Simone Weil

“The most important part of teaching is to teach what it is to know.”

— 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

“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

“Beauty always promises, but never gives anything.”

— Simone Weil

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

— 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

“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 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

“Charity. To love human beings in so far as they are nothing. That is to love them as God does.”

— 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.”

— Simone Weil

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

— Simone Weil

“Evil being the root of mystery, pain is the root of knowledge.”

— Simone Weil

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

— 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

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

— 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

“Humility is attentive patience.”

— Simone Weil

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

— Simone Weil

“Most works of art, like most wines, ought to be consumed in the district of their fabrication.”

— Simone Weil

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

— Simone Weil