A scientist's life, the author says, is indeed conflictual, formed by battles, defeats, and victories: but the adversary … - Primo Levi

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I had to make a living. I had the mortgage to pay, I had the school fees to pay. I had bread and butter to put on the table. You know your worth as an actor, but you have to get a job.

Primo Levi

A scientist's life, the author says, is indeed conflictual, formed by battles, defeats, and victories: but the adversary is always and only the unknown, the problem to be solved, the mystery to be clarified. It is never a matter of civil war; even though of different opinions, or of different political leanings, scientists dispute each other, they compete, but they do not battle: they are bound together by a strong alliance, by the common faith "in the validity of Maxwell's or Boltzmann's equations," and by the common acceptance of Darwinism and the molecular structure of DNA.

Acceptance, Molecular, Political, Strong, Together, War

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We must be listened to: above and beyond our personal experience, we have collectively witnessed a fundamental unexpected event, fundamental precisely because unexpected, not foreseen by anyone. It happened, therefore it can happen again: this is the core of what we have to say. It can happen, and it can happen everywhere.

Events, Experience, Foreseen, Fundamentals, Personal, Unexpected

Monsters exist, but they are too few in numbers to be truly dangerous. More dangerous are…the functionaries ready to believe and act without asking questions.

Asking Questions, Believe, Exist, Monsters, Numbers

Auschwitz is outside of us, but it is all around us, in the air. The plague has died away, but the infection still lingers and it would be foolish to deny it. Rejection of human solidarity, obtuse and cynical indifference to the suffering of others, abdication of the intellect and of moral sense to the principle of authority, and above all, at the root of everything, a sweeping tide of cowardice, a colossal cowardice which masks itself as warring virtue, love of country and faith in an idea.

Country, Everything, Ideas, Love, Suffering Of Others, Warring

We who survived the Camps are not true witnesses. We are those who, through prevarication, skill or luck, never touched bottom. Those who have, and who have seen the face of the Gorgon, did not return, or returned wordless.

Faces, Luck, Seen, Skills, Survived

There is Auschwitz, and so there cannot be God.

Atheist, Auschwitz, God