Primo Levi Quotes

If, amid the multitude of contending counsel, you have hesitated and doubted; if, when a great measure suggested itself, you have shrunk from the vast responsibility, afraid to go forward lest you should go wrong, what wonder?

A minister of state is excusable for the harm he does when the helm of government has forced his hand in a storm; but in the calm he is guilty of all the good he does not do.

I don't reject caution, but you also have to be careful about caution because there's a stage when it turns into paralysis.

If you have any question in your mind, don't do it. If you go in thinking it's going to fix something that's wrong, don't do it.

To me, nothing is more vibrant than having the power to do something but not having the experience of knowing what's right and what's wrong.

I've never stayed awake at night over a chance I took that failed, but I've stayed awake over chances I didn't take.

My gut and intuition told me it wasn't time to do this.

Silence is the safest policy if you are unsure of yourself.

One of the biggest lessons I've learned recently is that when you don't know what to do, you should do nothing until you figure out what to do because a lot of times you feel like you are pressed against the wall, and you've got to make a decision. You never have to do anything. Don't know what to do? Do nothing.

When "Why not do it?" barely outweighs "Why do it?" — don't do it.

He who hesitates is sometimes wise.

Based on the experience of my life, which I have not exactly hit out of the park, I tend to agree with that thing about, If it's not broke, don't fix it. And would go even further to: Even if it is broke, leave it alone, you'll probably make it worse.

It is only through timidity that states are lost.

If we don't play God, who will?

What's it going to be then, eh?

If you don't know what to do, don't do anything.

I'm still not sure I made the right choice when I told my wife about the bakery attack.But then,it might not have been a question of right or wrong. Which is to say that wrong choices can produce right results, and vice versa. I myself have adopted the position that,in fact, we never choose anything at all. Things happen. Or not.

When in doubt, stand still.

Knowing what to do and not doing it is the same as not knowing what to do.

When you always know what is right, where is freedom? No one chooses the wrong, Jacen Solo. Uncertainty sets you free." -Vergere

This is a boy's lot: anything he does, anything whatever, may afterward turn out to have been a crime - he never knows. And punishment and clemency are alike inexplicable.

All the 'too close to call' announcements are not due to incompetence ... It's caution.

Doubt may be a poor encouragement to do anything, but it is a bad reason for doing nothing.

It's better to stay too long than to leave too soon.

All I can do is say I smell a rat. I don't know where it is or what kind of rat it is, but as an artist, I can express how. But I couldn't responsibly stand up and tell people which way to go, because then I'm just as guilty as the people who are telling everybody else what to do and where to go.