Primo Levi on history

Monsters exist, but they are too few in number to be truly dangerous; more dangerous are the common men, the functionaries ready to believe and to act without asking questions.

Death begins with the shoes; for most of us, they show themselves to be instruments of torture, which after a few hours of marching cause painful sores which become fatally infected.

In history and in life one sometimes seems to glimpse a ferocious law which states: “to he that has, will be given; from he that has not, will be taken away.”

History doesn’t repeat itself, but it does rhyme.

The man who has no sense of history, is like a man who has no ears or eyes.

Adolf Hitler1889–1945

There is nothing new in the world except the history you do not know.

Harry S. Truman1884–1972