Quotes By Simone Weil
We are like horses who hurt themselves as soon as they pull on their bits - and we bow our heads. We even lose consciousness of the situation, we just submit. Any re-awakening of thought is then painful.
Simone Weil
The intelligent man who is proud of his intelligence is like the condemned man who is proud of his large cell.
Simone Weil
Oppression that is clearly inexorable and invincible does not give rise to revolt but to submission.
Simone Weil
An atheist may be simply one whose faith and love are concentrated on the impersonal aspects of God.
Simone Weil
Culture is an instrument wielded by teachers to manufacture teachers, who, in their turn, will manufacture still more teachers.
Simone Weil
Who were the fools who spread the story that brute force cannot kill ideas? Nothing is easier. And once they are dead they are no more than corpses.
Simone Weil
For when two beings who are not friends are near each other there is no meeting, and when friends are far apart there is no separation.
Simone Weil
Those who are unhappy have no need for anything in this world but people capable of giving them their attention.
Simone Weil
A test of what is real is that it is hard and rough. Joys are found in it, not pleasure. What is pleasant belongs to dreams.
Simone Weil
A hurtful act is the transference to others of the degradation which we bear in ourselves.
Simone Weil
The poison of skepticism becomes, like alcoholism, tuberculosis, and some other diseases, much more virulent in a hitherto virgin soil.
Simone Weil
More than in any other performing arts the lack of respect for acting seems to spring from the fact that every layman considers himself a valid critic.
Simone Weil
A self-respecting nation is ready for anything, including war, except for a renunciation of its option to make war.
Simone Weil
It is only the impossible that is possible for God. He has given over the possible to the mechanics of matter and the autonomy of his creatures.
Simone Weil
With no matter what human being, taken individually, I always find reasons for concluding that sorrow and misfortune do not suit him; either because he seems too mediocre for anything so great, or, on the contrary, too precious to be destroyed.
Simone Weil
In the intellectual order, the virtue of humility is nothing more nor less than the power of attention.
Simone Weil
The mysteries of faith are degraded if they are made into an object of affirmation and negation, when in reality they should be an object of contemplation.
Simone Weil
I am not a Catholic; but I consider the Christian idea, which has its roots in Greek thought and in the course of the centuries has nourished all of our European civilization, as something that one cannot renounce without becoming degraded.
Simone Weil