Human beings are so made that the ones who do the crushing feel nothing; it is the person crushed who feels what is happening. Unless one has placed oneself on the side of the oppressed, to feel with them, one cannot understand.
Simone Weil
The proper method of philosophy consists in clearly conceiving the insoluble problems in all their insolubility and then in simply contemplating them, fixedly and tirelessly, year after year, without any hope, patiently waiting.
Simone Weil
Those who are unhappy have no need for anything in this world but people capable of giving them their attention.
Simone Weil
Do not allow yourself to be imprisoned by any affection. Keep your solitude. The day, if it ever comes, when you are given true affection there will be no opposition between interior solitude and friendship, quite the reverse. It is even by this infallible sign that you will recognize it.
Simone Weil
A self-respecting nation is ready for anything, including war, except for a renunciation of its option to make war.
Simone Weil
Two prisoners whose cells adjoin communicate with each other by knocking on the wall. The wall is the thing which separates them but is also their means of communication. It is the same with us and God. Every separation is a link.
Simone Weil
The capacity to give one's attention to a sufferer is a very rare and difficult thing; it is almost a miracle; it is a miracle.
Simone Weil
Difficult as it is really to listen to someone in affliction, it is just as difficult for him to know that compassion is listening to him.
Simone Weil
Equality is the public recognition, effectively expressed in institutions and manners, of the principle that an equal degree of attention is due to the needs of all human beings.
Simone Weil
In the intellectual order, the virtue of humility is nothing more nor less than the power of attention.
Simone Weil
To set up as a standard of public morality a notion which can neither be defined nor conceived is to open the door to every kind of tyranny.
Simone Weil