--- title: "13 Primo Levi Quotes by 13 authors" description: "Browse 13 Primo Levi quotes by 13 authors. Discover the best Primo Levi sayings and thoughts." image: "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/1ac/helmut-walser-smith-26007_history_the-greater-part-of-historical-and-natur_3046627.jpg" --- > [“The greater part of historical and natural phenomena are not simple, or not simple in the way we would like. —PRIMO LEVI”](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/helmut-walser-smith/the-greater-part-of-historical-and-natural-phenomena-are-not-simple/) [Helmut Walser Smith](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/author/helmut-walser-smith/) [Image](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/1ac/helmut-walser-smith-26007_history_the-greater-part-of-historical-and-natur_3046627.jpg) > [“Willingly or not we come to terms with power, forgetting that we are all in the ghetto, that the ghetto is walled…](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/primo-levi/willingly-or-not-we-come-to-terms-with-power-forgetting-that-we-are/) [Primo Levi](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/author/primo-levi/) [Image](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/5aa/primo-levi-2751_death_willingly-or-not-we-come-to-terms-with-p_305709.jpg) > [I encourage everyone to read James Baldwin and Malcom X and Aldous Huxley. To read Primo Levi. To read 'Silent Spring.' To…](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/zoe-kazan/i-encourage-everyone-to-read-james-baldwin-and-malcom-x-and-aldous/) [Zoe Kazan](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/author/zoe-kazan/) [Image](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/b4b/zoe-kazan-3186_everyone_i-encourage-everyone-to-read-james-baldw_2318990.jpg) > [“For me God existed in Primo Levi's writing, in the moments of reprieve he described when one human granted another respect in…](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/kaylie-jones/for-me-god-existed-in-primo-levi-s-writing-in-the-moments-of-reprieve/) [Kaylie Jones](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/author/kaylie-jones/) [Image](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/ea7/kaylie-jones-46768_respect_for-me-god-existed-in-primo-levi-s-writi_47996.jpg) > [Again and again, Primo Levi's work is described as indispensable, essential, necessary. None of those terms overstate the case, but they do…](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/howard-jacobson/again-and-again-primo-levi-s-work-is-described-as-indispensable/) [Howard Jacobson](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/author/howard-jacobson/) [Image](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/ba4/howard-jacobson-1484_experience_again-and-again-primo-levi-s-work-is-des_1408337.jpg) > [When somebody says that six million people died in the Holocaust, there is nobody in the world who can understand that. It's…](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/uzodinma-iweala/when-somebody-says-that-six-million-people-died-in-the-holocaust/) [Uzodinma Iweala](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/author/uzodinma-iweala/) [Image](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/865/uzodinma-iweala-7990_books_when-somebody-says-that-six-million-peop_179212.jpg) > [Primo Levi's - I mean, he's a very different kind of writer. He's a much more formal writer. He's a much more…](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/ann-goldstein/primo-levi-s-i-mean-he-s-a-very-different-kind-of-writer-he-s-a-much/) [Ann Goldstein](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/author/ann-goldstein/) [Image](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/311/ann-goldstein-27795_detached_primo-levi-s-i-mean-he-s-a-very-differen_723528.jpg) > [“In order for the wheel to turn, for life to be lived, impurities are needed, and the impurities of impurities in the…](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/oliver-benjamin/in-order-for-the-wheel-to-turn-for-life-to-be-lived-impurities-are/) [Oliver Benjamin](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/author/oliver-benjamin/) [Image](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/096/oliver-benjamin-22640_impurities_in-order-for-the-wheel-to-turn-for-life_2409637.jpg) > [Confronting the intolerable should be challenging and upsetting. Who could read the testimonies of Primo Levi and not feel intellectually and emotionally…](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/henry-giroux/confronting-the-intolerable-should-be-challenging-and-upsetting-who/) [Henry Giroux](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/author/henry-giroux/) [Image](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/375/henry-giroux-945_challenges_confronting-the-intolerable-should-be-ch_2250021.png) > [“Finally, I had held up examples of Goldhagen's inflammatory language and suggested that he had missed the essence of what Primo Levi…](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/erna-paris/finally-i-had-held-up-examples-of-goldhagen-s-inflammatory-language/) [Erna Paris](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/author/erna-paris/) [Image](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/55f/erna-paris-64575_black-and-white_finally-i-had-held-up-examples-of-goldha_2063463.jpg) > [“Soldier on guard says they've identified “someone on two legs a hundred metres from the outpost”. The other soldier, in the lookout,…](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/selma-dabbagh/soldier-on-guard-says-they-ve-identified-someone-on-two-legs-a/) [Selma Dabbagh](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/author/selma-dabbagh/) [Image](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/c27/selma-dabbagh-56838_dehumanization_soldier-on-guard-says-they-ve-identified_293512.jpg) > [“I too entered the Lager as a nonbeliever, and as a nonbeliever I was liberated and have lived to this day. Actually,…](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/christopher-hitchens/i-too-entered-the-lager-as-a-nonbeliever-and-as-a-nonbeliever-i-was-2/) [Christopher Hitchens](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/author/christopher-hitchens/) [Image](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/0e6/christopher-hitchens-117_ask-for-help_i-too-entered-the-lager-as-a-nonbeliever_543729.jpg) > [“Our difficulty or inability to perceive the experience of others…is all the more pronounced the more distant these experiences are from ours…](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/gabor-mat/our-difficulty-or-inability-to-perceive-the-experience-of-others-is/) [Gabor Maté](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/author/gabor-mat/) [Image](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/0fd/gabor-mat-1410_faith-in-humanity_our-difficulty-or-inability-to-perceive_651268.jpg) ```json { "@context": "https://schema.org", "@graph": [ { "@type": "ItemList", "@id": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/about/primo-levi/#itemlist", "name": "Primo Levi Quotes", "numberOfItems": 13, "itemListElement": [ { "@type": "ListItem", "position": 1, "item": { "@type": "Quotation", "text": "“The greater part of historical and natural phenomena are not simple, or not simple in the way we would like. —PRIMO LEVI”", "creator": { "@type": "Person", "name": "Helmut Walser Smith" }, "url": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/helmut-walser-smith/the-greater-part-of-historical-and-natural-phenomena-are-not-simple/", "image": { "@type": "ImageObject", "@id": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/1ac/helmut-walser-smith-26007_history_the-greater-part-of-historical-and-natur_3046627.jpg", "contentUrl": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/1ac/helmut-walser-smith-26007_history_the-greater-part-of-historical-and-natur_3046627.jpg", "url": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/1ac/helmut-walser-smith-26007_history_the-greater-part-of-historical-and-natur_3046627.jpg", "width": 1080, "height": 1080, "caption": "“The greater part of historical and natural phenomena are not simple, or not simple in the way we would like…” — Helmut Walser Smith", "creditText": "SMS4Smile Quotes", "creator": { "@id": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/#organization" } } } }, { "@type": "ListItem", "position": 2, "item": { "@type": "Quotation", "text": "“Willingly or not we come to terms with power, forgetting that we are all in the ghetto, that the ghetto is walled in, that outside the ghetto reign the lords of death, and that close by the train is waiting.\" by Primo Levi in Drowned”", "creator": { "@type": "Person", "name": "Primo Levi" }, "url": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/primo-levi/willingly-or-not-we-come-to-terms-with-power-forgetting-that-we-are/", "image": { "@type": "ImageObject", "@id": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/5aa/primo-levi-2751_death_willingly-or-not-we-come-to-terms-with-p_305709.jpg", "contentUrl": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/5aa/primo-levi-2751_death_willingly-or-not-we-come-to-terms-with-p_305709.jpg", "url": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/5aa/primo-levi-2751_death_willingly-or-not-we-come-to-terms-with-p_305709.jpg", "width": 1080, "height": 1080, "caption": "“Willingly or not we come to terms with power, forgetting that we are all in the ghetto, that the ghetto is…” — Primo Levi", "creditText": "SMS4Smile Quotes", "creator": { "@id": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/#organization" } } } }, { "@type": "ListItem", "position": 3, "item": { "@type": "Quotation", "text": "I encourage everyone to read James Baldwin and Malcom X and Aldous Huxley. To read Primo Levi. To read 'Silent Spring.' To read Toni Morrison. To read Zora Neale Hurston.", "creator": { "@type": "Person", "name": "Zoe Kazan" }, "url": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/zoe-kazan/i-encourage-everyone-to-read-james-baldwin-and-malcom-x-and-aldous/", "image": { "@type": "ImageObject", "@id": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/b4b/zoe-kazan-3186_everyone_i-encourage-everyone-to-read-james-baldw_2318990.jpg", "contentUrl": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/b4b/zoe-kazan-3186_everyone_i-encourage-everyone-to-read-james-baldw_2318990.jpg", "url": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/b4b/zoe-kazan-3186_everyone_i-encourage-everyone-to-read-james-baldw_2318990.jpg", "width": 1080, "height": 1080, "caption": "“I encourage everyone to read James Baldwin and Malcom X and Aldous Huxley. To read Primo Levi. To read…” — Zoe Kazan", "creditText": "SMS4Smile Quotes", "creator": { "@id": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/#organization" } } } }, { "@type": "ListItem", "position": 4, "item": { "@type": "Quotation", "text": "“For me God existed in Primo Levi's writing, in the moments of reprieve he described when one human granted another respect in that godless wasteland of cruelty.”", "creator": { "@type": "Person", "name": "Kaylie Jones" }, "url": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/kaylie-jones/for-me-god-existed-in-primo-levi-s-writing-in-the-moments-of-reprieve/", "image": { "@type": "ImageObject", "@id": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/ea7/kaylie-jones-46768_respect_for-me-god-existed-in-primo-levi-s-writi_47996.jpg", "contentUrl": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/ea7/kaylie-jones-46768_respect_for-me-god-existed-in-primo-levi-s-writi_47996.jpg", "url": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/ea7/kaylie-jones-46768_respect_for-me-god-existed-in-primo-levi-s-writi_47996.jpg", "width": 1080, "height": 1080, "caption": "“For me God existed in Primo Levi's writing, in the moments of reprieve he described when one human granted…” — Kaylie Jones", "creditText": "SMS4Smile Quotes", "creator": { "@id": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/#organization" } } } }, { "@type": "ListItem", "position": 5, "item": { "@type": "Quotation", "text": "Again and again, Primo Levi's work is described as indispensable, essential, necessary. None of those terms overstate the case, but they do prepare readers new to Levi for a forbiddingly educative experience, making him a writer unlike all others and the experience of reading him a chore. Which it isn't.", "creator": { "@type": "Person", "name": "Howard Jacobson" }, "url": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/howard-jacobson/again-and-again-primo-levi-s-work-is-described-as-indispensable/", "image": { "@type": "ImageObject", "@id": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/ba4/howard-jacobson-1484_experience_again-and-again-primo-levi-s-work-is-des_1408337.jpg", "contentUrl": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/ba4/howard-jacobson-1484_experience_again-and-again-primo-levi-s-work-is-des_1408337.jpg", "url": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/ba4/howard-jacobson-1484_experience_again-and-again-primo-levi-s-work-is-des_1408337.jpg", "width": 1080, "height": 1080, "caption": "“Again and again, Primo Levi's work is described as indispensable, essential, necessary. None of those terms…” — Howard Jacobson", "creditText": "SMS4Smile Quotes", "creator": { "@id": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/#organization" } } } }, { "@type": "ListItem", "position": 6, "item": { "@type": "Quotation", "text": "When somebody says that six million people died in the Holocaust, there is nobody in the world who can understand that. It's only through story, reading books by Elie Wiesel or Primo Levi, that you really begin to understand the trauma and how horrible it actually was.", "creator": { "@type": "Person", "name": "Uzodinma Iweala" }, "url": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/uzodinma-iweala/when-somebody-says-that-six-million-people-died-in-the-holocaust/", "image": { "@type": "ImageObject", "@id": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/865/uzodinma-iweala-7990_books_when-somebody-says-that-six-million-peop_179212.jpg", "contentUrl": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/865/uzodinma-iweala-7990_books_when-somebody-says-that-six-million-peop_179212.jpg", "url": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/865/uzodinma-iweala-7990_books_when-somebody-says-that-six-million-peop_179212.jpg", "width": 1080, "height": 1080, "caption": "“When somebody says that six million people died in the Holocaust, there is nobody in the world who can…” — Uzodinma Iweala", "creditText": "SMS4Smile Quotes", "creator": { "@id": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/#organization" } } } }, { "@type": "ListItem", "position": 7, "item": { "@type": "Quotation", "text": "Primo Levi's - I mean, he's a very different kind of writer. He's a much more formal writer. He's a much more -almost detached. I mean, I wouldn't really say that he's detached ultimately. But he does write as a scientist, and so he describes things very - in great detail, very carefully.", "creator": { "@type": "Person", "name": "Ann Goldstein" }, "url": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/ann-goldstein/primo-levi-s-i-mean-he-s-a-very-different-kind-of-writer-he-s-a-much/", "image": { "@type": "ImageObject", "@id": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/311/ann-goldstein-27795_detached_primo-levi-s-i-mean-he-s-a-very-differen_723528.jpg", "contentUrl": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/311/ann-goldstein-27795_detached_primo-levi-s-i-mean-he-s-a-very-differen_723528.jpg", "url": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/311/ann-goldstein-27795_detached_primo-levi-s-i-mean-he-s-a-very-differen_723528.jpg", "width": 1080, "height": 1080, "caption": "“Primo Levi's - I mean, he's a very different kind of writer. He's a much more formal writer. He's a much…” — Ann Goldstein", "creditText": "SMS4Smile Quotes", "creator": { "@id": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/#organization" } } } }, { "@type": "ListItem", "position": 8, "item": { "@type": "Quotation", "text": "“In order for the wheel to turn, for life to be lived, impurities are needed, and the impurities of impurities in the soil, too, as is known, if it is to be fertile. Dissention, diversity, the grain of salt and mustard are needed. Fascism does not want them, forbids them…it wants everyone to be the same, and you’re not. —Primo Levi, The Periodic Table”", "creator": { "@type": "Person", "name": "Oliver Benjamin" }, "url": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/oliver-benjamin/in-order-for-the-wheel-to-turn-for-life-to-be-lived-impurities-are/", "image": { "@type": "ImageObject", "@id": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/096/oliver-benjamin-22640_impurities_in-order-for-the-wheel-to-turn-for-life_2409637.jpg", "contentUrl": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/096/oliver-benjamin-22640_impurities_in-order-for-the-wheel-to-turn-for-life_2409637.jpg", "url": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/096/oliver-benjamin-22640_impurities_in-order-for-the-wheel-to-turn-for-life_2409637.jpg", "width": 1080, "height": 1080, "caption": "“In order for the wheel to turn, for life to be lived, impurities are needed, and the impurities of…” — Oliver Benjamin", "creditText": "SMS4Smile Quotes", "creator": { "@id": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/#organization" } } } }, { "@type": "ListItem", "position": 9, "item": { "@type": "Quotation", "text": "Confronting the intolerable should be challenging and upsetting. Who could read the testimonies of Primo Levi and not feel intellectually and emotionally exhausted? Or Martin Luther King Jr.'s words, not to mention those of Malcolm X? It is the conditions that produce violence that should upset us ethically and prompt us to act responsibly, rather than to capitulate to a privatized emotional response that substitutes a therapeutic language for a political and worldly one.", "creator": { "@type": "Person", "name": "Henry Giroux" }, "url": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/henry-giroux/confronting-the-intolerable-should-be-challenging-and-upsetting-who/", "image": { "@type": "ImageObject", "@id": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/375/henry-giroux-945_challenges_confronting-the-intolerable-should-be-ch_2250021.png", "contentUrl": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/375/henry-giroux-945_challenges_confronting-the-intolerable-should-be-ch_2250021.png", "url": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/375/henry-giroux-945_challenges_confronting-the-intolerable-should-be-ch_2250021.png", "width": 1080, "height": 1080, "caption": "“Confronting the intolerable should be challenging and upsetting. Who could read the testimonies of Primo…” — Henry Giroux", "creditText": "SMS4Smile Quotes", "creator": { "@id": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/#organization" } } } }, { "@type": "ListItem", "position": 10, "item": { "@type": "Quotation", "text": "“Finally, I had held up examples of Goldhagen's inflammatory language and suggested that he had missed the essence of what Primo Levi once called the 'grey zone' of human affairs, described by the historian Christopher Browning as that foggy universe of mixed motives, conflicting emotions, personal priorities, reluctant choices, opportunism and accomodation, all wedded, when convenient, to self-deception and denial. I thought that by marshalling his research into an overly narrow narrative, painted without nuance in black and white, the author had missed the human complexity and the ordinariness of racism.”", "creator": { "@type": "Person", "name": "Erna Paris" }, "url": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/erna-paris/finally-i-had-held-up-examples-of-goldhagen-s-inflammatory-language/", "image": { "@type": "ImageObject", "@id": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/55f/erna-paris-64575_black-and-white_finally-i-had-held-up-examples-of-goldha_2063463.jpg", "contentUrl": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/55f/erna-paris-64575_black-and-white_finally-i-had-held-up-examples-of-goldha_2063463.jpg", "url": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/55f/erna-paris-64575_black-and-white_finally-i-had-held-up-examples-of-goldha_2063463.jpg", "width": 1080, "height": 1080, "caption": "“Finally, I had held up examples of Goldhagen's inflammatory language and suggested that he had missed the…” — Erna Paris", "creditText": "SMS4Smile Quotes", "creator": { "@id": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/#organization" } } } }, { "@type": "ListItem", "position": 11, "item": { "@type": "Quotation", "text": "“Soldier on guard says they've identified “someone on two legs a hundred metres from the outpost”. The other soldier, in the lookout, says “A girl about ten,” but by then they're already shooting. Girl's dead[...]The point is this use of code, on two legs, denoting human. It reminded me of that speech by their Prime Minister saying that we were beasts walking on two legs [...]The idea that having legs makes you human. I thought of adding a Primo Levi-ish dimension to it. Merging this two-legged idea with a sort of general question about what is a man, you know, linking it to “if this is a man who labours in the mud/ who knows no peace/ who fights for a crust of bread?” [...] my thesis being that the occupation, the closures, the siege have made amputees of all of us, crawling around in the mud. Legless in Gaza. The lot of us.”", "creator": { "@type": "Person", "name": "Selma Dabbagh" }, "url": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/selma-dabbagh/soldier-on-guard-says-they-ve-identified-someone-on-two-legs-a/", "image": { "@type": "ImageObject", "@id": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/c27/selma-dabbagh-56838_dehumanization_soldier-on-guard-says-they-ve-identified_293512.jpg", "contentUrl": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/c27/selma-dabbagh-56838_dehumanization_soldier-on-guard-says-they-ve-identified_293512.jpg", "url": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/c27/selma-dabbagh-56838_dehumanization_soldier-on-guard-says-they-ve-identified_293512.jpg", "width": 1080, "height": 1080, "caption": "“Soldier on guard says they've identified “someone on two legs a hundred metres from the outpost”. The other…” — Selma Dabbagh", "creditText": "SMS4Smile Quotes", "creator": { "@id": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/#organization" } } } }, { "@type": "ListItem", "position": 12, "item": { "@type": "Quotation", "text": "“I too entered the Lager as a nonbeliever, and as a nonbeliever I was liberated and have lived to this day. Actually, the experience of the Lager with its frightful iniquity confirmed me in my nonbelief. It has prevented me, and still prevents me, from conceiving of any form of providence or transcendent justice . . . I must nevertheless admit that I experienced (and again only once) the temptation to yield, to seek refuge in prayer. This happened in October 1944, in the one moment in which I lucidly perceived the imminence of death . . . naked and compressed among my naked companions with my personal index card in hand, I was waiting to file past the ‘commission’ that with one glance would decide whether I should go immediately into the gas chamber or was instead strong enough to go on working. For one instance I felt the need to ask for help and asylum; then, despite my anguish, equanimity prevailed: one does not change the rules of the game at the end of the match, nor when you are losing. A prayer under these conditions would have been not only absurd (what rights could I claim? and from whom?) but blasphemous, obscene, laden with the greatest impiety of which a nonbeliever is capable. I rejected the temptation: I knew that otherwise were I to survive, I would have to be ashamed of it.” —FROM PRIMO LEVI: THE DROWNED AND THE SAVED (1986)”", "creator": { "@type": "Person", "name": "Christopher Hitchens" }, "url": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/christopher-hitchens/i-too-entered-the-lager-as-a-nonbeliever-and-as-a-nonbeliever-i-was-2/", "image": { "@type": "ImageObject", "@id": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/0e6/christopher-hitchens-117_ask-for-help_i-too-entered-the-lager-as-a-nonbeliever_543729.jpg", "contentUrl": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/0e6/christopher-hitchens-117_ask-for-help_i-too-entered-the-lager-as-a-nonbeliever_543729.jpg", "url": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/0e6/christopher-hitchens-117_ask-for-help_i-too-entered-the-lager-as-a-nonbeliever_543729.jpg", "width": 1080, "height": 1080, "caption": "“I too entered the Lager as a nonbeliever, and as a nonbeliever I was liberated and have lived to this day…” — Christopher Hitchens", "creditText": "SMS4Smile Quotes", "creator": { "@id": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/#organization" } } } }, { "@type": "ListItem", "position": 13, "item": { "@type": "Quotation", "text": "“Our difficulty or inability to perceive the experience of others…is all the more pronounced the more distant these experiences are from ours in time, space, or quality,” wrote the Auschwitz survivor Primo Levi. We can be moved by the tragedy of mass starvation on a far continent; after all, we have all known physical hunger, if only temporarily. But it takes a greater effort of emotional imagination to empathize with the addict. We readily feel for a suffering child, but cannot see the child in the adult who, his soul fragmented and isolated, hustles for survival a few blocks away from where we shop or work. Levi quotes Jean Améry, a Jewish-Austrian philosopher and resistance fighter who fell into the grasp of the Gestapo. “Anyone who was tortured remains tortured… Anyone who has suffered torture never again will be able to be at ease in the world…Faith in humanity, already cracked by the first slap in the face, then demolished by torture, is never acquired again.” Améry was a full-grown adult when he was traumatized, an accomplished intellectual captured by the foe in the course of a war of liberation. We may then imagine the shock, loss of faith and unfathomable despair of the child who is traumatized not by hated enemies but by loved ones.”", "creator": { "@type": "Person", "name": "Gabor Maté" }, "url": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/gabor-mat/our-difficulty-or-inability-to-perceive-the-experience-of-others-is/", "image": { "@type": "ImageObject", "@id": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/0fd/gabor-mat-1410_faith-in-humanity_our-difficulty-or-inability-to-perceive_651268.jpg", "contentUrl": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/0fd/gabor-mat-1410_faith-in-humanity_our-difficulty-or-inability-to-perceive_651268.jpg", "url": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/0fd/gabor-mat-1410_faith-in-humanity_our-difficulty-or-inability-to-perceive_651268.jpg", "width": 1080, "height": 1080, "caption": "“Our difficulty or inability to perceive the experience of others…is all the more pronounced the more distant…” — Gabor Maté", "creditText": "SMS4Smile Quotes", "creator": { "@id": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/#organization" } } } } ] }, { "@type": "CollectionPage", "@id": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/about/primo-levi/#webpage", "url": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/about/primo-levi/", "name": "Primo Levi Quotes", "isPartOf": { "@id": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/#website" }, "mainEntity": { "@id": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/about/primo-levi/#itemlist" }, "primaryImageOfPage": { "@id": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/1ac/helmut-walser-smith-26007_history_the-greater-part-of-historical-and-natur_3046627.jpg" }, "description": "Browse 13 Primo Levi quotes by 13 authors. 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