Quotes from book
Other People's Trades

Name: Other People's Trades
Author: Primo Levi

Other People's Trades is a collection of fifty-one essays written by Primo Levi between 1969 and 1985. According to Levi, the essays are "the fruit of my roaming about as a curious dilettante for more than a decade". Mainly written for his regular column in La Stampa, the Turin daily newspaper, the essays include book reviews, autobiographical snippets, exercises in homespun philosophy, and accounts of scientific curiosities.

“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.”

Primo Levi book Other People's Trades

"The Irritable Chess-Players"
Other People's Trades (1985)

“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.”

Primo Levi book Other People's Trades

"Ex-Chemist"
Other People's Trades (1985)

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

Primo Levi book Other People's Trades

Other People's Trades (1985)

“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.”

Primo Levi book Other People's Trades

"News from the Sky"
Other People's Trades (1985)