Book:The Drowned and the Saved
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“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. 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.”

WorldLoveYearsLongEndsLightScienceEnergyMillionsFireWrittenPlanetsIndustryKingsEqualPaperMassLong TimeLettersScalesSquaresSheetsCalculationsCottagesParasitesVelocityDevouringBeetles
Author:Primo Levi
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“Perhaps one cannot, what is more one must not, understand what happened, because to understand [the Holocaust] is almost to justify...no normal human being will ever be able to identify with Hitler, Himmler, Goebbels, Eichmann, and endless others. This dismays us, and at the same time gives us a sense of relief, because perhaps it is desirable that their words (and also, unfortunately, their deeds) cannot be comprehensible to us. They are non-human words and deeds, really counter-human.”

GivingHumansAbleHuman BeingsHappenedNormalDeedsEndlessReliefJustifyHolocaustDesirableDismayHimmlerGoebbels
Author:Primo Levi
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“To accuse another of having weak kidneys, lungs, or heart, is not a crime; on the contrary, saying he has a weak brain is a crime. 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.”

HeartFoundBrainCrimeStupidWeaknessWeakPainfulVicesStupidityContraryViolentLazyRhetoricLungsCowardlyDefendersKidneysExaltation
Author:Primo Levi
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“The future of humanity is uncertain, even in the most prosperous countries, and the quality of life deteriorates; and yet I believe that what is being discovered about the infinitely large and infinitely small is sufficient to absolve this end of the century and millennium. 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.”

WorldBelieveEndsCountryScienceHumanityI BelieveCausesQualityCenturyReturnPeriodsPureScientistSufficientJudgedUncertainProsperousQuality Of LifeBarbarismMillenniumFuture Of HumanityProsperous Country
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“For me chemistry represented an indefinite cloud of future potentialities which enveloped my life to come in black volutes torn by fiery flashes, like those which had hidden Mount Sinai. Like Moses, from that cloud I expected my law, 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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