The Best Primo Levi quotes

This is a story interwoven with freezing dawns.) — Primo Levi

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

Sooner or later in life everyone discovers that perfect happiness is unrealizable, but there are few who stop to consider the antithesis; that perfect unhappiness is equally unattainable. — Primo Levi

For a country is considered the more civilized the more the wisdom and efficiency of its laws hinder a weak man from becoming too weak or a powerful one too powerful. — Primo Levi

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

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

Everybody is somebody’s Jew. — Primo Levi

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

If I’m not for myself, who will be for me? If not this way, how? If not now, when? — Primo Levi

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

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

Is anything sadder than a trainThat leaves when it’s supposed to,That has only one voice,Only one route?There’s nothing sadder.Except perhaps a cart horse,Shut between two shaftsAnd unable even to look sideways. — Primo Levi

Perfection belongs to narrated events, not to those we live. — Primo Levi

In the space of a few minutes the sky turned black and it began to rain. — Primo Levi

The truck went on its way in the night and Gedaleh shouted, laughing, ‘If not this way, how? And if not now, when? — Primo Levi

He never asked nor accepted any reward, because he was good and simple and did not think that one did good for a reward. — Primo Levi

Those who deny Auschwitz would be ready to remake it. — Primo Levi

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

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

The aims of life are The best defense against death. — Primo Levi

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

The sea of grief has no shores, no bottom; no one can sound its depths. — Primo Levi

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

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

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

I am persuaded that normal human beings are biologically built for an activity that is aimed toward a goal and that idleness, or aimless work (like Auschwitz’s Arbeit), gives rise to suffering and to atrophy. — Primo Levi

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

Today the only thing left of the life of those days is what one needs to suffer hunger and cold; I am not even alive enough to know how to kill myself. — Primo Levi

The sea’s only gifts are harsh blows and, occasionally, the chance to feel strong. — Primo Levi

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. — Primo Levi

For he who loses all often easily loses himself. — Primo Levi

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

How important it is in life not necessarily to be strong but to feel strong, to measure yourself at least once, to find yourself at least once… — Primo Levi

I am constantly amazed by man’s inhumanity to man. — Primo Levi

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

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. — Primo Levi

There is Auschwitz, and so there cannot be God. — Primo Levi

The living are more demanding; the dead can wait. — Primo Levi

It is this refrain that we hear repeated by everyone: you are not at home, this is not a sanatorium, the only exit is by way of the Chimney. (What did it mean? Soon we were all to learn what it meant.) — Primo Levi

She had asked the older women: ‘What is that fire?’ And they had replied: ‘It is we who are burning. — Primo Levi

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

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. — Primo Levi