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The struggle between the opponents and defenders of capitalism is a struggle between innovators who do not know what innovation to make and conservatives who do not know what to conserve.

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
Defenders
Conservatives
Opponents
Innovation
Capitalism
Struggle
Make
Conserve
Innovators

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Religion in so far as it is a source of consolation is a hindrance to true faith and in this sense atheism is a purification. I have to be an atheist with that part of myself which is not made for God. Among those in whom the supernatural part of themselves has not been awakened, the atheists are right and the believers wrong.
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We must not wish for the disappearance of our troubles but for the grace to transform them.
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Sin is not a distance, it is a turning of our gaze in the wrong direction.
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The afflicted are not listened to. They are like someone whose tongue has been cut out and who occasionally forgets the fact. When they move their lips no ear perceives any sound. And they themselves soon sink into impotence in the use of language, because of the certainty of not being heard.
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In struggling against anguish one never produces serenity the struggle against anguish only produces new forms of anguish.
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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.
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We do not obtain the most precious gifts by going in search of them but by waiting for them.
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Punishment is a vital need of the human soul.
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Nothing can have as its destination anything other than its origin. The contrary idea, the idea of progress, is poison.
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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.
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The notion of rights is linked with the notion of sharing out, of exchange, of measured quantity. It has a commercial flavor, essentially evocative of legal claims and arguments. Rights are always asserted in a tone of contention and when this tone is adopted, it must rely upon force in the background, or else it will be laughed at.
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Academic work is one of those fields which contain a pearl so precious that it is worth while to sell all our possessions, keeping nothing for ourselves, in order to be able to acquire it.
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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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Stars and blossoming fruit-trees: utter permanence and extreme fragility give an equal sense of eternity.
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The human soul has need of security and also of risk. The fear of violence or of hunger or of any other extreme evil is a sickness of the soul. The boredom produced by a complete absence of risk is also a sickness of the soul.
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