Quotes from Simone Weil

Evil being the root of mystery, pain is the root of knowledge.

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.

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.

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.

It is not the cause for which men took up arms that makes a victory more just or less, it is the order that is established when arms have been laid down.

...nothing on earth can stop man from feeling himself born for liberty. Never, whatever may happen, can he accept servitude; for he is a thinking creature.

Of two men who have no experience of God, he who denies him is perhaps nearer to him than the other.

Men owe us what we imagine they will give us. We must forgive them this debt.

If you want to know what a man is really like, take notice of how he acts when he loses money.

Algebra and money are essentially levelers; the first intellectually, the second effectively.

All sins are attempts to fill voids.

Oppression that is clearly inexorable and invincible does not give rise to revolt but to submission.

What a country calls its vital... interests are not things that help its people live, but things that help it make war.

Evil when we are in its power is not felt as evil but as a necessity, or even a duty.

Power ... is the supreme end for all those who have not understood.

God is rich in mercy. I know this wealth of his with the certainty of experience, I have touched it.

To die for God is not a proof of faith in God. To die for an unknown and repulsive convict who is a victim of injustice, that is a proof of faith in God.

It is much easier to imagine ourselves in the place of God the Creator than in the place of Christ crucified.

The world is God's language to us.

If we forgive God for his crime against us, which is to have made us finite creatures, He will forgive our crime against him, which is that we are finite creatures.

It is not my business to think about myself. My business is to think about God. It is for God to think about me.

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.

We cannot take a step toward the heavens. God crosses the universe and comes to us.

The essential thing to know about God is that God is Good. All the rest is secondary.