Inspirational Quotations

Inspirational Quotes by Simone Weil (French Philosopher, Political Activist)

Simone Weil (1909–43) was a French essayist, political activist, philosopher, and religious mystic. She is well known for the strength of her commitments and the breadth and depth of her analysis of various facets of modern civilization.

Born in Paris to a Jewish-agnostic family, Simone attended École Normale Supérieure, but rejected a traditional academic career. She identified and lived with the poor and the oppressed, serving the Spanish Civil War on the Republican side, and working as a manual farm worker and in a car factory. In the late 1930s, she had the first of many mystical experiences that drew her to the Roman Catholic Church. She converted to Catholicism in 1938 and moved to England in 1942.

During World War II, Weil joined the French Resistance movement in England and starved in solidarity by consuming the same rations, as did her French compatriots who were inmates of the Nazi labor camps. Weil soon grew weak and died of tuberculosis.

Most of her works appeared after death; in her collected works, Weil explored the spiritually dampening effect of modern industrial life, the reasons for human exploitation, and the connection between the human condition and the realm of the transcendental. Weil’s notable works include La Pesanteur et la grâce (1949; Gravity and Grace, 1952,) L’Enracinement (1949; The Need for Roots, 1952,) Attente de Dieu (1950; Waiting for God, 1951,) and Cahiers (1952–55; Notebooks, 1956.)

More: Wikipedia • READ: Works by Simone Weil

In the Church, considered as a social organism, the mysteries inevitably degenerate into beliefs.
—Simone Weil
Topics: Religion, Churches

Evil being the root of mystery, pain is the root of knowledge.
—Simone Weil
Topics: Pain, Difficulties, Adversity

Every new development for the last three centuries has brought men closer to a state of affairs in which absolutely nothing would be recognized in the whole world as possessing a claim to obedience except the authority of the State. The majority of people in Europe obey nothing else.
—Simone Weil

Imagination and fiction make up more than three-quarters of our real life.
—Simone Weil
Topics: Imagination

When a contradiction is impossible to resolve except by a lie, then we know that it is really a door.
—Simone Weil
Topics: Problems

At the bottom of the heart of every human being, from earliest infancy until the tomb, there is something that goes on indomitably expecting, in the teeth of all experience of crimes committed, suffered, and witnessed, that good and not evil will be done
—Simone Weil
Topics: Goodness

The contemporary form of true greatness lies in a civilization founded on the spirituality of work.
—Simone Weil
Topics: Work

The poison of skepticism becomes, like alcoholism, tuberculosis, and some other diseases, much more virulent in a hitherto virgin soil.
—Simone Weil
Topics: Skepticism, Doubt

It would seem that man was born a slave, and that slavery is his natural condition. At the same time 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.
—Simone Weil
Topics: Liberty

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
Topics: Civilization

Every time that I think of the crucifixion of Christ, I commit the sin of envy.
—Simone Weil
Topics: Christianity

Oppression that is clearly inexorable and invincible does not give rise to revolt but to submission.
—Simone Weil
Topics: Oppression

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: Authors & Writing, Fiction

The real stumbling-block of totalitarian regimes is not the spiritual need of men for freedom of thought; it is men’s inability to stand the physical and nervous strain of a permanent state of excitement, except during a few years of their youth.
—Simone Weil
Topics: Tyranny, Excitement

To be rooted is perhaps the most important and least recognized need of the human soul.
—Simone Weil
Topics: Soul

I can, therefore I am.
—Simone Weil
Topics: Existence

Attachment is the great fabricator of illusions; reality can be attained only by someone who is detached.
—Simone Weil
Topics: Attachment

Why is it that reality, when set down untransposed in a book, sounds false?
—Simone Weil
Topics: Reality

With no matter what human being, taken individually, I always find reasons for concluding that sorrow and misfortune do not suit him; either because he seems too mediocre for anything so great, or, on the contrary, too precious to be destroyed.
—Simone Weil
Topics: Sadness, Sorrow

Beauty always promises, but never gives anything.
—Simone Weil
Topics: Promises, Beauty

Those who are unhappy have no need for anything in this world but people capable of giving them their attention.
—Simone Weil
Topics: Attention, Unhappiness, Sadness, Happiness

To us, men of the West, a very strange thing happened at the turn of the century; without noticing it, we lost science, or at least the thing that had been called by that name for the last four centuries. What we now have in place of it is something different, radically different, and we don’t know what it is. Nobody knows what it is.
—Simone Weil
Topics: Science

Evil is neither suffering nor sin; it is both at the same time, it is something common to them both. For they are linked together; sin makes us suffer and suffering makes us evil, and this indissoluble complex of suffering and sin is the evil in which we are submerged against our will, and to our horror.
—Simone Weil
Topics: Evil

Humility is attentive patience.
—Simone Weil
Topics: Humility, Patience

Human beings are so made that the ones who do the crushing feel nothing; it is the person crushed who feels what is happening. Unless one has placed oneself on the side of the oppressed, to feel with them, one cannot understand.
—Simone Weil
Topics: Oppression

The payment of debts is necessary for social order. The non-payment is quite equally necessary for social order. For centuries humanity has oscillated, serenely unaware, between these two contradictory necessities.
—Simone Weil
Topics: Debt

Real genius is nothing else but the supernatural virtue of humility in the domain of thought.
—Simone Weil
Topics: Genius

Life does not need to mutilate itself in order to be pure.
—Simone Weil

A mind enclosed in language is in prison.
—Simone Weil
Topics: Language

The mysteries of faith are degraded if they are made into an object of affirmation and negation, when in reality they should be an object of contemplation.
—Simone Weil
Topics: Faith

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