Primo Levi Quotes

The aims of life are the best defense against death.

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.

There is Auschwitz, and so there cannot be God.

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

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

Everybody is somebody's Jew.

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.

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

Those who deny Auschwitz would be ready to remake it.

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.

Man is a centaur, a tangle of flesh and mind, divine inspiration and dust.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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

Anyone who has obeyed nature by transmitting a piece of gossip experiences the explosive relief that accompanies the satisfying of a primary need.

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

I'm a libertine, but it's not my specialty.

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

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

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.

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.

Perhaps Kafka laughed when he told stories [. . . ] because one isn't always equal to oneself.

We will not return No one must leave here and so carry to the world, together with the sign impressed on his skin, the evil tidings of what man's presumption made of man in Auschwitz

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

I have many times been praised for my lack of animosity towards the Germans. It's not a philosophical virtue. It's a habit of having my second reactions before the first.

A man who would mutilate himself is well damned, isn't he?

The work of bestial degradation, begun by the victorious Germans, had been carried to its conclusion by the Germans in defeat.

Today I think that if for no other reason than that an Auschwitz existed, no one in our age should speak of Providence.

For he who loses all often easily loses himself.

An enemy who sees the error of his ways ceases to be an enemy.

The living are more demanding; the dead can wait.

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.

Suicide is an act of man and not of the animal.

If we had to and were able to suffer the sufferings of everyone, we could not live.

Compassion and brutality can coexist in the same individual and in the same moment...