Primo Levi

"The greater the cruelty, the greater the intelligence required to combat it"

"If understanding is impossible, knowing becomes all the more necessary"

"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"

"One single sentence has the power to liberate us from a burden we have carried for a long time"

"It is forbidden to forbid understanding"

"There is no greater violence than to deny someone the right to speak"

"The need to tell our story and to have it heard is a primary human need"

"Laughter is a sign of freedom"

"We cannot change the past, but we can change how we remember it"

"The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function"

"If this is a man, then we must ask what makes us human"

"Suffering ennobles, but it also destroys"

"One must still have chaos within oneself to give birth to a dancing star"

"Memory is a fundamental human right"

"To be or not to be is not the question; to remain human is"

"Every age has its own criminals, but also its own rebels"

"The human condition will always contain both light and darkness"

"Bearing witness is a moral imperative"

"Forgetting is a form of death"

"We must understand that hatred is a poison we drink hoping others will die"

"The act of remembering is itself an act of resistance"

"If we could hear the voice of every person who has suffered, we would hear truth itself"

"Silence in the face of evil is complicity"

"The power of language lies in its ability to transform experience into meaning"

"We are the sum of all our choices"

"To see others clearly requires that we first see ourselves"

"The most terrible thing is to be forgotten"

"Humanity is discovered in unexpected places and unexpected people"

"The pursuit of truth demands sacrifice"

"Hope is the most dangerous and necessary of all human emotions"