Quotes By Simone Weil

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

In the Church, considered as a social organism, the mysteries inevitably degenerate into beliefs.

To want friendship is a great fault. Friendship ought to be a gratuitous joy, like the joys afforded by art or life.

A mind enclosed in language is in prison.

Nothing is less instructive than a machine.

It is an eternal obligation toward the human being not to let him suffer from hunger when one has a chance of coming to his assistance.

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

There is no detachment where there is no pain. And there is no pain endured without hatred or lying unless detachment is present too.

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.

Difficult as it is really to listen to someone in affliction, it is just as difficult for him to know that compassion is listening to him.

Petroleum is a more likely cause of international conflict than wheat.

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

It is not the cause for which men took up arms that makes a victory more just or less, it is the order that is established when arms have been laid down.

Whatever debases the intelligence degrades the entire human being.

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.

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.

Every perfect life is a parable invented by God.

I suffer more from the humiliations inflicted by my country than from those inflicted on her.

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