Simone Weil's brainless quotes

Here is a list of 'brainy-quotes' from Simone Weil 

I can, therefore I am.

You can kill yourself and thus cease to exist. Equally a person in a coma who can't do anything continues to exist.  I suppose Simone meant that having the capability to do things was valuable to her. Yet, existence is not dependent on such capability. Perhaps, for this reason some pious people feel that God acts through them. In themselves they are nothing. 

It is only the impossible that is possible for God. He has given over the possible to the mechanics of matter and the autonomy of his creatures. 

No. God, in Scripture is shown as doing things we could possibly do- e.g. speak to Moses- but also things impossible for us- e.g. creating the Sun and stars. As for the 'mechanics of matter', it ends on the Day of Wrath as does 'autonomy'. 

Humility is attentive patience.

No. A proud and arrogant courtier may be very attentive and patient when dealing with the Emperor. Otherwise his head may be chopped off. A humble person may not be attentive to or patient of flattery. 

The only way into truth is through one's own annihilation; through dwelling a long time in a state of extreme and total humiliation. 

In which case people who have suffered such humiliation would be known for their truthfulness. They could gain employment as professional witnesses. After annihilation, no path to anything exists for the annihilated person.  

Attachment is the great fabricator of illusions; reality can be attained only by someone who is detached.

But so can lunacy.  

I would suggest that barbarism be considered as a permanent and universal human characteristic which becomes more or less pronounced according to the play of circumstances. 

In that case it isn't a 'characteristic'. It is a potentiality.  

Petroleum is a more likely cause of international conflict than wheat.

Yet such conflicts existed before petroleum was used for anything. It is likely that warfare became endemic only after the agricultural revolution- i.e. growing wheat or rice- had created big enough surpluses to make the game worth the candle. 

The poison of skepticism becomes, like alcoholism, tuberculosis, and some other diseases, much more virulent in a hitherto virgin soil.

No. Tuberculosis is dormant in 90 percent of cases. If it becomes active, the prognosis for a 'virgin' is better than for someone already weakened by the disease.  Scepticism is not a disease. It may be removed or reinforced by evidence. 

When once a certain class of people has been placed by the temporal and spiritual authorities outside the ranks of those whose life has value, then nothing comes more naturally to men than murder. 

There is no evidence that Jews sent to death camps became murderers. Those employed there were paid to beat and kill. Clearly they had value for their employers. That's why they got paid and were provided with good food and nice uniforms at a time when many were starving.  

To write the lives of the great in separating them from their works necessarily ends by above all stressing their pettiness, because it is in their work that they have put the best of themselves. 

Not always. We may discover that a great mathematician was also a very good and charitable man.  

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.

No. It is the principle that all people have equal status in law or as a matter of procedure. Equal degrees of attention may be given to two cases equally worthy of it. None may be paid to those who do not seek it or otherwise require it.  

We are like horses who hurt themselves as soon as they pull on their bits - and we bow our heads. We even lose consciousness of the situation, we just submit. Any re-awakening of thought is then painful.

This would only be true if we have a master who uses us in the manner that a rider uses a horse.  

The mysteries of faith are degraded if they are made into an object of affirmation and negation, when in reality they should be an object of contemplation. 

One can affirm the conclusion arrived at through contemplation. This may be very helpful to others.  

The future is made of the same stuff as the present. 

Whatever stuff the future is made from, it isn't stuff which exists at present.  

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.

God is not a prisoner. He doesn't need to communicate by knocking. Walls are nothing to him. One might say 'I'm a prisoner. I think God is knocking on my wall to cheer me up.' We may feel sympathy for you. But we don't believe God is really that interested in you. 

Evil being the root of mystery, pain is the root of knowledge.

Mystery is its own root. Knowledge is what you gain when a mystery is dispelled or a thing becomes clear.  

Beauty always promises, but never gives anything. 

It doesn't really promise anything. It isn't true that pretty girls want to be sexually harassed.  

There is one, and only one, thing in modern society more hideous than crime namely, repressive justice. 

Oddly, it was just the opposite in pre-modern society.  People were delighted to be raped and robbed. They became despondent if the police intervened and arrested the rapist or the robber.

The destruction of the past is perhaps the greatest of all crimes.

Time is a criminal. Somebody should arrest it and send it to prison.  

 Life does not need to mutilate itself in order to be pure. 

Nor does it need to shit itself.  

To get power over is to defile.

If someone gives you a power of attorney you won't be able to stop yourself from defiling them by shitting on their heads. 

To possess is to defile. 

If you buy a chair, you are bound to end up shitting on it.  

If we are suffering illness, poverty, or misfortune, we think we shall be satisfied on the day it ceases. But there too, we know it is false; so soon as one has got used to not suffering one wants something else. 

Wanting stuff is not suffering. I have a tooth ache. The Dentist cures it. I am no longer suffering even if I now want to eat some cake.  

All sins are attempts to fill voids.

So are all virtues.  

In struggling against anguish one never produces serenity; the struggle against anguish only produces new forms of anguish.

So does the struggle to say something profound. You are bound to utter the stupidest thing possible. On the other hand struggling to some good purpose cures anguish. If you did your best, you have no reason to reproach yourself.  

Imagination is always the fabric of social life and the dynamic of history.

No. Imagination is merely the simulation of some small portion of both.  

The influence of real needs and compulsions, of real interests and materials, is indirect because the crowd is never conscious of it.

Nonsense! The crowd really does feel hunger. It is highly conscious of it.  

In the intellectual order, the virtue of humility is nothing more nor less than the power of attention.

No. In the intellectual order, humility involves not trying to sound profound. Focus on what Blake called 'minute particulars'. Use your brain for some useful purpose.  

One cannot imagine St. Francis of Assisi talking about rights. 

Pope Francis did do so. He knew more about St. Francis than Simone.  

Oppression that is clearly inexorable and invincible does not give rise to revolt but to submission.

It may give rise to a doomed revolt. If you have nothing to lose, you may as well inflict some small cost on your oppressor.  

A science which does not bring us nearer to God is worthless.

This is not the view of the Church. Science can make this world a better place. But Religion can help us get a better after-life. 

Charity. To love human beings in so far as they are nothing. That is to love them as God does. 

Simone was very humble. She is saying she knows as much as God about how He loves his creatures.  

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. 

We may inadvertently crush somebody's foot by stepping on them. But once they cry out in pain, we feel horrible and apologize profusely even if they belong to the class of oppressors or if we are unaware that people are being oppressed in some foreign country.  

Imagination and fiction make up more than three quarters of our real life. 

No. Most people have to work for a living. Even the idle rich get tired of reading novels or watching Netflix. That's why they take up hobbies.  

To be rooted is perhaps the most important and least recognized need of the human soul. 

What human souls, who happened to be Jewish, needed was to be less rooted in Hitler's Germany.  

We can only know one thing about God - that he is what we are not.

So, the Church is wrong to say that Christ had a human nature.  

Our wretchedness alone is an image of this. The more we contemplate it, the more we contemplate him.

Rubbish! Plenty of atheists contemplate their own wretchedness. There are also plenty of very saintly people who have always been cheerful.  

A hurtful act is the transference to others of the degradation which we bear in ourselves. 

No. Much of the harm we do is unintentional. We need to be more careful in future.  

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.

The thing may be difficult for self-involved people. It isn't difficult at all for the vast majority of Doctors, Nurses, Dentists etc.  

Most works of art, like most wines, ought to be consumed in the district of their fabrication.

That depends on 'value to weight'. If it is high, it will be consumed more in the richest district howsoever far away.  

It is an eternal obligation toward the human being not to let him suffer from hunger when one has a chance of coming to his assistance.

Simone should have been force-fed. She was clearly mad. That's why she starved to death.  

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. 

Nope. You can't have tyranny unless the tyrant can command a sufficient surplus to pay soldiers and policemen. Also any notion whatsoever can be conceived. To say 'the true notion of morality can't b conceived' is merely to say that our judgments in this respect are provisional and defeasible. God alone knows whether we did right or wrong.  

Evil, when we are in its power, is not felt as evil, but as a necessity, even a duty.

One could say the same thing of the Good or the Nice or the Cuddly. It is a duty and necessity to pick up and give cuddles to the baby.  

The highest ecstasy is the attention at its fullest. 

The highest ecstasy surpasses attention or consciousness.  

Every time that I think of the crucifixion of Christ, I commit the sin of envy. 

Coz Christ was God and rose from the dead in 3 days? The miracles he performed over the next 40 days were so numerous that if they were all written down in a Book, that Book would be bigger than the universe.  But nobody really envies Christ. He was 'the man of sorrows' who drank the cup of God's wrath. We can't do so. We feel gratitude, not envy. 

A test of what is real is that it is hard and rough. Joys are found in it, not pleasure. What is pleasant belongs to dreams. 

A test of what is nonsense masquerading as profundity is that it is hard and indigestible. Pleasure is part and parcel of Joy. Some dreams are pleasant. But having a nice meal with friends or family is always pleasant- till I fart.  

Humanism was not wrong in thinking that truth, beauty, liberty, and equality are of infinite value, but in thinking that man can get them for himself without grace.

Humanism doesn't think anything has infinite value. It need take no position on 'Grace' or 'Salvation by works' or any other theological issue.  

The intelligent man who is proud of his intelligence is like the condemned man who is proud of his large cell.

Intelligent people do tend to be quite proud of their superior braininess. Condemned men take little pride in their cell. They will have to quit it soon enough.  

To be a hero or a heroine, one must give an order to oneself. 

No. One must do something heroic. Ordering oneself to do so has no effect one way or another.  

When a contradiction is impossible to resolve except by a lie,

It isn't resolved in that way. Consider the contradiction between the fact that I am a fat elderly man and my desire to be known as Miss Teen Tamil Nadu. It is resolved by my accepting that I am not a cute 17 year old girl. Lying won't help me any. Mani Ratnam is not going to hire me to play the ingenue in his his next film.  

then we know that it is really a door. 

A door is something through which we can come or go. A contradiction isn't.  

To want friendship is a great fault. Friendship ought to be a gratuitous joy, like the joys afforded by art or life.

Beyonce should be my bff. Rihanna will be totes jelly.  

A mind enclosed in language is in prison.

Minds aren't enclosed in language.  

There is no detachment where there is no pain.

No. Pain arises from attachment. Once the thing causing you pain- e.g. a rotten tooth- is detached, the pain ends. Religion enables us to overcome the pain of losing those to whom we are attached. This may be by giving us hope that we will be re-united with our loved ones in the after-life. At the very least, it is a comfort to know that good people get an eternal reward. Moreover, God is All Merciful.  

And there is no pain endured without hatred or lying unless detachment is present too. 

Nonsense! We have all had toothache or migraine or suffered some other sort of pain. Very few of us respond by hating Neo-liberalism or telling lies about how we are actually Beyonce.  

The most important part of teaching is to teach what it is to know. 

No. That isn't important at all. The most important part of teaching is to impart useful information or a skill which enhances productivity.  

We must prefer real hell to an imaginary paradise. 

Why? The fact is 'ontologically dysphoric goods'- e.g. the Heaven Religion teaches us about- improve 'correlated equilibria'. Everybody can be better off. As for a 'real Hell', people may work hard to stay out of it even if there is no Heaven.  

The danger is not lest the soul should doubt whether there is any bread, but lest, by a lie, it should persuade itself that it is not hungry. 

The danger to me- which my Doctor has warned me about- is to think I am still hungry and should have a second 15 inch Pizza. The fact is, we need to control our impulses or cravings.  

A self-respecting nation is ready for anything, including war, except for a renunciation of its option to make war. 

Weil was wrong. Japan renounced that option and was all the better for it. The question for Merz, in Germany, is whether his people are willing to re-arm. In particular, will young people accept the re-introduction of conscription?  

Force is as pitiless to the man who possesses it, or thinks he does, as it is to its victims;

No. Eisenhower was a good man. Hitler wasn't. No doubt, Hitler's Generals felt very bitter about Eisenhower's use of force against them.  

the second it crushes, the first it intoxicates. The truth is, nobody really possesses it. 

The truth is Simone was stupid and mad. Yet she thought of herself as very profound.  

In the Church, considered as a social organism, the mysteries inevitably degenerate into beliefs.

Not in the Catholic Church. Faith is founded on a mystery. As for beliefs (dogma) let the Cardinals decide such matters. Ordinary people need not trouble themselves about it. They can get on with doing useful stuff in areas where they have 'domain expertise'.  

A doctrine serves no purpose in itself, but it is indispensable to have one if only to avoid being deceived by false doctrines.

Plenty of people have a doctrine and yet get deceived by false doctrines. The thing has no magical power. Why not say 'it is indispensable to believe you are a cat if only to avoid being deceived into thinking you are a dog?'  

If Germany, thanks to Hitler and his successors, were to enslave the European nations and destroy most of the treasures of their past, future historians would certainly pronounce that she had civilized Europe.

If that was what they were paid to do- sure.  

An atheist may be simply one whose faith and love are concentrated on the impersonal aspects of God.

That would be the doctrine of 'Divine Simplicity'. St. Thomas Aquinas wasn't an atheist.  

The only hope of socialism resides in those who have already brought about in themselves, as far as is possible in the society of today, that union between manual and intellectual labor which characterizes the society we are aiming at.

Sadly, what Simone and her ilk were doing wasn't 'intellectual labour'. It was sheer nonsense. The society everybody else was aiming for was one where general purpose and total factor productivity kept rising (this required more STEM subject research) while 'total war' was rendered self-defeating by 'mutually assured destruction'. True, there might be proxy wars in remote corners of the world, but Europe would never again experience the horrors of the two World Wars. 

Simone Weil's brother was brainy. Few ordinary people could understand the value of his contributions to Mathematics. But, we understand that they were very very useful. Our lives are now much better thanks to people like him. Simone herself wasn't useful but she appeared to be moving to Catholicism, combining it with Socialism as in 'the Social Gospel',  and thus was part and parcel of the rehabilitation of 'the Centre' in German and European politics. The fact is anti-clericalism had been highly mischievous. An ecumenical, irenic, approach- which gave a bigger role to the Public sector in solving collective action problems- was required in order to raise up Europe economically while maintaining political stability. 

The mistake Weil and her fellow teachers in the elite Government High schools and Colleges made was that they refused to champion the cause of the poorly paid fellow teachers in Catholic institutions. People who work in the same profession should show solidarity. They should oppose wage, price & service provision discrimination. Economic Theory explains why this is Pareto inefficient and causes a dead weight loss to the Economy. But, Politically, too it is mischievous. It divides those who would otherwise be united. It weakens the country and makes it prone to political instability and military defeat. This was the lesson France's philosophy teachers never learned. Instead they babbled modish nonsense. To be fair, Simone was genuinely mad. She starved herself to death. We may feel pity for those who suffer from eating disorders or paranoid delusion systems but our response should be to demand more resources are devoted to researching and curing the underlying illness. As for religion- get it from the Church by all means. Don't listen to some crazy charlatan.