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Sooner or later in life everyone discovers that perfect happiness is unrealizable, but there are few who pause to consider the antithesis: that perfect unhappiness is equally unattainable.

— Primo Levi If This Is a Man (1947)

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More quotes by Primo Levi

If he believes time has run its course,
A man is a sad thing too.

Collected Poems (1984)

Those who deny Auschwitz would be ready to remake it.

Monsters exist, but they are too few in number to be truly dangerous; more dangerous are the common men, the functionaries ready to believe and to act without asking questions.

It is not at all an idle matter trying to define what a human being is.

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.

If This Is a Man (1947)

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Attribution

Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: Primo Levi (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.