"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."

Rating:

  rate this quote
Topic: none  help us select a topic for this quote

More quotes from: Simone Weil

• "A doctrine serves no purpose in itself, but it is indispensable to have one if ..."
• "A hurtful act is the transference to others of the degradation which we bear in ..."
• "A mind enclosed in language is in prison. "
• "A self-respecting nation is ready for anything, including war, except for a renunciation of its ..."
• "A test of what is real is that it is hard and rough. Joys are ..."
• "All sins are attempts to fill voids. "
• "An atheist may be simply one whose faith and love are concentrated on the impersonal ..."
• "Attachment is the great fabricator of illusions; reality can be attained only by someone who ..."
• "Beauty always promises, but never gives anything. "
• "Charity. To love human beings in so far as they are nothing. That is to ..."
• "Culture is an instrument wielded by teachers to manufacture teachers, who, in their turn, will ..."
• "Difficult as it is really to listen to someone in affliction, it is just as ..."
• "Equality is the public recognition, effectively expressed in institutions and manners, of the principle that ..."
• "Every perfect life is a parable invented by God. "
• "Every time that I think of the crucifixion of Christ, I commit the sin of ..."
• "Evil being the root of mystery, pain is the root of knowledge. "
• "For when two beings who are not friends are near each other there is no ..."
• "Force is as pitiless to the man who possesses it, or thinks he does, as ..."
• "Human beings are so made that the ones who do the crushing feel nothing; it ..."
• "Humanism was not wrong in thinking that truth, beauty, liberty, and equality are of infinite ..."
• "Humility is attentive patience. "
• "I am not a Catholic; but I consider the Christian idea, which has its roots ..."
• "I can, therefore I am. "
• "I suffer more from the humiliations inflicted by my country than from those inflicted on ..."
• "I would suggest that barbarism be considered as a permanent and universal human characteristic which ..."
• "If Germany, thanks to and his successors, were to enslave the European nations and destroy ..."
• "If Germany, thanks to Hitler and his successors, were to enslave the European nations and ..."

• "If we are suffering illness, poverty, or misfortune, we think we shall be satisfied on ..."
• "Imagination and fiction make up more than three quarters of our real life. "
• "Imagination is always the fabric of social life and the dynamic of history. The influence ..."
• "In struggling against anguish one never produces serenity; the struggle against anguish only produces new ..."
• "In Switzerland they had brotherly love, five hundred years of democracy and peace, and what ..."
• "In the Church, considered as a social organism, the mysteries inevitably degenerate into beliefs. "
• "It is an eternal obligation toward the human being not to let him suffer from ..."
• "It is only the impossible that is possible for God. He has given over the ..."
• "Life does not need to mutilate itself in order to be pure. "
• "More than in any other performing arts the lack of respect for acting seems to ..."
• "Most works of art, like most wines, ought to be consumed in the district of ..."
• "Nothing can have as its destination anything other than its origin. The contrary idea, the ..."
• "Nothing is less instructive than a machine. "
• "One cannot imagine St. Francis of Assisi talking about rights. "
• "Oppression that is clearly inexorable and invincible does not give rise to revolt but to ..."
• "Petroleum is a more likely cause of international conflict than wheat. "
• "Purity is the power to contemplate defilement. "
• "Real genius is nothing else but the supernatural virtue of humility in the domain of ..."
• "The contemporary form of true greatness lies in a civilization founded on the spirituality of ..."
• "The danger is not lest the soul should doubt whether there is any bread, but ..."
• "The destruction of the past is perhaps the greatest of all crimes. "
• "The future is made of the same stuff as the present. "
• "The highest ecstasy is the attention at its fullest. "
• "The love of our neighbor in all its fullness simply means being able to say ..."
• "The most important part of teaching is to teach what it is to know. "
• "The mysteries of faith are degraded if they are made into an object of affirmation ..."

• "The only hope of socialism resides in those who have already brought about in themselves, ..."
• "The payment of debts is necessary for social order. The non-payment is quite equally necessary ..."
• "The poison of skepticism becomes, like alcoholism, tuberculosis, and some other diseases, much more virulent ..."
• "The proper method of philosophy consists in clearly conceiving the insoluble problems in all their ..."
• "The real stumbling-block of totalitarian rTgimes is not the spiritual need of men for freedom ..."
• "The role of the intelligence - that part of us which affirms and denies and ..."
• "There can be a true grandeur in any degree of submissiveness, because it springs from ..."
• "There is no detachment where there is no pain. And there is no pain endured ..."
• "Those who are unhappy have no need for anything in this world but people capable ..."
• "To be a hero or a heroine, one must give an order to oneself. "
• "To be rooted is perhaps the most important and least recognized need of the human ..."
• "To get power over is to defile. To possess is to defile. "
• "To want friendship is a great fault. Friendship ought to be a gratuitous joy, like ..."
• "To write the lives of the great in separating them from their works necessarily ends ..."
• "Two prisoners whose cells adjoin communicate with each other by knocking on the wall. The ..."
• "We are like horses who hurt themselves as soon as they pull on their bits ..."
• "We can only know one thing about God - that he is what we are ..."
• "We must prefer real hell to an imaginary paradise. "
• "What a country calls its vital economic interests are not the things which enable its ..."
• "What a country calls its vital... interests are not things that help its people live, ..."
• "Whatever debases the intelligence degrades the entire human being. "
• "When a contradiction is impossible to resolve except by a lie, then we know that ..."
• "When once a certain class of people has been placed by the temporal and spiritual ..."
• "Who were the fools who spread the story that brute force cannot kill ideas? Nothing ..."
• "Why is it that reality, when set down untransposed in a book, sounds false? "
• "With no matter what human being, taken individually, I always find reasons for concluding that ..."