Simone Weil Quotes

• 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

  Tags in Equality

• Mathematics alone make us feel the limits of our intelligence. For we can always suppose in the case of an experiment that it is inexplicable because we don’t happen to have all the data. In mathematics we have all the data and yet we don’t understand. We always come back to the contemplation of our human wretchedness. What force is in relation to our will, the impenetrable opacity of mathematics is in relation to our intelligence.

  Simone Weil

  Topics in Intelligence

  Tags in Limits

• Whatever debases the intelligence degrades the entire human being.

  Simone Weil

  Topics in Intelligence

• For when two beings who are not friends are near each other there is no meeting, and when friends are far apart there is no separation.

  Simone Weil

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Friends

• 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

  Topics in History

• There can be a true grandeur in any degree of submissiveness, because it springs from loyalty to the laws and to an oath, and not from baseness of soul.

  Simone Weil

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Degree

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

  Simone Weil

  Topics in Intelligence

• There is something else which has the power to awaken us to the truth. It is the works of writers of genius. They give us, in the guise of fiction, something equivalent to the actual density of the real, that density which life offers us every day but which we are unable to grasp because we are amusing ourselves with lies.

  Simone Weil

  Topics in Power

• Real genius is nothing else but the supernatural virtue of humility in the domain of thought.

  Simone Weil

  Topics in Genius

  Tags in Virtue

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

  Simone Weil

  Topics in Intelligence

  Tags in Man

• Opportunities are usually disguised as hard work, so most people don’t recognize them.

  Simone Weil

  Topics in Suffering

  Tags in Empathy, Attention

• The future is made of the same stuff as the present.

  Simone Weil

  Topics in Future

• To be a hero or a heroine, one must give an order to oneself.

  Simone Weil

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Hero, Choice, Choosing

• Obvious and inexorable oppression that cannot be overcome does not give rise to revolt but to submission.

  Simone Weil

  Tags in Injustice

• Attention is the rarest and purest form of generosity.

  Simone Weil

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Generosity, Attention

• The joy of learning is as indispensable in study as breathing is in running. Where it is lacking there are no real students, but only poor caricatures of apprentices who, at the end of their apprenticeship, will not even have a trade.

  Simone Weil

  Topics in Education

  Tags in Learning

• The love of our neighbor in all its fullness simply means being able to say, “What are you going through?”

  Simone Weil

  Topics in Friendship, Love

  Tags in Community

• Do not allow yourself to be imprisoned by any affection. Keep your solitude. The day, if it ever comes, when you are given true affection there will be no opposition between interior solitude and friendship, quite the reverse. It is even by this infallible sign that you will recognize it.

  Simone Weil

  Topics in Friendship

  Tags in Integrity/Individuality, Solitude

• 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

  Topics in Respect

  Tags in Actors And Acting

• The capacity to give one’s attention to a sufferer is a very rare and difficult thing; it is almost a miracle; it is a miracle. Nearly all those who think they have the capacity do not possess it.

  Simone Weil

  Topics in Suffering

  Tags in Empathy, Attention

Simone Weil (101)

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

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