
“The danger today is in believing there are no sick people, there is only a sick society.”
Second Series, p. 186
Life Is Worth Living (1951–1957)
El mal de no creer es creer un poco.
Voces (1943)
El mal de no creer es creer un poco.
“The danger today is in believing there are no sick people, there is only a sick society.”
Second Series, p. 186
Life Is Worth Living (1951–1957)
“Ours is an age which consciously pursues health, and yet only believes in the reality of sickness.”
Review of Selected Essays http://www.nybooks.com/articles/13783 by Simone Weil, The New York Review of Books (1 February 1963)
Context: Ours is an age which consciously pursues health, and yet only believes in the reality of sickness. The truths we respect are those born of affliction. We measure truth in terms of the cost to the writer in suffering — rather than by the standard of an objective truth to which a writer's words correspond. Each of our truths must have a martyr.
Examples of self-translation (c. 2004), Quotes - Zitate - Citations - Citazioni
“As long as one believes in philosophy, one is healthy; sickness begins when one starts to think.”
Tears and Saints (1937)
Speech to the National Press Club (19 September 1975) http://www.margaretthatcher.org/document/102770
Leader of the Opposition
Context: In every generation there comes a moment to choose, and for too long we've chosen the soft option. And it's brought us pretty low. There are some signs now that our people are prepared to make the tough choice and to follow the harder road. We're still the same people that have fought for freedom, and won, and the spirit of adventure, the inventiveness, the determination are still strands in our character. We may suffer from a British sickness now, but we have a British constitution and it's still sound, and we have British hearts and a British will to win through. I believe in Britain. I believe in the British people. I believe in our future.
“For many human beings, religion has been the music which they believe in.”
Source: Real Presences (1989), III: Presences, Ch. 6 (p. 218).
“Don't believe them when they tell me there ain't no cure.The Rich stay healthy,the Sick stay poor”
"God Part II
Lyrics, Rattle And Hum(1988)
Context: Don't believe them when they tell me there ain't no cure. The Rich stay healthy, the Sick stay poor
Hartford Advocate Interview (2008)
“None are so likely to believe too little as those who have begun by believing too much.”
The Tragic Sense of Life (1913), IV : The Essence of Catholicism
Context: ... as the great Unitarian preacher Channing pointed out, that in France and Spain there are multitudes who have proceeded from rejecting Popery to absolute atheism, because "the fact is, that false and absurd doctrines, when exposed, have a natural tendency to beget skepticism in those who receive them without reflection. None are so likely to believe too little as those who have begun by believing too much." Here is, indeed, the terrible danger of believing too much. But no! the terrible danger comes from another quarter — from seeking to believe with the reason and not with the life.