169 quotes
It is only by entering the transcendental, the supernatural, the authentically spiritual order that man rises above the social. Until then, whatever he may do, the social is transcendent in relation to him.
Simone Weil : An Anthology (1986)
A lever. We lower when we want to lift. In the same way, “He who humbleth himself shall be exalted.”
Gravity and Grace (1972)
Conformity is an imitation of grace.
Gravity and Grace (1947)
Whoever recognizes that reality recognizes also that link. Because of it, he holds every human being without any exception as something sacred to which he is bound to show respect.
Draft for a Statement of Human Obligation (1943)
The intelligence is defeated as soon as the expression of one's thoughts is preceded, explicitly or implicitly, by the little word 'we'. And when the light of the intelligence grows dim, it is not very long before the love of good becomes lost.
The Need for Roots: Prelude to a Declaration of Duties Towards Mankind (1949)
He who does not realize to what extent shifting fortune and necessity hold in subjection every human spirit, cannot regard as fellow-creatures nor love as he loves himself those whom chance separated from him by an abyss. The variety of constraints pressing upon man give rise to the illusion of several distinct species that cannot communicate.
Simone Weil : An Anthology (1986)
That reality is the unique source of all the good that can exist in this world: that is to say, all beauty, all truth, all justice, all legitimacy, all order, and all human behaviour that is mindful of obligations.
Draft for a Statement of Human Obligation (1943)
The necessity for power is obvious, because life cannot be lived without order; but the allocation of power is arbitrary because all men are alike, or very nearly. Yet power must not seem to be arbitrarily allocated, because it will not then be recognized as power. Therefore prestige, which is illusion, is of the very essence of power.
Simone Weil : An Anthology (1986)
Rome is the Great Beast of atheism and materialism, adoring nothing but itself. Israel is the Great Beast of religion. Neither one nor the other is likable. The Great Beast is always repulsive.
Simone Weil : An Anthology (1986)
Conscience is deceived by the social. Our supplementary energy (imaginative) is to a great extent taken up with the social. It has to be detached from it. That is the most difficult of detachments.
Simone Weil : An Anthology (1986)
Men … ask nothing better, it would seem, than to leave their destiny, their life, and all their thoughts in the hands of a few men with a gift for the exclusive manipulation of this or that technique.
On Science, Necessity, and the Love of God (1968)
There must be absolutely acceptance of the possibility that everything material in us should be destroyed. But we must simultaneously accept and repudiate the possibility that the supernatural part of the soul should disappear.
The common run of moralists complain that man is moved by his private self-interest: would to heaven it were so! Private interest is a self-centered principle of action, but at the same time restricted, reasonable and incapable of giving rise to unlimited evils.
Simone Weil : An Anthology (1986)
Human history is simply the history of the servitude which makes men — oppressed and oppressors alike — the plaything of the instruments of domination they themselves have manufactured, and thus reduces living humanity to being the chattel of inanimate chattels.
Simone Weil : An Anthology (1986)
Whatever formulation of belief or disbelief a man may choose to make, if his heart inclines him to feel this respect, then he in fact also recognizes a reality other than this world's reality.
Draft for a Statement of Human Obligation (1943)
When we are the victims of illusion we do not feel it to be an illusion but a reality. It is the same perhaps with evil. Evil when we are in its power is not felt as evil but as a necessity, or even a duty.
Gravity and Grace (1947)
But 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 : An Anthology (1986)
Croire qu’on s’élève parce qu’en gardant les mêmes bas penchants (exemple : désir de l’emporter sur autrui) on leur a donné des objets élevés. On s’élèverait au contraire en attachant à des objets bas des penchants élevés.
Gravity and Grace (1947)
Action is the pointer which shows the balance. We must not touch the pointer but the weight.
Gravity and Grace (1947)
Any government whose members commit this crime, or authorize it in their subordinates, has betrayed its function.
Draft for a Statement of Human Obligation (1943)