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Simone Weil Quotes

1909–1943 France

Simone Adolphine Weil (3 February 1909 – 24 August 1943) was a French social and religious philosopher, and Christian mystic. Politically active, during the Spanish Civil War she joined the Anarchist military unit known as the Durruti Column, and took part in the French Resistance during World War II.

France
Activists
Anarchists
Authors
Philosophers

Also known as: Weil, Simone

Random Simone Weil quote

169 quotes

Liberty, taking the word in its concrete sense, consists in the ability to choose.

Simone Weil : An Anthology (1986)

We should desire neither the immortality nor the death of any human being, whoever he may be, with whom we have to do.

Simone Weil : An Anthology (1986)

The miser deprives himself of his treasure because of his desire for it.

Simone Weil : An Anthology (1986)

The first thing that we know about ourselves is our imperfection.

Lectures on Philosophy (1959)

Prestige, which is illusion, is of the very essence of power.

The Power of Words (1937)

To wish to escape from solitude is cowardice. Friendship is not to be sought, not to be dreamed, not to be desired; it is to be exercised (it is a virtue).

Simone Weil : An Anthology (1986)

It is not in a person's nature to desire what he already has. Desire is a tendency, the start of a movement toward something, toward a point from which one is absent.

Simone Weil : An Anthology (1986)

There is a reality outside the world, that is to say, outside space and time, outside man's mental universe, outside any sphere whatsoever that is accessible to human faculties.

Draft for a Statement of Human Obligation (1943)

If all men, by the act of being born, are destined to suffer violence, that is a truth to which the empire of circumstances closes their minds.

Simone Weil : An Anthology (1986)

The spirit, overcome by the weight of quantity, has no longer any other criterion than efficiency.

Gravity and Grace (1972)

The development of the faculty of attention forms the real object and almost the sole interest of studies.

Waiting for God (1951)

It is impossible to feel pride in one’s intelligence at the moment when one really and truly exercises it.

Simone Weil: An Anthology (1986)

Any madness in us gains from being expressed, because in this way one gives a human form to what separates us from humanity.

Lectures on Philosophy (1959)

Whenever one tries to suppress doubt, there is tyranny.

Lectures in philosophy [Leçons de philosophie (1959)

We must wish either for that which actually exists or for that which cannot in any way exist — or, still better, for both. That which is and that which cannot be are both outside the realm of becoming.

Gravity and Grace (1947)

It would be strange, indeed, that the word of Christ should have produced such results if it had been properly understood.

Letter to a Priest (1951)

If anyone possesses this faculty, then his attention is in reality directed beyond the world, whether he is aware of it or not.

Draft for a Statement of Human Obligation (1943)

The surrealists have set up non-oriented thought as a model; they have chosen the total absence of value as their supreme value.

On Science, Necessity, and the Love of God (1968)

Rights are always asserted in a tone of contention; and when this tone is adopted, it must rely upon force in the background, or else it will be laughed at.

Simone Weil : An Anthology (1986)

From the power to transform him into a thing by killing him there proceeds another power, and much more prodigious, that which makes a thing of him while he still lives.

Simone Weil : An Anthology (1986)

Attribution

Quotes and notes from Wikiquote: Simone Weil (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0.