“Sớm hay muộn trong cuộc đời mình mỗi người sẽ khám phá ra rằng hạnh phúc hoàn hảo là không có thật, nhưng ít ai chịu ngẫm nghĩ về điều ngược lại: rằng một sự bất hạnh hoàn hảo cũng không hề có. Những vật cản để tiến tới hai thái cực này đều cùng một dạng: đều là vì đặc trưng của con người vốn luôn phản kháng lại những điều tuyệt đối, vô hạn. Những đặc trưng ấy bắt nguồn từ hiểu biết chẳng bao giờ đủ của chúng ta về tương lai mà ta vẫn gọi khi thì hi vọng, khi thì là sự bất trắc về ngày mai; là cái chết rồi sẽ đến của mỗi đời người, chết là chấm hết mọi niềm sung sướng cũng như mọi nỗi khổ đau; là những nỗi lo vật chất không tránh khỏi, có thể làm vẩn đục bất cứ hạnh phúc lâu dài nào cũng như có thể làm lãng đi những nỗi thống khổ, làm gián đoạn ý thức con người về nỗi bất hạnh của mình và khiến nó trở nên chịu đựng được.” HumansWarPsychologyToughPrimo Levi Book:Survival In Auschwitz Source: Survival In Auschwitz
“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. I am none of these; I'm a normal man with a good memory who fell into a maelstrom and got out of it more by luck than by virtue, and who from that time on has preserved a certain curiosity about maelstroms large and small, metaphorical and actual.” MenHumansFactsCertainForceTermMemoriesVirtueMinesTypeReaderNormalMessagesClothesLuckCuriosityProphetDistressDistrustGood MemoriesDetestMetaphoricalSeersMaelstrom Author:Primo Levi
“Human memory is a marvelous but fallacious instrument. 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.” YearsHumansLyingMemoriesStonesIncreaseInstrumentsFeaturesMarvelousOur MemoriesIncorporating Author: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. 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 Source: Survival In Auschwitz
“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 Author:Primo Levi
“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 Source: The Drowned and the Saved
“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
