A Quote by Primo Levi

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.

Primo Levi

Quote Topics

Air Cosmic Dreamed Dreams Enemies Equally Everyone Everything Exile Fruit Future Future Dreams Immediate Improbable Like Most Mythical Over Past Past And Future Perverse Real Redemption Slavery Subtle Unreal Uprooting

Quote Author

Primo Levi
Italian - Scientist
July 31, 1919 - April 11, 1987

For an entrepreneur with 'improbable' and 'impossible' dreams, the alleged stability that comes from getting 'a real job' is nothing but a sign of slavery.

Fabrizio Moreira

The idea was fantastically, wildly improbable. But like most fantastically, wildly improbable ideas it was at least as worthy of consideration as a more mundane one to which the facts had been strenuously bent to fit.

Douglas Adams

I have made some enemies. My enemies in the southern states consisted of those who oppressed the black slave. My enemies in the north are among those who would perpetuate the slavery of the wage workers

Albert Parsons

. . .the larger the crowd, the more probable that that which it praises is folly, and the more improbable that it is truth; and the most improbable of all that it is any eternal truth.

Soren Kierkegaard

It's good for everyone to understand that they are to love their enemies, simply because your enemies show you things about yourself you need to change. So in actuality enemies are friends in reverse.

Gary Busey

The enemies of American civilization-- for such are the enemies of slavery-- seem to be more on the alert than its friends.

William Walker

I reject your impossible. Most of what others tell me is impossible I know to be improbable. If it is impossible you have nothing more to do but if it is improbable...you can choose to ask the unasked question or walk the unwalked step. For me that has made all the difference.

Gary Holder-Winfield

However statistically improbable the entity you seek to explain by invoking a designer, the designer himself has got to be at least as improbable. God is the Ultimate Boeing 747

Richard Dawkins

It [knowledge] is clearly related to information, which we can now measure; and an economist especially is tempted to regard knowledge as a kind of capital structure, corresponding to information as an income flow. Knowledge, that is to say, is some kind of improbable structure or stock made up essentially of patterns - that is, improbable arrangements, and the more improbable the arrangements, we might suppose, the more knowledge there is.

Kenneth E. Boulding

You can't statistically explain improbable things like living creatures by saying that they must have been designed because you're still left to explain the designer, who must be, if anything, an even more statistically improbable and elegant thing.

Richard Dawkins

No, make something different from war. Don't allow your enemies to be enemies. Make them something else, because otherwise they have a power over you that they should not have. If you think in the same ways as the past, you will only get new versions of the past. Think differently. That's what I'm saying.

David Anthony Durham

The real enemies of our life are the 'oughts' and the 'ifs.' They pull us backward into the unalterable past and forward into the unpredictable future. But real life takes place in the here and now.

Henri Nouwen

I think it not improbable that man, like the grub that prepares a chamber for the winged thing it never has seen but is to be - that man may have cosmic destinies that he does not understand.

Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.

We don't seek to destroy our enemies. After all, Jesus taught that our love must extend even to enemies. It's a remarkable teaching. Not to destroy enemies, but to convert hearts, to win people over to the cause of justice.

Robert P. George

There is beauty everywhere on earth, but there is greater beauty in those places where one feels that sense of ease which comes from no longer having to put off one’s dreams until some improbable future – a future inexorably shrinking away; where the fear that has pervaded one’s life suddenly vanishes because there is... nothing to be afraid of.