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To get power over is to defile. To possess is to defile.

Simone Weil

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Simone Weil
Age: 34 †
Born: 1909
Born: February 3
Died: 1943
Died: August 24
Autobiographer
Diarist
French Resistance Fighter
Philosopher
Poet
Teacher
Trade Unionist
Translator
Writer
Paris
France
Simone Adolphine Weil
Defile
Possess
Power

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Stars and blossoming fruit-trees: utter permanence and extreme fragility give an equal sense of eternity.
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the instruments of power - arms, gold, machines, magical or technical secrets - always exist independently of him who disposes of them, and can be taken up by others. Consequently all power is unstable.
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To us, men of the West, a very strange thing happened at the turn of the century without noticing it, we lost science, or at least the thing that had been called by that name for the last four centuries. What we now have in place of it is something different, radically different, and we don't know what it is. Nobody knows what it is.
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How many people have been thus led, through lack of self-confidence, to stifle their most justified doubts?
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In reality nothing is so beautiful as the good, nothing is so monotonous and boring as evil.
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A self-respecting nation is ready for anything, including war, except for a renunciation of its option to make war.
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Attachment is a manufacturer of illusion and whoever wants reality ought to be detached.
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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.
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There is only one fault, only one: our inability to feed upon light.
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Compassion directed to oneself is humility.
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Only an indirect method is effective. We do nothing if we have not first drawn back.
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Love of God is pure when joy and suffering inspire an equal degree of gratitude.
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It is human misery and not pleasure which contains the secret of the divine wisdom.
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Human existence is so fragile a thing and exposed to such dangers that I cannot love without trembling.
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When a man's life is destroyed or damaged by some wound or privation of soul or body, which is due to other men's actions or negligence, it is not only his sensibility that suffers but also his aspiration toward the good. Therefore there has been sacrilege towards that which is sacred in him.
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Pain and suffering are a kind of currency passed from hand to hand until they reach someone who receives them but does not pass them on.
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Evil being the root of mystery, pain is the root of knowledge.
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What a country calls its vital economic interests are not the things which enable its citizens to live, but the things which enable it to make war. Petrol is more likely than wheat to be a cause of international conflict.
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The right to kill: supposing the life of X ... were linked with our own so that the two deaths had to be simultaneous, should we still wish him to die? If with our whole body and soul we desire life and if nevertheless without lying, we can reply 'yes'> then we have the right to kill.
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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.
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