Quotes from bookIf This Is a Man
If This Is a Man is a memoir by Italian Jewish writer Primo Levi, first published in 1947. It describes his arrest as a member of the Italian anti-fascist resistance during the Second World War, and his incarceration in the Auschwitz concentration camp from February 1944 until the camp was liberated on 27 January 1945.
Primo Levi book If This Is a Man
If This Is a Man (1947)
Context: 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. The obstacles preventing the realization of both these extreme states are of the same nature: they derive from our human condition, which is opposed to everything infinite. Our ever-insufficient knowledge of the future opposes it: and this is called, in the one instance, hope, and and in the other, uncertainty of the following day. The certainty of death opposes it: for it places a limit on every joy, but also on every grief. The inevitable material cares oppose it: for as they poison every lasting happiness, they equally assiduously distract us from our misfortunes and make our consciousness of them intermittent and hence supportable.
“I am constantly amazed by man's inhumanity to man.”
Primo Levi book If This Is a Man
Source: If This Is a Man / The Truce
“I am not even alive enough to know how to kill myself.”
Primo Levi book If This Is a Man
If This Is a Man (1947)
