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Simone Weil

Simone Weil Quotes

Philosopher

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Famous Simone Weil Quotes

“Gregorian chant, Romanesque architecture, the Iliad , the invention of geometry were not, for the people through whom they were brought into being and made available to us, occasions for the manifestation of personality.”

PeopleMadePersonalityAvailableArchitectureInventionOccasionsManifestationGeometryIliad
Book:Selected Essays, 1934-1943: Historical, Political, and Moral Writings
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“One can never really give a proof of the reality of anything; reality is not something open to proof, it is something established. It is established just because proof is not enough. It is this characteristic of language, at once indispensable and inadequate, which shows the reality of the external world. Most people hardly ever realize this, because it is rare that the very same man thinks and puts his thought into action.”

PeopleThinkingMenWorldGivingEnoughShowsRealityActionLanguageRealizingProofCharacteristicsIndispensableInadequate
Author:Simone Weil
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“Our patriotism comes straight from the Romans. This is why French children are encouraged to seek inspiration for it in Corneille. It is a pagan virtue, if these two words are compatible. The word pagan, when applied to Rome, early possesses the significance charged with horror which the early Christian controversialists gave it. The Romans really were an atheistic and idolatrous people; not idolatrous with regard to images made of stone or bronze, but idolatrous with regard to themselves. It is this idolatry of self which they have bequeathed to us in the form of patriotism.”

PeopleIfsChildrenMadeTwoSelfInspirationChristianFormVirtueHorrorStonesRegardPatriotismSignificanceRomePaganIdolatryAtheisticCompatibleBronze
Author:Simone Weil
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“The great error of nearly all studies of war, an error into which all socialists have fallen, has been to consider war as an episode in foreign politics when it is especially an act of internal politics and the most atrocious act of all . . . Since the directing apparatus has no other way of fighting the enemy than by sending its own soldiers, under compulsion, to their death-the war of one state against another state resolves itself into a war of the state and the military apparatus against its own people.”

PeopleWayHas BeensWarStatesFightingEnemyStudyMilitaryErrorsSoldierFallenInternalsResolveAnti WarEpisodesCompulsion
Author:Simone Weil
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“In this world, only those people who have fallen to the lowest degree of humiliation, far below beggary, who are not just without any social consideration but are regarded by all as being deprived of that foremost human dignity, reason itself - only those people, in fact, are capable of telling the truth. All the others lie.”

PeopleWorldHumansReasonFactsTruthLyingSocialThis WorldDegreesCapableDignityFallenConsiderationTelling The TruthLowestHumiliationDeprivedHuman DignityBeggary
Author:Simone Weil
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