Quotes From "The Drowned And The Saved" By Primo Levi

Willingly or not we come to terms with power, forgetting that we are all in the ghetto, that the ghetto is walled in, that outside the ghetto reign the lords of death, and that close by the train is waiting." by Primo Levi in Drowned Primo Levi

The memories which lie within us are not carved in stone; not only do they tend to becomeerased as the years go by, but often they change, or even grow, by incorporating extraneous features. Judges know this very well: almost never do two eyewitnesses of the same event describe it in the same way and with the same words, even if the event is recent and if neither of them has a personal interest in distorting it. Primo Levi

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

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

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

An extreme case of the distortion of the memory of a committed guilty act is found in its suppression. Here, too, the borderline between good and bad faith can be vague; behind the "I don't know" and "I do not remember" that one hears in courtrooms there is sometimes the precise intent to lie, but at other times it is a fossilized lie, rigidified in a formula. Primo Levi