Simone Weil

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

— 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

“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

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

— Simone Weil

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

— 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

“An atheist may be simply one whose faith and love are concentrated on the impersonal aspects of God.”

— Simone Weil

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

— Simone Weil

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

— 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.”

— Simone Weil

“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

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

— 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.”

— Simone Weil

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

— 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.”

— 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.”

— 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.”

— Simone Weil

“Whatever debases the intelligence degrades the entire human being.”

— Simone Weil

“Beauty always promises, but never gives anything.”

— Simone Weil

“Attachment is the great fabricator of illusions reality can be attained only by someone who is detached.”

— Simone Weil