Simone Weil (/veɪ/; French: [simɔn vɛj] ( listen); 3 February 1909 – 24 August 1943) was a French philosopher, mystic, and political activist.
The recognition of human wretchedness is difficult for whoever is rich and powerful because he is almost invincibly led to believe that he is something. It is equally difficult for the man in miserable circumstances because he is almost invincibly led to believe that the rich and powerful man is something.
School children and students who love God should never say: "For my part I like mathematics"; "I like French"; "I like Greek. " They should learn to like all these subjects, because all of them develop that faculty of attention which, directed toward God, is the very substance of prayer.
One cannot imagine St. Francis of Assisi talking about rights.
If someone does me injury I must desire that this injury shall not degrade me. I must desire this out of love for him who inflicts it, in order that he may not really have done evil.
Capitalism has brought about the emancipation of collective humanity with respect to nature. But this collective humanity has itself taken on with respect to the individual the oppressive function formerly exercised by nature.
In the Church, considered as a social organism, the mysteries inevitably degenerate into beliefs.
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.
The soul is the human being considered as having a value in itself.
Nothing is worse than extreme affliction which destroys the "I" from the outside, because after that we can no longer destroy it ourselves.
Because no other could do it, he himself went to the greatest possible distance, the infinite distance. This infinite distance between God and God, this supreme tearing apart, this incomparable agony, this marvel of love, is the crucifixion. Nothing can be further from God than that which has been made accursed.
In this world we live in a mixture of time and eternity. Hell would be pure time.
Renunciation is submission to time.
Science is voiceless; it is the scientists who talk.
If a young girl is being forced into a brothel she will not talk about her rights. In such a situation the word would sound ludicrously inadequate.
Truth is sought not because it is truth but because it is good.
Whenever a human being, through the commission of a crime, has become exiled from good, he needs to be reintegrated with it through suffering. The suffering should be inflicted with the aim of bringing the soul to recognize freely some day that its infliction was just.
Love of God is pure when joy and suffering inspire an equal degree of gratitude.
Affliction hardens and discourages us because, like a red hot iron, it stamps the soul to its very depths with the scorn, the disgust, and even the self-hatred and sense of guilt that crime logically should produce but actually does not.
Purity is the power to contemplate defilement.
A hurtful act is the transference to others of the degradation which we bear in ourselves.