Simone Weil: Citations en anglais (Page 9)

Simone Weil était philosophe française. Citations en anglais.
Simone Weil: 270   citations 6   J'aime

“The materialists say, it is by means of a series of straight lines more or less perfect that one imagines the perfect straight line as an ideal limit. That is right, but the progression in itself necessarily contains what is infinite; it is in relation to the perfect straight line that one can say that such and such a straight line is less twisted than some other. … Either one conceives the infinite or one does not conceive at all.”

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Simone Weil

Source: Lectures on Philosophy (1959), p. 87

“We have seen that language is something precious because it allows us to express ourselves; but it is fatal when one allows oneself to be completely led astray by it, because then it prevents one from expressing oneself. Language is the source of the prejudices and haste which Descartes thought of as the sources of error.”

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Simone Weil

Source: Lectures on Philosophy (1959), p. 76

“Just as a vagrant accused of stealing a carrot from a field stands before a comfortably seated judge who keeps up an elegant flow of queries, comments and witticisms while the accused is unable to stammer a word, so truth stands before an intelligence which is concerned with the elegant manipulation of opinions.”

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Simone Weil

Source: Simone Weil : An Anthology (1986), Human Personality (1943), p. 68

“Meditation on the chance which led to the meeting of my mother and father is even more salutary than meditation on death.”

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Simone Weil

Source: Simone Weil : An Anthology (1986), Chance (1947), p. 277

“I also am other than what I imagine myself to be. To know this is forgiveness.”

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Simone Weil

Source: Simone Weil : An Anthology (1986), Void and Compensation (1947), p. 200

“It is not religion but revolution which is the opium of the people.”

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Simone Weil livre Gravity and Grace

Source: Gravity and Grace (1947), p. 159 (1972 edition)

“Capitalism has brought about the emancipation of collective humanity with respect to nature. But this collective humanity has itself taken on with respect to the individual the oppressive function formerly exercised by nature.”

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Simone Weil livre Gravity and Grace

Source: Gravity and Grace (1947), p. 140 (1972 edition)

“We believe we are rising because while keeping the same base inclinations (for instance: the desire to triumph over others) we have given them a noble object. We should, on the contrary, rise by attaching noble inclinations to lowly objects.”

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Simone Weil livre Gravity and Grace

Croire qu’on s’élève parce qu’en gardant les mêmes bas penchants (exemple : désir de l’emporter sur autrui) on leur a donné des objets élevés. On s’élèverait au contraire en attachant à des objets bas des penchants élevés.
La pesanteur et la grâce (1948), p. 61
Source: Gravity and Grace (1947), p. 48 (1972 edition)

“School children and students who love God should never say: "For my part I like mathematics"; "I like French"; "I like Greek." They should learn to like all these subjects, because all of them develop that faculty of attention which, directed toward God, is the very substance of prayer.”

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Simone Weil

Waiting on God (1950), Reflections on the Right Use of School Studies with a View to the Love of God

“We must leave on one side the beliefs which fill up voids and sweeten what is bitter. The belief in immortality. The belief in the utility of sin: etiam peccata. The belief in the providential ordering of events — in short the "consolations" which are ordinarily sought in religion.”

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Simone Weil

Source: Simone Weil : An Anthology (1986), Detachment (1947), p. 258

“We should desire neither the immortality nor the death of any human being, whoever he may be, with whom we have to do.”

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Simone Weil

Source: Simone Weil : An Anthology (1986), Detachment (1947), p. 260

“If people were told: what makes carnal desire imperious in you is not its pure carnal element. It is the fact that you put into it the essential part of yourself—the need for Unity, the need for God — they wouldn’t believe it. To them it seems obvious that the quality of imperious need belongs to the carnal desire as such. In the same way it seems obvious to the miser that the quality of desirability belongs to gold as such, and not to its exchange value.”

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Simone Weil

First and Last Notebooks (1970)

“Attention consists of suspending our thought, leaving it detached, empty, and ready to be penetrated by the object; it means holding in our minds, within reach of this thought, but on a lower level and not in contact with it, the diverse knowledge we have acquired which we are forced to make use of.”

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Simone Weil

Waiting on God (1950), Reflections on the Right Use of School Studies with a View to the Love of God

“The necessity for power is obvious, because life cannot be lived without order; but the allocation of power is arbitrary because all men are alike, or very nearly. Yet power must not seem to be arbitrarily allocated, because it will not then be recognized as power. Therefore prestige, which is illusion, is of the very essence of power.”

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Simone Weil

Source: Simone Weil : An Anthology (1986), The Power of Words (1937), p. 235

“Truth is sought not because it is truth but because it is good.”

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Simone Weil

Source: Simone Weil : An Anthology (1986), Attention and Will (1947), p. 213

“To desire friendship is a great fault. Friendship should be a gratuitous joy like those afforded by art or life. We must refuse it so that we may be worthy to receive it; it is of the order of grace.”

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Simone Weil

Source: Simone Weil : An Anthology (1986), Love (1947), p. 274

“To listen to someone is to put oneself in his place while he is speaking. To put oneself in the place of someone whose soul is corroded by affliction, or in near danger of it, is to annihilate oneself. It is more difficult than suicide would be for a happy child. Therefore 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.
That is why there is no hope for the vagrant as he stands before the magistrate. Even if, through his stammerings, he should utter a cry to pierce the soul, neither the magistrate nor the public will hear it. His cry is mute. And the afflicted are nearly always equally deaf to one another; and each of them, constrained by the general indifference, strives by means of self-delusion or forgetfulness to become deaf to his own self.”

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Simone Weil

Source: Simone Weil : An Anthology (1986), Human Personality (1943), p. 71

“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.”

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Simone Weil

Source: Simone Weil : An Anthology (1986), The Power of Words (1937), p. 233

“The aim is to replace economic oligarchies by the State, which has a will-to-power of its own and is quite as little concerned with the public good; and a will-to-power, moreover, which is not economic but military and therefore much more dangerous to any good folk who have a taste for staying alive. And on the bourgeois side what on earth is the sense of objecting to State control in economic affairs if one accepts private monopolies which have all the economic and technical disadvantages of State monopolies and possibly some others as well?”

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Simone Weil

Source: Simone Weil : An Anthology (1986), The Power of Words (1937), p. 230

“Culture is an instrument wielded by professors to manufacture professors, who, when their turn comes, will manufacture professors.”

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Simone Weil livre L'Enracinement

HTTP://BOOKS. GOOGLE. COM/books? id=zacmeILjLvIC&q=%22culture+as+we+know+it+is+an+instrument+manipulated+by+teachers+for+manufacturing+more+teachers+who+in+their+turn+will+manufacture+still+more+teachers%22&pg=PA65#v=onepage
La culture est un instrument manié par des professeurs pour fabriquer des professeurs qui à leur tour fabriqueront des professeurs.
http://books.google.com/books?id=33rE96fD8h8C&q=%22La+culture+est+un+instrument+mani%C3%A9+par+des+professeurs+pour+fabriquer+des+professeurs+qui+%C3%A0+leur+tour+fabriqueront+des+professeurs%22&pg=PA65#v=onepage
The Need for Roots, part 2: Uprootedness, chapter 1: Uprootedness in the Towns (1949)