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.)

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

A self-respecting nation is ready for anything, including war, except for a renunciation of its option to make war.
Simone Weil
Topics: War

A man whose mind feels that it is captive would prefer to blind himself to the fact. But if he hates falsehood, he will not do so; and in that case he will have to suffer a lot. He will beat his head against the wall until he faints. He will come to again
Simone Weil

If we go down into ourselves, we find that we possess exactly what we desire.
Simone Weil
Topics: Blessings, Silver Linings, Desire

The role of the intelligence—that part of us which affirms and denies and formulates opinions is merely to submit.
Simone Weil
Topics: Intelligence

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

To be a hero or a heroine, one must give an order to oneself.
Simone Weil
Topics: Heroes

Imaginary evil is romantic and varied; real evil is gloomy, monotonous, barren, boring. Imaginary good is boring; real good is always new, marvelous, intoxicating.
Simone Weil
Topics: Evil, Goodness

Learn to reject friendship, or rather the dream of friendship. To want friendship is a great fault. Friendship ought to be a gratuitous joy, like the joys afforded by art, or life (like aesthetic joys). I must refuse it in order to be worthy to receive it
Simone Weil
Topics: Friendship, Friends and Friendship

Those who love a cause are those who love the life which has to be led in order to serve it.
Simone Weil
Topics: Aptness, Appropriateness

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

If we are suffering illness, poverty, or misfortune, we think we shall be satisfied on the day it ceases. But there too, we know it is false; so soon as one has got used to not suffering one wants something else.
Simone Weil
Topics: Satisfaction

Under the name of truth I also included beauty, virtue, and every kind of goodness, so that for me it was a question of a conception of the relationship between grace and desire. The conviction that had come to me was that when one hungers for bread one does not receive stones. But at that time I had not read the Gospel.
Just as I was certain that desire has in itself an efficacy in the realm of spiritual goodness whatever its form, I thought it was also possible that it might not be effective in any other realm.
Simone Weil
Topics: Goodness

We are like horses who hurt themselves as soon as they pull on their bits—and we bow our heads. We even lose consciousness of the situation, we just submit. Any re-awakening of thought is then painful.
Simone Weil
Topics: Slavery

I suffer more from the humiliations inflicted by my country than from those inflicted on her.
Simone Weil
Topics: Nations, Nationalism, Nationality, Nation

Humanism was not wrong in thinking that truth, beauty, liberty, and equality are of infinite value, but in thinking that man can get them for himself without grace.
Simone Weil
Topics: Humanity

A test of what is real is that it is hard and rough. Joys are found in it, not pleasure. What is pleasant belongs to dreams.
Simone Weil
Topics: Reality

The most important part of teaching is to teach what it is to know.
Simone Weil
Topics: Teaching, Education, Part of The Whole

The intelligent man who is proud of his intelligence is like the condemned man who is proud of his large cell
Simone Weil
Topics: Intelligence

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

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

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

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

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

In solitude we are in the presence of mere matter (even the sky, the stars, the moon, trees in blossom), things of less value (perhaps) than a human spirit. Its value lies in the greater possibility of attention.
Simone Weil
Topics: Solitude

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

For when two beings who are not friends are near each other there is no meeting, and when friends are far apart there is no separation.
Simone Weil
Topics: Friendship, Friends

Do not allow yourself to be imprisoned by any affection. Keep your solitude. The day, if it ever comes, when you are given true affection there will be no opposition between interior solitude and friendship, quite the reverse. It is even by this infallible sign that you will recognize it.
Simone Weil
Topics: Friendship

Culture is an instrument wielded by teachers to manufacture teachers, who, in their turn, will manufacture still more teachers.
Simone Weil
Topics: Culture

It is only the impossible that is possible for God. He has given over the possible to the mechanics of matter and the autonomy of his creatures.
Simone Weil
Topics: God

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