Simone Weil

"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."

"What a country calls its vital... interests are not things that help its people live, but things that help it make war."

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

"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."

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

"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."

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

"Force is as pitiless to the man who possesses it, or thinks he does, as it is to its victims; the second it crushes, the first it intoxicates. The truth is, nobody really possesses it."

"Humility is attentive patience."

"I can, therefore I am."

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

"More than in any other performing arts the lack of respect for acting seems to spring from the fact that every layman considers himself a valid critic."

"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."

"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."

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

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

"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."

"We can only know 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."