Simone Weil
28 quotations
The most important part of teaching is to teach what it is to know.
I can, therefore I am.
The future is made of the same stuff as the present.
Real genius is nothing else but the supernatural virtue of humility in the domain of thought.
Imagination and fiction make up more than three quarters of our life.
A hurtful act is the transference to others of the degradation which we bear in ourselves.
Whatever debases the intelligence degrades the entire human being.
Every time that I think of the crucifixion of Christ, I commit the sin of envy.
A mind enclosed in language is in prison.
Every perfect life is a parable invented by God.
Nothing is less instructive than a machine.
I suffer more from the humiliations inflicted by my country than from those inflicted on her.
Oppression that is clearly inexorable and invincible does not give rise to revolt but to submission.
Evil being the root of mystery, pain is the root of knowledge.
We must prefer real hell to an imaginary paradise.
The destruction of the past is perhaps the greatest of all crimes.
Art is the symbol of the two noblest human efforts: to construct and to refrain from destruction.
An atheist may be simply one whose faith and love are concentrated on the impersonal aspects of God.
To get power over is to defile. To possess is to defile.
Purity is the power to contemplate defilement.
Life does not need to mutilate itself in order to be pure.
Why is it that reality, when set down untransposed in a book, sounds false?
One cannot imagine St. Francis of Assisi talking about rights.
To be rooted is perhaps the most important and least recognized need of the human soul.
Beauty always promises, but never gives anything.