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Our science is like a store filled with the most subtle intellectual devices for solving the most complex problems, and yet we are almost incapable of applying the elementary principles of rational thought.

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
Thought
Complex
Elementary
Problem
Rational
Solving
Reason
Filled
Incapable
Like
Intellectual
Devices
Problems
Store
Principles
Subtle
Almost
Stores
Science
Complexes
Applying

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Humanism was not wrong in thinking that truth, beauty, liberty, and equality are of infinite value, but in thinking that man can get them for himself without grace.
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I only read what I am hungry for at the moment when I have an appetite for it, and then I do not read, I eat.
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Compassion directed toward oneself is true humility.
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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.
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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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Punishment is a vital need of the human soul.
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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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In struggling against anguish one never produces serenity the struggle against anguish only produces new forms of anguish.
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The contemporary form of true greatness lies in a civilization founded upon the spirituality of work.
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Every sin is an attempt to fly from emptiness.
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Christians ought to suspect that affliction is the very essence of creation. To be a created thing is not necessarily to be afflicted, but it is necessarily to be exposed to affliction. ... Affliction is the surest sign that God wishes to be loved by us it is the most precious evidence of His tenderness.
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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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If we go down into ourselves, we find that we possess exactly what we desire.
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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 entire universe is nothing but a great metaphor.
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Everything beautiful has a mark of eternity.
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To be rooted is perhaps the most important and least recognized need of the human soul.
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The only hope of socialism resides in those who have already brought about in themselves, as far as is possible in the society of today, that union between manual and intellectual labor which characterizes the society we are aiming at.
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