Primo Levi Quotes

Quotes about:

• Monsters exist, but they are too few in numbers to be truly dangerous. More dangerous are…the functionaries ready to believe and act without asking questions.

  Primo Levi

  Believe, Asking Questions, Numbers

  138 Copy quote

• 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.

  Primo Levi

  Events, Fundamentals, Unexpected

  136 Copy quote

• 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.

  Primo Levi

  Country, Roots, Air

  70 Copy quote

• I am constantly amazed by man's inhumanity to man.

  Primo Levi

  Men, Inhumanity To Man, Death Penalty

  71 Copy quote

• Each of us bears the imprint of a friend met along the way; In each the trace of each.

  Primo Levi

  Way, Bears, Mets

  Primo Levi, “To My Friends”

  82 Copy quote

• There is Auschwitz, and so there cannot be God.

  Primo Levi

  Atheist, Auschwitz

  "Primo Levi: The Matter of a Life by Berel Lang - review" by Tim Adams, www.theguardian.com. February 2, 2014.

  93 Copy quote

• We who survived the Camps are not true witnesses. We 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.

  Primo Levi

  Skills, Luck, Faces

  "The Age of Extremes: The Short Twentieth Century, 1914-1991". Book by Eric J. Hobsbawm, 1994.

  98 Copy quote

• Everybody is somebody's Jew.

  Primo Levi

  Today, Palestinian, Jew

  "A strike against silence" by Antony Lerman, www.theguardian.com. October 15, 2009.

  67 Copy quote

• 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.

  Primo Levi

  Skeletons, Civilization, Stories

  Primo Levi (1996). “Survival In Auschwitz”, p.41, Simon and Schuster

  63 Copy quote

• Those who deny Auschwitz would be ready to remake it.

  Primo Levi

  Would Be, Deny, Remakes

  Interview with Daniel Toaff, "Sorgenti di Vita", translated by Mirto Stone, March 25, 1983.

  55 Copy quote

• A country is considered the more civilised the more the wisdom and efficiency of its laws hinder a weak man from becoming too weak and a powerful one too powerful.

  Primo Levi

  Country, Powerful, Men

  "If This Is a Man". Book by Primo Levi, 1947.

  60 Copy quote

• Perfection belongs to narrated events, not to those we live.

  Primo Levi

  Perfection, Events

  Primo Levi (1995). “The Periodic Table”, Schocken

  53 Copy quote

• The aims of life are the best defense against death.

  Primo Levi

  Death, Defense, Aim Of Life

  Primo Levi (2017). “The Drowned and the Saved”, p.133, Simon and Schuster

  225 Copy quote

• 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.

  Primo Levi

  Children, Thinking, Race

  35 Copy quote

• 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.

  Primo Levi

  Country, Believe, Science

  1985 Other People's Trades,'News from the Sky' (translated by Raymond Rosenthal,1989).

  54 Copy quote

• Darwin was not afraid to look deeply into the void. His bold view can be seen as either noble and pessimistic or noble and admirable. 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

  Hero, Men, Views

  51 Copy quote

• He could hardly read or write but his heart spoke the language of the good

  Primo Levi

  Writing, Heart, Language

  9 Copy quote

• 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.

  Primo Levi

  Giving, Holocaust, Relief

  38 Copy quote

• My number is 174517; we have been baptized, we will carry the tattoo on our left arm until we die.

  Primo Levi

  Tattoo, Numbers, Holocaust

  Primo Levi (1996). “Survival In Auschwitz”, p.27, Simon and Schuster

  8 Copy quote

• If a writer is convinced that he is honest, then it is very difficult for him to be a bad writer.

  Primo Levi

  Honest, Difficult, Convinced

  25 Copy quote

• 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.

  Primo Levi

  Beautiful, Eye, Butterfly

  61 Copy quote

• The living are more demanding; the dead can wait.

  Primo Levi

  Waiting

  Primo Levi (1996). “Survival In Auschwitz”, p.172, Simon and Schuster

  4 Copy quote

• Our ignorance allowed us to live, as you are in the mountains, and your rope is frayed and about to break, but you don't know it and feel safe.

  Primo Levi

  Ignorance, Mountain, Rope

  Primo Levi (1995). “The Periodic Table”

  27 Copy quote

• I am not even alive enough to know how to kill myself

  Primo Levi

  Alive, Enough, Know How

  Primo Levi (1996). “Survival In Auschwitz”, p.144, Simon and Schuster

  10 Copy quote

• 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.

  Primo Levi

  Memories, Lying, Years

  "Remembering and Imagining the Holocaust: The Chain of Memory". Book by Christopher Bigsby, 2006.

  19 Copy quote

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