Simone Weil Quotes

• 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

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Great, Lives

• To set up as a standard of public morality a notion which can neither be defined nor conceived is to open the door to every kind of tyranny.

  Simone Weil

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Morality

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

  Simone Weil

  Topics in Power

• To be rooted is perhaps the most important and least recognized need of the human soul.

  Simone Weil

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Important

• Those who are unhappy have no need for anything in this world but people capable of giving them their attention.

  Simone Weil

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Anything

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

  Simone Weil

  Topics in Society

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

  Simone Weil

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Pain

• The poison of skepticism becomes, like alcoholism, tuberculosis, and some other diseases, much more virulent in a hitherto virgin soil.

  Simone Weil

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Skepticism

• 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

  Topics in Truth

• 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

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Hope, Socialism

• 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

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Faith

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

  Simone Weil

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Teaching, Important

• The highest ecstasy is the attention at its fullest.

  Simone Weil

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Attention

• Humility is attentive patience.

  Simone Weil

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Humility, Patience

• Imagination and fiction make up more than three-quarters of our real life.

  Simone Weil

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Fiction, Imagination

• The danger is not lest the soul should doubt whether there is any bread, but lest, by a lie, it should persuade itself that it is not hungry.

  Simone Weil

  Tags in Denger

• When a contradiction is impossible to resolve except by a lie, then we know that it is really a door.

  Simone Weil

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Contradiction

• When once a certain class of people has been placed by the temporal and spiritual authorities outside the ranks of those whose life has value, then nothing comes more naturally to men than murder.

  Simone Weil

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in People, Class

• Who were the fools who spread the story that brute force cannot kill ideas? Nothing is easier. And once they are dead they are no more than corpses.

  Simone Weil

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Spread, Story

• With no matter what human being, taken individually, I always find reasons for concluding that sorrow and misfortune do not suit him; either because he seems too mediocre for anything so great, or, on the contrary, too precious to be destroyed.

  Simone Weil

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Human Being

Simone Weil (101)

Birth:	3rd February, 1909
Death:	24th August, 1943
Nationality:	French
Profession:	Philosopher

Related Authors

• Jiddu Krishnamurti
• George Edward Moore
• Anacharsis
• Mortimer J. Adler
• Blaise Pascal
• Augustine of Hippo
• Baltasar Gracián
• Jean Guitton
• Rudy Rucker
• Raymond Smullyan

Advertisement

Today's Anniversary - 20th November

Births

• 1932 - Richard Dawson
• 1970 - Matt Blunt
• 1942 - Meredith Monk
• 1959 - Sean Young
• 1936 - Don DeLillo

Deaths

• 1921 - Leonardo Sciascia
• 2006 - Robert Altman
• 1933 - Augustine Birrell
• 1976 - Trofim Lysenko
• 2011 - Shelagh Delaney