Primo Levi Quotes - Page 2

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Auschwitz Country Dignity Enemies Giving Heart Holocaust

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.

Primo Levi

War, Men, Righteous Man

"The Drowned and the Saved". Book by Primo Levi, 1986.

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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.

Primo Levi

Stupid, Heart, Brain

55 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
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.

Primo Levi

Pain, Men, Effort

Primo Levi (2017). “The Drowned and the Saved”, p.72, Simon and Schuster

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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

Rose, Enemy, Sun

Primo Levi (1996). “Survival In Auschwitz”, p.16, Simon and Schuster

38 Copy quote
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.

Primo Levi

Spring, Science, Law

"The Periodic Table". Book by Primo Levi, 1975.

32 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

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A scientist's life, the author says, is indeed conflictual, formed by battles, defeats, and victories: but the adversary is always and only the unknown, the problem to be solved, the mystery to be clarified. It is never a matter of civil war; even though of different opinions, or of different political leanings, scientists dispute each other, they compete, but they do not battle: they are bound together by a strong alliance, by the common faith "in the validity of Maxwell's or Boltzmann's equations," and by the common acceptance of Darwinism and the molecular structure of DNA.

Primo Levi

Strong, War, Acceptance

29 Copy quote
If you and your child were going to be killed tomorrow, would you not give him to eat today?

Primo Levi

Children, Giving, Today

Primo Levi (1996). “Survival In Auschwitz”, p.15, Simon and Schuster

17 Copy quote
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.

Primo Levi

Memories, Men, Clothes

"The Mirror Maker" by Primo Levi, ("The Premise"), 1986.

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To destroy a man is difficult, almost as difficult as to create one: it has not been easy, nor quick, but you Germans have succeeded. Here we are, docile under your gaze; from our side you have nothing more to fear; no acts of violence, no words of defiance, not even a look of judgment.

Primo Levi

Men, Looks, Violence

Primo Levi (1996). “Survival In Auschwitz”, p.150, Simon and Schuster

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I live in my house as I live inside my skin: I know more beautiful, more ample, more sturdy and more picturesque skins: but it would seem to me unnatural to exchange them for mine.

Primo Levi

Beautiful, Home, House

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To give a name to a thing is as gratifying as giving a name to an island, but it is also dangerous: the danger consists in one's becoming convinced that all is taken care of and that once named, the phenomenon has also been explained.

Primo Levi

Taken, Islands, Names

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The bond between a man and his profession is similar to that which ties him to his country; it is just as complex, often ambivalent, and in general it is understood completely only when it is broken: by exile or emigration in the case of one's country, by retirement in the case of a trade or profession.

Primo Levi

Country, Retirement, Military

"Other People's Trades" by Primo Levi, ("Ex-Chemist"), 1985.

68 Copy quote
Nothing can be said: nothing sure, nothing probable, nothing honest. Better to err through omission than through commission: better to refrain from steering the fate of others, since it is already so difficult to navigate one's own.

Primo Levi

Fate, Omission, Honest

Primo Levi (1987). “The Wrench”

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In order for the wheel to turn, for life to be lived, impurities are needed, and the impurities of impurities in the soil, too, as is known, if it is to be fertile. Dissension, diversity, the grain of salt and mustard are needed: 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.

Primo Levi

Order, Diversity, Growth

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

32 Copy quote
I too entered the Lager as a nonbeliever, and as a nonbeliever I was liberated and have lived to this day.

Primo Levi

Lager, Liberated, This Day

Primo Levi (2017). “The Drowned and the Saved”, p.130, Simon and Schuster

15 Copy quote
There are few men who know how to go to their deaths with dignity, and often they are not those whom one would expect.

Primo Levi

Courage, Men, Dignity

Primo Levi (1996). “Survival In Auschwitz”, p.18, Simon and Schuster

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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

Taken, Law, Glimpse

Primo Levi (1996). “Survival In Auschwitz”, p.88, Simon and Schuster

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If it is true that there is no greater sorrow than to remember a happy time in a state of misery, it is just as true that calling up a moment of anguish in a tranquil mood, seated quietly at one's desk, is a source of profound satisfaction.

Primo Levi

Happy Times, Profound, Sorrow

Primo Levi (1984). “The periodic table”, Schocken

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The sea's only gifts are harsh blows and, occasionally, the chance to feel strong.

Primo Levi

Strong, Blow, Sea

"Bear Meat" by Primo Levi, www.newyorker.com. January 8, 2007.

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The trade of chemist (fortified, in my case, by the experience of Auschwitz), teaches you to overcome, indeed to ignore, certain revulsions that are neither necessary or congenital: matter is matter, neither noble nor vile, infinitely transformable, and its proximate origin is of no importance whatsoever. Nitrogen is nitrogen, it passes miraculously from the air into plants, from these into animals, and from animals into us; when its function in our body is exhausted, we eliminate it, but it still remains nitrogen, aseptic, innocent.

Primo Levi

Animal, Air, Overcoming

Primo Levi (1995). “The Periodic Table”

55 Copy quote
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.

Primo Levi

Dream, Real, Past

Primo Levi (1986). “If this is a Man: Remembering Auschwitz”

9 Copy quote
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.

Primo Levi

Love, Kings, Science

"Gaither's Dictionary of Scientific Quotations" by Carl C. Gaither, Springer Science & Business Media, (p. 101), January 5, 2012.

19 Copy quote
We collected in a group in front of their door, and we experienced within ourselves a grief that was new for us, the ancient grief of the people that has no land, the grief without hope of the exodus which is renewed in every century.

Primo Levi

Grief, Doors, Land

Primo Levi (1996). “Survival In Auschwitz”, p.16, Simon and Schuster

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Born: July 31, 1919
Died: April 11, 1987
Occupation: Chemist
Cite this Page: Citation

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