Simone Weil

Simone Weil

37 quotes

As a French philosopher, Simone Weil earned a lasting place in the canon of memorable quotations. With equal ease, Simone Weil moved between Truth and Power, finding connections others missed. 46 of Simone Weil's sharpest quotes live here, spanning themes of Truth, Power, Intelligence, God, and Work. Readers often gravitate to this one: "Most works of art, like most wines, ought to be consumed in the district of their fabrication."

“In the intellectual order, the virtue of humility is nothing more nor less than the power of attention.”

— Simone Weil

Power

All Quotes by 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

Art

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

— Simone Weil

Power

“In the intellectual order, the virtue of humility is nothing more nor less than the power of attention.”

— Simone Weil

Power

“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.”

— Simone Weil

Future

“Two prisoners whose cells adjoin communicate with each other by knocking on the wall. The wall is the thing which separates them but is also their means of communication. It is the same with us and God. Every separation is a link.”

— Simone Weil

Communication

“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.”

— Simone Weil

Beauty

“What a country calls its vital... interests are not things that help its people live, but things that help it make war.”

— Simone Weil

War

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

— Simone Weil

Intelligence

“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

Hope

“The intelligent man who is proud of his intelligence is like the condemned man who is proud of his large cell.”

— Simone Weil

Intelligence

“The only way into truth is through one's own annihilation through dwelling a long time in a state of extreme and total humiliation.”

— Simone Weil

Truth

“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

Truth

“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

Equality

“Beauty always promises, but never gives anything.”

— Simone Weil

Beauty

“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

History

“A science which does not bring us nearer to God is worthless.”

— Simone Weil

God

“Humility is attentive patience.”

— Simone Weil

Patience

“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

Respect

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

— Simone Weil

Power

“The future is made of the same stuff as the present.”

— Simone Weil

Future