Top 375 Quotes & Sayings by Simone Weil - Page 2

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.

As soon as men know that they can kill without fear of punishment or blame, they kill; or at least they encourage killers with approving smiles.

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.

Life does not need to mutilate itself in order to be pure.

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

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

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

A doctrine serves no purpose in itself, but it is indispensable to have one if only to avoid being deceived by false doctrines.

The destruction of the past is perhaps the greatest of all crimes.

There is one, and only one, thing in modern society more hideous than crime namely, repressive justice.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

If Germany, thanks to Hitler and his successors, were to enslave the European nations and destroy most of the treasures of their past, future historians would certainly pronounce that she had civilized Europe.

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

There can be a true grandeur in any degree of submissiveness, because it springs from loyalty to the laws and to an oath, and not from baseness of soul.

Whether the mask is labeled fascism, democracy, or dictatorship of the proletariat, our great adversary remains the apparatus—the bureaucracy, the police, the military. Not the one facing us across the frontier of the battle lines, which is not so much our enemy as our brothers' enemy, but the one that calls itself our protector and makes us its slaves. No matter what the circumstances, the worst betrayal will always be to subordinate ourselves to this apparatus and to trample underfoot, in its service, all human values in ourselves and in others.

It is grace that forms the void inside us and it is grace that can fill the void.

Joy is being fully aware of reality.

The right to kill: supposing the life of X ... were linked with our own so that the two deaths had to be simultaneous, should we still wish him to die? If with our whole body and soul we desire life and if nevertheless without lying, we can reply 'yes'> then we have the right to kill.

Love of God is pure when joy and suffering inspire an equal degree of gratitude.

Attention is the rarest and purest form of generosity.

We only possess what we renounce; what we do not renounce escapes from us.

Love is not consolation, it is light.

If you want to know what a man is really like, take notice of how he acts when he loses money.

God's love for us is not the reason for which we should love him. God's love for us is the reason for us to love ourselves.

To die for God is not a proof of faith in God. To die for an unknown and repulsive convict who is a victim of injustice, that is a proof of faith in God.

Human existence is so fragile a thing and exposed to such dangers that I cannot love without trembling.

Every being cries out in silence to be read differently. Do not be indifferent to these cries.

It is a fault to wish to be understood before we have made ourselves clear to ourselves.

Justice consists in seeing that no harm is done to men. Whenever a man cries inwardly: 'Why am I being hurt?' harm is being done to him. He is often mistaken when he tries to define the harm, and why and by whom it is being inflicted on him. But the cry itself is infallible.

Love: To feel with one's whole self the existence of another being.

The love of our neighbor in all its fullness simply means being able to say, "What are you going through?

Whenever one tries to suppress doubt , there is tyranny .

We must not wish for the disappearance of our troubles but for the grace to transform them.

We are like plants which have the one choice of being in or out of the light.

Religion as a source of consolation is an obstacle to true faith.

Compassion directed toward oneself is true humility.

When we hit a nail with a hammer, the whole of the shock received by the large head of the nail passes into the point without any of it being lost, although it is only a point. If the hammer and the head of the nail were infinitely big it would be just the same. The point of the nail would transmit this infinite shock at the point to which it was applied. Extreme affliction, which means physical pain, distress of soul and social degradation, all at the same time, constitutes the nail. The point is applied at the very center of the soul, whose head is all necessity, spreading throughout space and time.

We have to try to cure our faults by attention and not by will.

When war is waged, it is for the purpose of safeguarding or increasing one's capacity to make war. International politics are wholly involved in this vicious cycle. What is called national prestige consists in behaving always in such a way as to demoralize other nations by giving them the impression that, if it comes to war, one would certainly defeat them. What is called national security is an imaginary state of affairs in which one would retain the capacity to make war while depriving all other countries of it.

There is only one fault, only one: our inability to feed upon light.

Purity is the ability to contemplate defilement.

Everything which originates from pure love is lit with the radiance of beauty.

There is no greater joy for me than looking at the sky on a clear night with an attention so concentrated that all my other thoughts disappear; then one can think that the stars enter into one's soul.

Evil when we are in its power is not felt as evil but as a necessity, or even a duty.

Just as the power of the sun is the only force in the natural universe that causes a plant to grow against gravity, so the grace of God is the only force in the spiritual universe that causes a person to grow against the gravity of their own ego.

There are only two things that pierce the human heart. One is beauty. The other is affliction.

If we go down into ourselves, we find that we possess exactly what we desire.

Absolutely unmixed attention is prayer.

Fortunately the sky is beautiful everywhere.

The needs of a human being are sacred. Their satisfaction cannot be subordinated either to reasons of state, or to any consideration of money, nationality, race, or color, or to the moral or other value attributed to the human being in question, or to any consideration whatsoever.

The joy of learning is as indispensable in study as breathing is in running.

Power ... is the supreme end for all those who have not understood.

Pain and suffering are a kind of currency passed from hand to hand until they reach someone who receives them but does not pass them on.

Every sin is an attempt to fly from emptiness.

Patriotism is idolatry of the self.