3 December 2020 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.
3 December 2020 Simone Weil A self-respecting nation is ready for anything, including war, except for a renunciation of its option to make war.
3 December 2020 Simone Weil The role of the intelligence – that part of us which affirms and denies and formulates opinions is merely to submit.
3 December 2020 Simone Weil Imagination and fiction make up more than three quarters of our real life.
3 December 2020 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.
3 December 2020 Simone Weil 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.
3 December 2020 Simone Weil What a country calls its vital… interests are not things that help its people live, but things that help it make war.
3 December 2020 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.
3 December 2020 Simone Weil To want friendship is a great fault. Friendship ought to be a gratuitous joy, like the joys afforded by art or life.
3 December 2020 Simone Weil The intelligent man who is proud of his intelligence is like the condemned man who is proud of his large cell.
3 December 2020 Simone Weil 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.
3 December 2020 Simone Weil An atheist may be simply one whose faith and love are concentrated on the impersonal aspects of God.
3 December 2020 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.
3 December 2020 Simone Weil Attachment is the great fabricator of illusions reality can be attained only by someone who is detached.
3 December 2020 Simone Weil 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.
3 December 2020 Simone Weil Imagination is always the fabric of social life and the dynamic of history. The influence of real needs and compulsions, of real interests and materials, is indirect because the crowd is never conscious of it.
3 December 2020 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.
3 December 2020 Simone Weil The contemporary form of true greatness lies in a civilization founded on the spirituality of work.
3 December 2020 Simone Weil There is one, and only one, thing in modern society more hideous than crime namely, repressive justice.
3 December 2020 Simone Weil To write the lives of the great in separating them from their works necessarily ends by above all stressing their pettiness, because it is in their work that they have put the best of themselves.
3 December 2020 Simone Weil The only way into truth is through one’s own annihilation through dwelling a long time in a state of extreme and total humiliation.
3 December 2020 Simone Weil Evil, when we are in its power, is not felt as evil, but as a necessity, even a duty.
