Quotes By Simone Weil

Force is as pitiless to the man who possesses it, or thinks he does, as it is to its victims; the second it crushes, the first it intoxicates. The truth is, nobody really possesses it.

The role of the intelligence - that part of us which affirms and denies and formulates opinions is merely to submit.

We must prefer real hell to an imaginary paradise.

Equality is the public recognition, effectively expressed in institutions and manners, of the principle that an equal degree of attention is due to the needs of all human beings.

Humility is attentive patience.

To set up as a standard of public morality a notion which can neither be defined nor conceived is to open the door to every kind of tyranny.

Every time that I think of the crucifixion of Christ, I commit the sin of envy.

We can only know one thing about God - that he is what we are not. Our wretchedness alone is an image of this. The more we contemplate it, the more we contemplate him.

In struggling against anguish one never produces serenity; the struggle against anguish only produces new forms of anguish.

When once a certain class of people has been placed by the temporal and spiritual authorities outside the ranks of those whose life has value, then nothing comes more naturally to men than murder.

The contemporary form of true greatness lies in a civilization founded on the spirituality of work.

To get power over is to defile. To possess is to defile.

In the Church, considered as a social organism, the mysteries inevitably degenerate into beliefs.

If we are suffering illness, poverty, or misfortune, we think we shall be satisfied on the day it ceases. But there too, we know it is false; so soon as one has got used to not suffering one wants something else.

A mind enclosed in language is in prison.

To want friendship is a great fault. Friendship ought to be a gratuitous joy, like the joys afforded by art or life.

It is an eternal obligation toward the human being not to let him suffer from hunger when one has a chance of coming to his assistance.

Nothing is less instructive than a machine.

The most important part of teaching is to teach what it is to know.

There is no detachment where there is no pain. And there is no pain endured without hatred or lying unless detachment is present too.

Difficult as it is really to listen to someone in affliction, it is just as difficult for him to know that compassion is listening to him.

Petroleum is a more likely cause of international conflict than wheat.

The only hope of socialism resides in those who have already brought about in themselves, as far as is possible in the society of today, that union between manual and intellectual labor which characterizes the society we are aiming at.

It is not the cause for which men took up arms that makes a victory more just or less, it is the order that is established when arms have been laid down.

Whatever debases the intelligence degrades the entire human being.

Evil being the root of mystery, pain is the root of knowledge.

Humanism was not wrong in thinking that truth, beauty, liberty, and equality are of infinite value, but in thinking that man can get them for himself without grace.

Every perfect life is a parable invented by God.

I would suggest that barbarism be considered as a permanent and universal human characteristic which becomes more or less pronounced according to the play of circumstances.

I suffer more from the humiliations inflicted by my country than from those inflicted on her.