Primo Levi Quotes

This cell belongs to a brain, and it is my brain, the brain of me who is writing; and the cell in question, and within it the atom in question, is in charge of my writing, in a gigantic minuscule game which nobody has yet described. It is that which at this instant, issuing out of a labyrinthine tangle of yeses and nos, makes my hand run along a certain path on the paper, mark it with these volutes that are signs: a double snap, up and down, between two levels of energy, guides this hand of mine to impress on the paper this dot, here, this one.

I do not know what I will think tomorrow and later; today I feel no distinct emotion.

Those who deny Auschwitz would be ready to remake it.

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

The Gedalists were nearly run down by a Dodge truck on which two grand pianos had been loaded: two uniformed officers were playing, in unison, with gravity and commitment, the 1812 Overture of Tchaikowsky, while the driver wove among the wagons with brusque swerves, pressing the siren at full volume, heedless of the pedestrians in his way.

But formulas are holy as prayers, decree-laws, and dead languages, and not an iota in them can be changed. And so my ammonium chloride, the twin of a happy love and a liberating book, by now completely useless and a bit harmful, is religiously ground into the chromate anti-rust paint on the short of that lake, and nobody knows why anymore.

По онова време бях много млад и все още си въобразявах, че е възможно да разубедиш началника си за каквото и да било, така че изложих два-три довода против, но веднага видях, че под техните удари Командора се втвърдява като медна плоча под чук.

Beware of analogies: for millenia they corrupted medicine, and it may be their fault that today's pedagogical systems are so numerous, and after three thousand years of argument we still don't know which is best.

For good or evil, we are a single people: the more we become conscious of this, the less difficult and long will be humanity’s progress toward justice and peace.

"She had asked the older women: "What is that fire?" And they had replied: "It is we who are burning.

We are slaves, deprived of every right, exposed to every insult, condemned to certain death, but we still posses one power, and we must defend it with all our strength for it is the last - the power to refuse our consent.

Tutti scoprono, più o meno presto nella loro vita, che la felicità perfetta non è realizzabile, ma pochi si soffermano invece sulla considerazione opposta: che tale è anche una infelicità perfetta. I momenti che si oppongono alla realizzazione di entrambi i due stati-limite sono della stessa natura: conseguono dalla nostra condizione umana, che è nemica di ogni infinito.
Vi si oppone la nostra sempre insufficiente conoscenza del futuro; e questo si chiama, in un caso, speranza, e nell'altro, incertezza del domani. Vi si oppone la sicurezza della morte, che impone un limite a ogni gioia, ma anche a ogni dolore. Vi si oppongono le inevitabili cure materiali, che, come inquinano ogni felicità duratura, cosi distolgono assiduamente la nostra attenzione dalla sventura che ci sovrasta, e ne rendono frammentaria, e perciò sostenibile, la consapevolezza.
Sono stati proprio i disagi, le percosse, il freddo, la sete, che ci hanno tenuti a galla sul vuoto di una disperazione senza fondo, durante il viaggio e dopo.

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.

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.

It was the very discomfort, the blows, the cold, the thirst that kept us aloft in the void of bottomless despair, both during the journey and after. It was not the will to live, nor a conscious resignation; for few are the men capable of such resolution, and we were but a common sample of humanity.