Simone Weil - The Need for Roots

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

Simone Weil
We do injury to a child if we bring it up in a narrow Christianity, which prevents it from ever becoming capable of perceiving that there are treasures of purest gold to be found in non-Christian civilizations. Laical education does an even greater injury to children. It covers up those treasures, and those of Christianity as well.

Simone Weil
Education-whether its object be children or adults, individuals or an entire people-consists in creating motives.

Simone Weil
A scientific conception of the world doesn't prevent one from observing what is socially fitting.

Simone Weil
Truth is a radiant manifestation of reality.

Simone Weil
There are only two sorts of greatness: true greatness, which is of a spiritual order, and the old, old lie of world conquest. Conquest is an ersatz greatness.

Simone Weil
Culture is an instrument wielded by professors to manufacture professors, who, when their turn comes, will manufacture professors.

Simone Weil
The contemporary form of true greatness lies in a civilization founded on the spirituality of work.

Simone Weil
Our patriotism comes straight from the Romans. This is why French children are encouraged to seek inspiration for it in Corneille. It is a pagan virtue, if these two words are compatible. The word pagan, when applied to Rome, early possesses the significance charged with horror which the early Christian controversialists gave it. The Romans really were an atheistic and idolatrous people; not idolatrous with regard to images made of stone or bronze, but idolatrous with regard to themselves. It is this idolatry of self which they have bequeathed to us in the form of patriotism.

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.

Simone Weil
Nowadays a man can belong to so-called cultured circles without, on the one hand, having any sort of conception about human destiny or, on the other hand, being aware, for example, that all the constellations are not visible at all seasons of the year.

Simone Weil
Concern for the symbol has completely disappeared from our science. And yet, if one were to give oneself the trouble, one could easily find, in certain parts at least of contemporary mathematics... symbols as clear, as beautiful, and as full of spiritual meaning as that of the circle and mediation. From modern thought to ancient wisdom the path would be short and direct, if one cared to take it.

Simone Weil
Culture — as we know it — is an instrument manipulated by teachers for manufacturing more teachers, who, in their turn, will manufacture still more teachers.

Simone Weil
Uprooting is by far the most dangerous of the ills of human society, for it perpetuates itself.

Simone Weil
The notion of obligations comes before that of rights, which is subordinate and relative to the former. A right is not effectual by itself, but only in relation to the obligation to which it corresponds.

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

Simone Weil
The true definition of science is this: the study of the beauty of the world.

Simone Weil
Whoever is uprooted himself uproots others. Whoever is rooted himself doesn't uproot others.

Simone Weil
Money destroys human roots wherever it is able to penetrate, by turning desire for gain into the sole motive. It easily manages to outweigh all other motives, because the effort it demands of the mind is so very much less. Nothing is so clear and so simple as a row of figures.

Simone Weil