Primo Levi Quotes

The will to label will always prevail over what's being labeled, usually at the expense of either truth or understanding.

What then is time? If no one asks me, I know what it is. If I wish to explain it to him who asks, I do not know.

Giving a phenomenon a label does not explain it.

It's always easy to describe something complex by applying to it an already known label.

One may say the eternal mystery of the world is its comprehensibility.

The whole idea of a stereotype is to simplify. Instead of going through the problem of all this great diversity - that it's this or maybe that - you have just one large statement; it is this.

Those who understand only what can be explained understand very little.

Whoever believes he knows why everything is as it is has hold of nothing.

People seem to have a great love for names. For to know a great many names seems to look like knowing a good many things.

They understand but a little who understand only what can be explained.

If you do not know the names of things, the knowledge of them is lost, too.

Finding a name for something is a way of conjuring its existence, of making it possible for people to see a pattern where they didn't see anything before.

Quid est ergo tempus? Si nemo ex me quaerat, scio; si quaerenti explicare velim, nescio. What, then, is time? I know well enough what it is, provided that nobodyasksme; but if Iamasked what it is and try to explain, I am baffled.

Understanding sometimes is not enough to explain something.

We see only what we have names for.

They say that nameless things change constantly—that names fix them in place like pins.

All that makes earlier times seem simpler is our ignorance of their complexities.

An expert is someone who takes something you already know and makes it sound confusing.

The fate of all explanation is to close one door only to have another fly wide open.

We cannot understand. The best is perhaps what we understand least.

When a man is proud because he can understand and explain the writings of Chrysippus, say to yourself, 'if Chrysippus had not written obscurely, this man would have had nothing to be proud of.'

No object is stuck with its name so irrevocably that one cannot find another which suits it better.

Explanations are clear but since no one to whom a thing is explained can connect the explanations with what is really clear, therefore clear explanations are not clear.

They stick you with those names, those labels -- ‘rebel’ or whatever; whatever they like to use. Because they need a label; they need a name. They need something to put the price tag on the back of.

Certain names always awake certain prejudices.