“What man needs is silence and warmth; what he is given is an icy pandemonium.”

—  Simone Weil

Source: Simone Weil : An Anthology (1986), Human Personality (1943), p. 59
Context: A modern factory reaches perhaps almost the limit of horror. Everybody in it is constantly harassed and kept on edge by the interference of extraneous wills while the soul is left in cold and desolate misery. What man needs is silence and warmth; what he is given is an icy pandemonium.
Physical labour may be painful, but it is not degrading as such. It is not art; it is not science; it is something else, possessing an exactly equal value with art and science, for it provides an equal opportunity to reach the impersonal stage of attention.

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Simone Weil 193
French philosopher, Christian mystic, and social activist 1909–1943

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I understood that God does not wish men to live apart, and therefore he does not reveal to them what each one needs for himself; but he wishes them to live united, and therefore reveals to each of them what is necessary for all.
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“A man is a fool not to put everything he has, at any given moment, into what he is creating”

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