Simone Weil Quotes

French philosopher, writer, and social activist (1909–1943)

Simone Adolphine Weil (3 February 1909 – 24 August 1943) was a French social and religious philosopher, and Christian mystic. Politically active, during the Spanish Civil War she joined the Anarchist military unit known as the Durruti Column, and took part in the French Resistance during World War II. She was the sister of mathematician André Weil, with whom she shared an interest in ancient Greek and Indian thought.

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Pen Names: Émile Novis • S. Galois

Alternative Names: Simone Adolphine Weil

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L’action est l’aiguille indicatrice de la balance. Il ne faut pas toucher à l’aiguille, mais aux poids.

But we can be nearly sure that those whose love for God has caused their pure loves here below to disappear are false friends of God. Our neighbour, our friends, religious ceremonies and the beauty of the world do not fall in rank to unreal things after direct contact between God and the soul. On the contrary, only then do these things become real. Previously, they were half-dreams. Previously, they had no reality.

We can know only 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.

Stars and blossoming fruit trees: Utter permanence and extreme fragility give an equal sense of eternity.

It is not religion but revolution which is the opium of the people.

Money, mechanization, algebra. The three monsters of contemporary civilization.

L’amour n’est pas consolation, il est lumière.

Justice. To be ever ready to admit that another person is something quite different from what we read when he is there (or when we think about him). Or rather, to read in him that he is certainly something different, perhaps something completely different from what we read in him.
Every being cries out silently to be read differently.

The supernatural greatness of Christianity lies in the fact that it does not seek a supernatural remedy for suffering but a supernatural use for it.

It is precisely those artists and writers who are most inclined to think of their art as the manifestation of their personality who are in fact the most in bondage to public taste.

The social order, though necessary, is essentially evil, whatever it may be.

There is nothing that comes closer to true humility than the intelligence. It is impossible to feel pride in one's intelligence at the moment when one really and truly exercises it.

The needs of the soul can for the most part be listed in pairs of opposites which balance and complete one another. The human soul has need of equality and of hierarchy. Equality is the public recognition, effectively expressed in institutions and manners, of the principle that an equal degree of attention is due to the needs of all human beings. Hierarchy is the scale of responsibilities. Since attention is inclined to direct itself upwards and remain fixed, special provisions are necessary to ensure the effective compatibility of equality and hierarchy.

Nothing is so beautiful and wonderful, nothing is so continually fresh and surprising, so full of sweet and perpetual ecstacy, as the good. No desert is so dreary, monotonous, and boring as evil. This is the truth about authentic good and evil. With fictional good and evil it is the other way round. Fictional good is boring and flat, while fictional evil is varied and intriguing, attractive, profound, and full of charm.

Action is the pointer which shows the balance. We must not touch the pointer but the weight.