Zitat des Tages von Simone Weil:
Petroleum is a more likely cause of international conflict than wheat.
I suffer more from the humiliations inflicted by my country than from those inflicted on her.
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.
The poison of skepticism becomes, like alcoholism, tuberculosis, and some other diseases, much more virulent in a hitherto virgin soil.
Imagination is always the fabric of social life and the dynamic of history. The influence of real needs and compulsions, of real interests and materials, is indirect because the crowd is never conscious of it.
As soon as men know that they can kill without fear of punishment or blame, they kill; or at least they encourage killers with approving smiles.
The only hope of socialism resides in those who have already brought about in themselves, as far as is possible in the society of today, that union between manual and intellectual labor which characterizes the society we are aiming at.
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.
To be rooted is perhaps the most important and least recognized need of the human soul.
When once a certain class of people has been placed by the temporal and spiritual authorities outside the ranks of those whose life has value, then nothing comes more naturally to men than murder.
The intelligent man who is proud of his intelligence is like the condemned man who is proud of his large cell.
We must prefer real hell to an imaginary paradise.
More than in any other performing arts the lack of respect for acting seems to spring from the fact that every layman considers himself a valid critic.
Real genius is nothing else but the supernatural virtue of humility in the domain of thought.
The only way into truth is through one's own annihilation; through dwelling a long time in a state of extreme and total humiliation.
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.
Force is as pitiless to the man who possesses it, or thinks he does, as it is to its victims; the second it crushes, the first it intoxicates. The truth is, nobody really possesses it.
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.
Nothing is less instructive than a machine.
A science which does not bring us nearer to God is worthless.
Attachment is the great fabricator of illusions; reality can be attained only by someone who is detached.
The contemporary form of true greatness lies in a civilization founded on the spirituality of work.
To be a hero or a heroine, one must give an order to oneself.
The highest ecstasy is the attention at its fullest.
In the Church, considered as a social organism, the mysteries inevitably degenerate into beliefs.
Culture is an instrument wielded by teachers to manufacture teachers, who, in their turn, will manufacture still more teachers.
A doctrine serves no purpose in itself, but it is indispensable to have one if only to avoid being deceived by false doctrines.
Evil being the root of mystery, pain is the root of knowledge.
Every perfect life is a parable invented by God.
It is an eternal obligation toward the human being not to let him suffer from hunger when one has a chance of coming to his assistance.
A mind enclosed in language is in prison.
There can be a true grandeur in any degree of submissiveness, because it springs from loyalty to the laws and to an oath, and not from baseness of soul.
Imagination and fiction make up more than three quarters of our real life.
We can only know one thing about God - that he is what we are not. Our wretchedness alone is an image of this. The more we contemplate it, the more we contemplate him.
The danger is not lest the soul should doubt whether there is any bread, but lest, by a lie, it should persuade itself that it is not hungry.
A hurtful act is the transference to others of the degradation which we bear in ourselves.