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

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Primo Levi
Age: 67 †
Born: 1919
Born: July 31
Died: 1987
Died: April 11
Author
Autobiographer
Chemist
Novelist
Philosopher
Poet
Politician
Science Fiction Writer
Writer
Turin
Italy
Without
Sorrow
Renewed
Every
Front
Collected
People
Doors
Experienced
Groups
Ancient
Century
Grief
Land
Group
Within
Door
Hope
Fronts
Exodus

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Perhaps Kafka laughed when he told stories [. . . ] because one isn't always equal to oneself.
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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.
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The aims of life are the best defense against death.
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There is Auschwitz, and so there cannot be God.
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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
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Each of us bears the imprint of a friend met along the way In each the trace of each.
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Anyone who has obeyed nature by transmitting a piece of gossip experiences the explosive relief that accompanies the satisfying of a primary need.
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Perfection belongs to narrated events, not to those we live.
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A man who would mutilate himself is well damned, isn't he?
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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.
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Today I think that if for no other reason than that an Auschwitz existed, no one in our age should speak of Providence.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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Those who deny Auschwitz would be ready to remake it.
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I am constantly amazed by man's inhumanity to man.
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