Simone Weil quotes - page 8

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. (Simone Weil)
The poison of skepticism becomes, like alcoholism, tuberculosis, and some other diseases, much more virulent in a hitherto virgin soil. View quote
Simone Weil
Life does not need to mutilate itself in order to be pure. View quote
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. View quote
Simone Weil
Petroleum is a more likely cause of international conflict than wheat. View quote
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. View quote
Simone Weil
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. View quote
Simone Weil
What a country calls its vital... interests are not things that help its people live, but things that help it make war. View quote
Simone Weil
Nothing can have as its destination anything other than its origin. The contrary idea, the idea of progress, is poison. View quote
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. View quote
Simone Weil
The contemporary form of true greatness lies in a civilization founded on the spirituality of work. (Simone Weil)
The soul was not made to dwell in a thing; and when forced to it, there is no part of that soul but suffers violence. View quote
Simone Weil
If all men, by the act of being born, are destined to suffer violence, that is a truth to which the empire of circumstances closes their minds. View quote
Simone Weil
He who does not realize to what extent shifting fortune and necessity hold in subjection every human spirit, cannot regard as fellow-creatures nor love as he loves himself those whom chance separated from him by an abyss. The variety of constraints pressing upon man give rise to the illusion of several distinct species that cannot communicate. View quote
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. View quote
Simone Weil
Purity is the power to contemplate defilement. View quote
Simone Weil
If a man has willfully refused to consent, then it is in itself a criminal activity for him to exercise any function, major or minor, public or private, which gives him control over people's lives. View quote
Simone Weil
Whatever formulation of belief or disbelief a man may choose to make, if his heart inclines him to feel this respect, then he in fact also recognizes a reality other than this world's reality. View quote
Simone Weil
There is a reality outside the world, that is to say, outside space and time, outside man's mental universe, outside any sphere whatsoever that is accessible to human faculties. View quote
Simone Weil
The first thing that we know about ourselves is our imperfection. This is what Descartes meant when he said: 'I know God before I know myself.' View quote
Simone Weil
That which is and that which cannot be are both outside the realm of becoming. (Simone Weil)
A modern factory reaches perhaps almost the limit of horror. View quote
Simone Weil
The use of expressions like "to the extent that" is beyond our intellectual capacity. View quote
Simone Weil
The prospects of revolution seem therefore quite restricted. For can a revolution avoid war? It is, however, on this feeble chance that we must stake everything or abandon all hope. View quote
Simone Weil
Besides, it is written that the tree shall be known by its fruits. The Church has borne too many evil fruits for there not to have been some mistake at the beginning. View quote
Simone Weil