The Complete Works of Primo Levi Quotes

“The triumph of human identity and worth over the pathology of human destruction glows virtually everywhere in Levi’s writing.”
― Primo Levi, The Complete Works of Primo Levi

“Fascism is a cancer that spreads rapidly, and its return is threatening us: is it too much to ask that we oppose it from the start?”
― Primo Levi, The Complete Works of Primo Levi

“Envisioning and organizing the [death camp Sonderkommandos] was National Socialism’s most diabolical crime…Through this institution, the attempt was made to shift the burden of guilt to others, that is, to the victims, so that not even the awareness that they were innocent was left to bring them relief. It is neither easy nor pleasant to plumb the depths of this evil, but I think it has to be done, because what was perpetrated yesterday could be attempted again tomorrow, and could involve us or our children. There is a temptation to turn away and to distract the mind: it is a temptation that must be resisted. In fact, the existence of the Sonderkommandos had a meaning and contained a message: ‘We, the Lord’s people, are your destroyers, but you are no better than us; if we want to, as we do, we are capable of destroying not only your bodies but also your souls, just as we have destroyed our own.”
― Primo Levi, The Complete Works of Primo Levi

“The layman has few certainties, but the first is this: it is acceptable to suffer (or to cause suffering) only if doing so prevents greater suffering.”
― Primo Levi, The Complete Works of Primo Levi

“Out of the shadows came men whom fascism had not bowed, lawyers, professors, and workers, and we recognized in them our teachers, those from whom we had till then uselessly sought wisdom in the Bible, in chemistry, in the mountains. Fascism had reduced them to silence for twenty years, and they explained to us that fascism was not only a clownish and improvident bad government but the denier of justice; it not only had dragged Italy into an ill-omened and unjust war but had arisen and established itself as the guardian of a detestable order and law, based on coercion of those who work, on uncontrolled profits for those who exploit the work of others, on silence imposed on those who think and don’t wish to be slaves, on systematic and calculated lies.”
― Primo Levi, The Complete Works of Primo Levi