The Wisdom of Leone Levi

Who Was Leone Levi and Why Should We Care About Him?

Leone Levi (1824-1876) was born and raised in the Jewish ghetto of Nizza Monferrato, a provincial market town in the Italy’s Piedmont region. He and a couple of hundred co-religionists were forced to live in a neighborhood that was walled off from the rest of town, and whose gates were locked and guarded from dusk to dawn. He attended a segregated school as Jews were banned from the town’s public schools. In 1848, when the Piedmontese Jews were freed from the ghettos and had their civil rights were restored, he set his sights on a university education. He passed the entrance exams for the University of Turin in 1851 and studied law. While practicing law in Turin, he read voraciously and became a remarkable polymath and one of the last people to know nearly everything about nearly everything.

Beginning in 1866 he launched a second career as an author, producing five books, numerous essays and stories in the popular press, and giving public lectures on a wide range of topics. The origin of this book was rooted in my discovery of the two volumes of Leone Levi’s Massime (Maxims) in the library of the Jewish Theological Seminary in New York City. These two books neatly summarized much of his personal philosophy in the form of 600 maxims and forty explanatory essays. After reading them I felt a strong urge to translate them as most of his ideas are even more relevant today than they were in the 1870s.

While a few of his initial maxims are old saws in the spirit of Aesop and Poor Richard, the overwhelming majority weigh in on topics as diverse as law, government, history, philosophy, economics, politics, classics, religion, science, and technology. Levi also had a clear understanding of mankind’s follies. He was concerned about people who falsely pretended to great wisdom, riches and/or power and how to protect the public from them. He railed against those who were physically or intellectually lazy. He made many astute observations about honest and corrupt players in both the public and private domains and their impacts on society.

I invite you to leaf through this book and enjoy his wit and keen insights.

Read: A Small Sample of Leone Levi’s 600 Maxims

A Small Sample of Leone Levi’s 600 Maxims

  • Hearty work heals poverty, but it is a medicine; because most people are children at heart and refuse their medicine, there are many poor people and few real workers.

  • One who bases arguments only on his own opinions shows mental myopia; one who rejects sound judgments developed through rigorous study shows weakness of character.

  • To appear especially learned enhances one’s self-respect but to merely go along with the opinions of all the others weakens it. Consequently, people use their expertise more often to criticize others than to praise them.

  • A man who appears devout in a secular society may be motivated not by religious conviction but by a desire to be admired for his courage, and similar logic can apply to a free thinker in a deeply religious society. In like fashion, a martyr is not always motivated by faith nor is one killed in war always motivated by heroism.

  • Overzealousness often raises suspicions. Therefore, the extra-good-hearted are often beset with woes and troubles.

  • Feeling oneself superior to others is often an illusion of a juvenile mind.

  • People like to see the suffering of others because it helps them feel their relatively greater happiness. Even more than fanaticism this perverse pleasure underlies religious persecution in many countries.

  • The only cures for a timid man’s poverty are for him to win the lottery or inherit from a rich uncle in America.

  • There are many types of courage, each driven by its own motives. Those types driven by noble causes are thought virtuous, while those with base motives are disdained. The courage of an assassin is often greater than that of a soldier not because of its inherent nature but because of what inspired him and how he explained his motivations. Thus, an act of courage can bring a man either fame or infamy.

  • Have you ever had the experience of responding to a warm greeting heard on the street and then feeling confused when you realize that the greeting was directed at someone else? This would happen to most rich people who, if parted from their fortunes, would realize that the honors and titles bestowed on them were really directed at their money.

  • Excellent doctors are rare, and great politicians are yet rarer, but they all claim to be so, be they doctors or politicians. One who diagnoses you with an illness without recommending an effective treatment or who carries on about a public problem without suggesting how a king, minister or governor should address it in this or that way shows you only that he does not understand the issue.

  • The response of the sworn witnesses in penal matters is a measure of the degree of vigor and civility of a country. Countries where witnesses’ actions do not substantially mirror the public’s sense of right and wrong, scientific education, or common knowledge are generally poorly governed. And in the contrary case, the opposite obtains.

  • Of the many oddities I have observed in the world, I have never encountered a truly tolerant bigot. If you think you have such a person, try scratching him and he will begin to spew fanatical hatred; this goes to show that bigotry is a form of masked egoism, crass ignorance, false charity, and an evil heart, as all of these are attributes of religious intolerance.

  • Sometimes unwise and dishonest means can help one seek his fortune. If you are ignorant and impotent, claim loudly to be wise and strong and many will believe you and give you fame and fortune. However, you will be despised by the few who grant true glory. To achieve the goal, you will say “What does it matter? In the world at large, the rich are most respected.” And your admirers will agree with you.

  • Adulation is the mother of bastards, unties the purses even of misers, breaks many bonds, displaces true merit, and opens every door, even those of academia. Many believe that it will open the doors of Heaven, and for that reason they daily recite praises of God.

  • Anyone can easily be a prophet in his own house, comparing income and spending. But few are willing or able to become prophets in this way, and when the prediction turns out badly, they disbelieve the result rather than mend their ways.

  • Do not believe in heresy, orthodoxy, in the character of politicians, the sincerity of speakers exhorting morality, or claims of disinterest put forward by promoters. Instead believe in your doubts about those who show themselves to be fanatics and intolerant of others’ opinions or who make a show of being much more serious, temperate, courteous, or just than others.

  • The esteem granted to scholars and that granted to the rich are not at all alike. The first belongs to the person and the second to his wealth; this latter would be more precisely called credit, which can be granted even to moneyed scoundrels. The difference is not merely one of words as there are many millionaires who are despised because of their shabbily obtained fortunes. Only the latter are denied credit for their money, while lenders offer millions of lire of credit to the others. Overall, justice and public opinion recognize this difference, and that is a good thing.

  • Any society in which people who wish to express their personal opinions on public issues must veil their thoughts and words is not a mature society.

  • A powerful mind is so attractive and strong that when it speaks, it blocks the ideas of all weaker thinkers. That is why one should judge people not only by their words, but also by their deeds.

  • Even rarer than wise people are those who know how to contain and correct their own tendency toward malevolence, a true poison of the human race which results in treachery, twists judgment, and destroys good will.

  • The difference between an opinion and an understanding consists in the latter being based on proven truths, and the former only on beliefs. People will fight to maintain their opinions, but for solid truths there can be no discussion by virtue of the evidence supporting them.