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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

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If It Is True

Primo Levi

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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.

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The Future Of Humanity Is Uncertain, Even In The Most Prosperous Countries, And The Quality Of Life Deteriorates; And Yet I Believe That What Is Being Discovered About The Infinitely Large And Infinitely Small Is Sufficient To Absolve This End Of The Century And Millennium. What A Very Few Are Acquiring In Knowledge Of The Physical World Will Perhaps Cause This Period Not To Be Judged As A Pure Return Of Barbarism.

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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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.

My Number Is 174517; We Have Been Baptized, We Will Carry The Tattoo On Our Left Arm Until We Die.

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.

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.

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.

The Aims Of Life Are The Best Defense Against Death.

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

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.

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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.

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.

This Cell Belongs To A Brain, And It Is My Brain, The Brain Of Me Who Is Writing; And The Cell In Question, And Within It The Atom In Question, Is In Charge Of My Writing, In A Gigantic Minuscule Game Which Nobody Has Yet Described. It Is That Which At This Instant, Issuing Out Of A Labyrinthine Tangle Of Yeses And Nos, Makes My Hand Run Along A Certain Path On The Paper, Mark It With These Volutes That Are Signs: A Double Snap, Up And Down, Between Two Levels Of Energy, Guides This Hand Of Mine To Impress On The Paper This Dot, Here, This One.

We Who Survived The Camps Are Not True Witnesses. We Are Those Who, Through Prevarication, Skill Or Luck, Never Touched Bottom. Those Who Have, And Who Have Seen The Face Of The Gorgon, Did Not Return, Or Returned Wordless.

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If A Writer Is Convinced That He Is Honest, Then It Is Very Difficult For Him To Be A Bad Writer.

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