“The first thing that we know about ourselves is our imperfection.
This is what Descartes meant when he said: 'I know God before I know myself.'
The only mark of God in us is that we feel that we are not God.”

—  Simone Weil

Source: Lectures on Philosophy (1959), p. 90

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "The first thing that we know about ourselves is our imperfection. This is what Descartes meant when he said: 'I know G…" by Simone Weil?
Simone Weil photo
Simone Weil 193
French philosopher, Christian mystic, and social activist 1909–1943

Related quotes

Simone Weil photo

“The first thing that we know about ourselves is our imperfection.
This is what Descartes meant when he said: 'I know God before I know myself.'”

Simone Weil (1909–1943) French philosopher, Christian mystic, and social activist

The only mark of God in us is that we feel that we are not God.

p. 90
Lectures on Philosophy (1959)

Henry Adams photo

“God, as Descartes justly said, we know! but what is man?”

Henry Adams (1838–1918) journalist, historian, academic, novelist

Mont Saint Michel and Chartres (1904)
Context: God, as Descartes justly said, we know! but what is man? The schools answered:— Man is a rational animal! So was apparently a dog, or a bee, or a beaver, none of which seemed to need churches. Modern science, with infinite effort, has discovered and announced that man is a bewildering complex of energies, which helps little to explain his relations with the ultimate Substance or Energy or Prime Motor whose existence both Science and Schoolmen admit; which Science studies in laboratories and Religion worships in churches. The Man whom God created to fill his Church, must be an energy independent of God; otherwise God filled his own Church with his own energy.

Simone Weil photo

“We can know only one thing about God — that he is what we are not. Our wretchedness alone is an image of this. The more we contemplate it, the more we contemplate him.”

Simone Weil (1909–1943) French philosopher, Christian mystic, and social activist

Source: Simone Weil : An Anthology (1986), Attention and Will (1947), p. 216

Rich Mullins photo

“It doesn't matter what we believe about God. It's what He knows about us.”

Morris West (1916–1999) Australian writer

London: Coronet Books, 1984, p. 316
The speaker is an eighty-year-old Mother Superior explaining why she allowed the burial in the convent cemetery of a foreign woman, a collaborator in a charitable enterprise, who was an unbeliever.
The World Is Made of Glass (1983)

Julian of Norwich photo
Alvin Plantinga photo

“God knows best who we are and why we were created and therefore, we should concern ourselves only with the fear of God, love of God and obedience to God's commands.”

Bu Ali Shah Qalandar (1209–1324) Indian Sufi saint

Source: The Sayings and Teachings of the Great Mystics of Islam (2004), p. 270

Maimónides photo

“This is the way how we have to understand the accounts of trials; we must not think that God desires to examine us and to try us in order to know what He did not know before.”

Source: Guide for the Perplexed (c. 1190), Part III, Ch.24
Context: This is the way how we have to understand the accounts of trials; we must not think that God desires to examine us and to try us in order to know what He did not know before. Far is this from Him; He is far above that which ignorant and foolish people imagine concerning Him, in the evil of their thoughts. Note this.

Swami Vivekananda photo

Related topics