"It is not the cause for which men took up arms that makes a victory more just or less, it is the order that is established when arms have been laid down."
Read quote
6 likes
Quote collection
Simone Weil quotes (page 12 of 19)
374 quotes — follow a thought to its full quote page.
"In the intellectual order, the virtue of humility is nothing more nor less than the power of attention."
Read quote
6 likes
"A well ordered society would be one where the State only had a negative action, comparable to that of a rudder: a light pressure at the right moment to counteract the first suggestion of any loss of equilibrium."
Read quote
6 likes
"The real sin of idolatry is always committed on behalf of something similar to the State."
Read quote
6 likes
"During the last quarter of a century all the authority associated with the function of spiritual guidance ... has seeped down into the lowest publications. ... Between a poem by Valéry and an advertisement for a beauty cream promising a rich marriage to anyone who used it there was at no point a breach of continuity. So as a result of literature's spiritual usurpation a beauty cream advertisement possessed, in the eyes of little village girls, the authority that was formerly attached to the words of priests."
Read quote
6 likes
"prayer consists of attention. It is the orientation of all the attention of which the soul is capable towards God. The quality of the attention counts for much in the quality of the prayer. Warmth of heart cannot make up for it."
Read quote
6 likes
"Armies under the control of ... a sovereign State cannot bring freedom to anyone."
Read quote
6 likes
"Time does us violence; it is the only violence."
Read quote
6 likes
"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, brought together in the full light of demonstration, 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."
Read quote
6 likes
"One must always be ready to change sides with justice, that fugitive from the winning camp."
Read quote
6 likes
"The apprehension of necessity is an imitation of creation."
Read quote
6 likes
"Purity is the power to contemplate defilement."
Read quote
6 likes
"Those who keep the masses of men in subjection by exercising force and cruelty deprive them at once of two vital foods, liberty and obedience; for it is no longer within the power of such masses to accord their inner consent to the authority to which they are subjected. Those who encourage a state of things in which the hope of gain is the principle motive take away from men their obedience, for consent which is its essence is not something which can be sold."
Read quote
6 likes
"...nothing on earth can stop man from feeling himself born for liberty. Never, whatever may happen, can he accept servitude; for he is a thinking creature."
Read quote
6 likes
"There are two atheisms of which one is a purification of the notion of God."
Read quote
6 likes
"Most works of art, like most wines, ought to be consumed in the district of their fabrication."
Read quote
6 likes
"The development of the faculty of attention forms the real object and almost the sole interest of studies."
Read quote
6 likes
"The role of the intelligence - that part of us which affirms and denies and formulates opinions is merely to submit."
Read quote
6 likes
"A self-respecting nation is ready for anything, including war, except for a renunciation of its option to make war."
Read quote
6 likes
"Truth is sought not because it is truth but because it is good."
Read quote
5 likes