There is Auschwitz, and so there cannot be God.
Primo LeviRead
This is the most immediate fruit of exile, of uprooting: the prevalence of the unreal over the real. Everyone dreamed past and future dreams, of slavery and redemption, of improbable paradises, of equally mythical and improbable enemies; cosmic enemies, perverse and subtle, who pervade everything like the air.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Exile leads to a heightened sense of imagination and a confrontation with one's dreams and fears.
Primo Levi's quote reflects on the experience of exile, suggesting that it fosters a disconnection from reality, allowing individuals to dwell in dreams and philosophical musings about existence, oppression, and redemption. In this state, people may visualize both idealized futures and daunting enemies, symbolizing deep introspection and the complex interplay between hope and despair.
Themes
ExileDreamsRealityImaginationRedemptionPhilosophy
In practice
Example use cases
In a discussion on the immigrant experience, this quote beautifully encapsulates the challenges and hopes felt by those displaced from their homeland.
More from Primo Levi
All quotes →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 LeviRead
To destroy a man is difficult, almost as difficult as to create one: it has not been easy, nor quick, but you Germans have succeeded. Here we are, docile under your gaze; from our side you have nothing more to fear; no acts of violence, no words of defiance, not even a look of judgment.
Primo LeviRead
They sensed that what had happened around them and in their presence, and in them, was irrevocable. Never again could it be cleansed; it would prove that man, the human species - we, in short - had the potential to construct an enormity of pain, and that pain is the only force created from nothing, without cost and without effort. It is enough not to see, not to listen, not to act.
Primo LeviRead
I live in my house as I live inside my skin: I know more beautiful, more ample, more sturdy and more picturesque skins: but it would seem to me unnatural to exchange them for mine.
Primo LeviRead
Imagine now a man who is deprived of everyone he loves, and at the same time of his house, his habits, his clothes, in short, of everything he possesses: he will be a hollow man, reduced to suffering and needs, forgetful of dignity and restraint, for he who loses all often loses himself.
Primo LeviRead
Similar quotes
A prediction, in a field where prediction is not possible, is no more than a prejudice.
Malcolm GladwellRead
How do you know but ev’ry Bird that cuts the airy way, Is an immense world of delight, clos’d by your senses five?
William BlakeRead
nothing is slower than the true birth of a man
Marguerite YourcenarRead
For the bourgeoisie, the main danger against which it had to be protected, that which had to be avoided at all costs, was armed uprising, was the armed people, was the workers taking to the streets in an assault against the government.
Michel FoucaultRead
The civil jury is the most effective form of sovereignty of the people. It defies the aggressions of time and man. During the reigns of Henry VIII (1509-1547) and Elizabeth I (1158-1603), the civil jury did in reality save the liberties of England.
Alexis De TocquevilleRead
You cannot really have the world and hold on to it. It is all too temporary and the more you try to hold on to it, the more it actually holds you. By contrast, the more you hold on to the true and the good, the more you are free to really live.
Ravi ZachariasRead