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.
Simone Weil
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.
Simone Weil
There is one, and only one, thing in modern society more hideous than crime namely, repressive justice.
Simone Weil
The role of the intelligence - that part of us which affirms and denies and formulates opinions is merely to submit.
Simone Weil
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.
Simone Weil
In struggling against anguish one never produces serenity; the struggle against anguish only produces new forms of anguish.
Simone Weil
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.
Simone Weil
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.
Simone Weil
In the Church, considered as a social organism, the mysteries inevitably degenerate into beliefs.
Simone Weil
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.
Simone Weil
The contemporary form of true greatness lies in a civilization founded on the spirituality of work.
Simone Weil
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.
Simone Weil
To want friendship is a great fault. Friendship ought to be a gratuitous joy, like the joys afforded by art or life.
Simone Weil
There is no detachment where there is no pain. And there is no pain endured without hatred or lying unless detachment is present too.
Simone Weil
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.
Simone Weil
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.
Simone Weil
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.
Simone Weil
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.
Simone Weil