Quotes of the day from previous years:
- 2004
- The things to do are: the things that need doing, that you see need to be done, and that no one else seems to see need to be done. ~ Buckminster Fuller
- 2005
- The past is but the beginning of a beginning, and all that is or has been is but the twilight of the dawn. ~ H. G. Wells
- 2006
- An age is called Dark not because the light fails to shine, but because people refuse to see it. ~ James A. Michener (born c. 3 February 1907)
- 2007
- At the bottom of the heart of every human being, from earliest infancy until the tomb, there is something that goes on indomitably expecting, in the teeth of all experience of crimes committed, suffered, and witnessed, that good and not evil will be done to him. It is this above all that is sacred in every human being. ~ Simone Weil (born 3 February 1909)
- 2008
- When war is waged it is for the purpose of safeguarding or increasing one's capacity to make war. International politics are wholly involved in this vicious cycle. What is called national prestige consists in behaving always in such a way as to demoralize other nations by giving them the impression that, if it comes to war, one would certainly defeat them. What is called national security is an imaginary state of affairs in which one would retain the capacity to make war while depriving all other countries of it. ~ Simone Weil
- 2009
- The whole duty of man consists in being reasonable and just … I am reasonable because I know the difference between understanding and not understanding and I am just because I have no opinion about things I don’t understand. ~ Gertrude Stein (Date of birth)
- 2010
- Only he who has measured the dominion of force, and knows how not to respect it, is capable of love and justice. ~ Simone Weil
- 2011
- Rights are always asserted in a tone of contention; and when this tone is adopted, it must rely upon force in the background, or else it will be laughed at. ~ Simone Weil
- 2012
- I went down to the sacred store
Where I'd heard the music years before
But the man there said the music wouldn't play
And in the streets the children screamed
The lovers cried and the poets dreamed
But not a word was spoken
The church bells all were broken
And the three men I admire most
The Father, Son and Holy Ghost
They caught the last train for the coast
The Day the Music Died.
~ Don McLean ~
- 2013
- 2014
| If a captive mind is unaware of being in prison, it is living in error. If it has recognized the fact, even for the tenth of a second, and then quickly forgotten it in order to avoid suffering, it is living in falsehood. Men of the most brilliant intelligence can be born, live and die in error and falsehood. In them, intelligence is neither a good, nor even an asset. The difference between more or less intelligent men is like the difference between criminals condemned to life imprisonment in smaller or larger cells. The intelligent man who is proud of his intelligence is like a condemned man who is proud of his large cell.
|
| ~ Simone Weil ~
|
- 2015
- 2016
- 2017
- 2018
- 2019
The longing in the depth of the heart for absolute good, and the power, though only latent, of directing attention and love to a reality beyond the world and of receiving good from it — constitutes a link which attaches every man without exception to that other reality.
Whoever recognizes that reality recognizes also that link. Because of it, he holds every human being without any exception as something sacred to which he is bound to show respect. This is the only possible motive for universal respect towards all human beings. Whatever formulation of belief or disbelief a man may choose to make, if his heart inclines him to feel this respect, then he in fact also recognizes a reality other than this world's reality. Whoever in fact does not feel this respect is alien to that other reality also.
|
| ~ Simone Weil ~
|
- 2020
- 2021
The needs of a human being are sacred. Their satisfaction cannot be subordinated either to reasons of state, or to any consideration of money, nationality, race, or colour, or to the moral or other value attributed to the human being in question, or to any consideration whatsoever.
There is no legitimate limit to the satisfaction of the needs of a human being except as imposed by necessity and by the needs of other human beings.
|
| ~ Simone Weil ~
|
- 2022
- 2023
- 2024
- 2025
- Rank or add further suggestions…
The Quote of the Day (QOTD) is a prominent feature of the Wikiquote Main Page. Thank you for submitting, reviewing, and ranking suggestions!
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When you are writing before there is an audience anything written is as important as any other thing and you cherish anything and everything that you have written. After the audience begins, naturally they create something that is they create you, and so not everything is so important, something is more important than another thing. ~ Gertrude Stein (born February 3, 1874)
- 3 InvisibleSun 07:59, 31 January 2007 (UTC)
- 3 Kalki 16:03, 3 February 2007 (UTC)
- 1 Zarbon 21:46, 22 April 2008 (UTC)
If anything is a surprise then there is not much difference between older and younger because the only thing that does make anybody older is that they cannot be surprised. ~ Gertrude Stein
- 3 InvisibleSun 07:59, 31 January 2007 (UTC)
- 3 Kalki 16:03, 3 February 2007 (UTC)
- 2 Zarbon 21:46, 22 April 2008 (UTC)
It always did bother me that the American public were more interested in me than in my work. And after all there is no sense in it because if it were not for my work they would not be interested in me so why should they not be more interested in my work than in me. That is one of the things one has to worry about in America. ~ Gertrude Stein
- 3 InvisibleSun 07:59, 31 January 2007 (UTC)
- 3 Kalki 16:03, 3 February 2007 (UTC)
- 1 Zarbon 21:46, 22 April 2008 (UTC)
If the stars are suns and the earth is the earth and there are men only upon this earth and anything can put an end to anything and any dog does anything like anybody does it what is the difference between eternity and anything. ~ Gertrude Stein
- 4 InvisibleSun 07:59, 31 January 2007 (UTC)
- 3 Kalki 16:03, 3 February 2007 (UTC)
- 1 Zarbon 21:46, 22 April 2008 (UTC)
Politeness does not interfere with facts, politeness is just another fact. ~ Gertrude Stein
- 3 InvisibleSun 07:59, 31 January 2007 (UTC)
- 3 Kalki 16:03, 3 February 2007 (UTC)
- 2 Zarbon 21:46, 22 April 2008 (UTC)
After all, human beings are like that. When they are alone they want to be with others, and when they are with others they want to be alone. ~ Gertrude Stein
- 3 InvisibleSun 07:59, 31 January 2007 (UTC)
- 3 Kalki 16:03, 3 February 2007 (UTC)
- 2 Zarbon 21:46, 22 April 2008 (UTC)
Truth is sought not because it is truth but because it is good. ~ Simone Weil
- 3 InvisibleSun 07:59, 31 January 2007 (UTC)
- 3 Kalki 16:03, 3 February 2007 (UTC)
- 1 Zarbon 21:46, 22 April 2008 (UTC)
Power must not seem to be arbitrarily allocated, because it will not then be recognized as power. Therefore prestige, which is illusion, is of the very essence of power. ~ Simone Weil
- 3 InvisibleSun 07:59, 31 January 2007 (UTC)
- 3 Kalki 16:03, 3 February 2007 (UTC)
- 1 Zarbon 21:46, 22 April 2008 (UTC)
God's love for us is not the reason for which we should love him. God's love for us is the reason for us to love ourselves. ~ Simone Weil
- 3 InvisibleSun 19:33, 2 February 2007 (UTC)
- 3 Kalki 16:03, 3 February 2007 (UTC)
- 1 Zarbon 21:46, 22 April 2008 (UTC)
A gram of experience is worth a ton of theory. ~ Robert Cecil, 3rd Marquess of Salisbury (born 3 February 1830)
- 3 Kalki 22:51, 2 February 2009 (UTC) with a strong lean toward 4 (but I think this might have been used…)
- 2 InvisibleSun 23:06, 2 February 2009 (UTC)
- 3 Zarbon 04:39, 27 February 2009 (UTC)
On general grounds I object to Parliament trying to regulate private morality in matters which only affects the person who commits the offence. ~ Robert Cecil, 3rd Marquess of Salisbury (born 3 February 1830)
- 3 Kalki 22:51, 2 February 2009 (UTC)
- 3 InvisibleSun 23:06, 2 February 2009 (UTC)
- 1 Zarbon 04:39, 27 February 2009 (UTC)
The great difficulty which history records is not that of the first step, but that of the second step. What is most evident is not the difficulty of getting a fixed law, but getting out of a fixed law; not of cementing (as upon a former occasion I phrased it) a cake of custom, but of breaking the cake of custom; not of making the first preservative habit, but of breaking through it, and reaching something better. ~ Walter Bagehot (born 3 February 1826)
- 3 Kalki 22:51, 2 February 2009 (UTC) with a very strong lean toward 4.
- 3 InvisibleSun 23:06, 2 February 2009 (UTC)
- 1 Zarbon 04:39, 27 February 2009 (UTC)
One of the greatest pains to human nature is the pain of a new idea. ~ Walter Bagehot (born 3 February 1826)
- 3 Kalki 22:51, 2 February 2009 (UTC)
- 3 InvisibleSun 23:06, 2 February 2009 (UTC)
- 1 Zarbon 04:39, 27 February 2009 (UTC)
| Friendship is not to be sought, not to be dreamed, not to be desired; it is to be exercised (it is a virtue).
|
| ~ Simone Weil ~
|
| There is no area in our minds reserved for superstition, such as the Greeks had in their mythology; and superstition, under cover of an abstract vocabulary, has revenged itself by invading the entire realm of thought. Our science is like a store filled with the most subtle intellectual devices for solving the most complex problems, and yet we are almost incapable of applying the elementary principles of rational thought. In every sphere, we seem to have lost the very elements of intelligence: the ideas of limit, measure, degree, proportion, relation, comparison, contingency, interdependence, interrelation of means and ends. To keep to the social level, our political universe is peopled exclusively by myths and monsters; all it contains is absolutes and abstract entities. This is illustrated by all the words of our political and social vocabulary: nation, security, capitalism, communism, fascism, order, authority, property, democracy. We never use them in phrases such as: There is democracy to the extent that... or: There is capitalism in so far as... The use of expressions like "to the extent that" is beyond our intellectual capacity. Each of these words seems to represent for us an absolute reality, unaffected by conditions, or an absolute objective, independent of methods of action, or an absolute evil; and at the same time we make all these words mean, successively or simultaneously, anything whatsoever. Our lives are lived, in actual fact, among changing, varying realities, subject to the casual play of external necessities, and modifying themselves according to specific conditions within specific limits; and yet we act and strive and sacrifice ourselves and others by reference to fixed and isolated abstractions which cannot possibly be related either to one another or to any concrete facts. In this so-called age of technicians, the only battles we know how to fight are battles against windmills.
|
| ~ Simone Weil ~
|
- 3 ♞☤☮♌︎Kalki ⚚⚓︎⊙☳☶⚡ 07:29, 2 February 2015 (UTC) with a VERY strong lean toward 4, despite its length.
| Nothing is so rare as to see misfortune fairly portrayed; the tendency is either to treat the unfortunate person as though catastrophe were his natural vocation, or to ignore the effects of misfortune on the soul, to assume, that is, that the soul can suffer and remain unmarked by it, can fail, in fact, to be recast in misfortune's image.
|
| ~ Simone Weil ~
|
- 3 ♞☤☮♌︎Kalki ⚚⚓︎⊙☳☶⚡ 07:29, 2 February 2015 (UTC) with a lean toward 4.
| The capacity to give one's attention to a sufferer is a very rare and difficult thing; it is almost a miracle; it is a miracle. Nearly all those who think they have this capacity do not possess it. Warmth of heart, impulsiveness, pity are not enough.
|
| ~ Simone Weil ~
|
| Once the experience of war makes visible the possibility of death that lies locked up in each moment, our thoughts cannot travel from one day to the next without meeting death's face. The mind is then strung up to a pitch it can stand for only a short time; but each new dawn introduces the same necessity; and days piled on days make years. On each one of these days the soul suffers violence. Regularly, each morning, the soul castrates itself of aspiration, for thought cannot journey through time without meeting death on the way. Thus war effaces all conceptions of purpose or goal, including even its own "war aims."
|
| ~ Simone Weil ~
|
| Always in human life, whether war or slavery is in question, intolerable sufferings continue, as it were, by the force of their own specific gravity, and so look to the outsider as though they deprived the sufferer of the resources which might serve to extricate him.
|
| ~ Simone Weil ~
|
| To listen to someone is to put oneself in his place while he is speaking. To put oneself in the place of someone whose soul is corroded by affliction, or in near danger of it, is to annihilate oneself. It is more difficult than suicide would be for a happy child. Therefore the afflicted are not listened to. They are like someone whose tongue has been cut out and who occasionally forgets the fact. When they move their lips no ear perceives any sound. And they themselves soon sink into impotence in the use of language, because of the certainty of not being heard.
|
| ~ Simone Weil ~
|
| The substance of our life is almost exclusively composed of fiction. We fictionalize our future, and, unless we are heroically devoted to truth, we fictionalize our past, refashioning it to our taste. We do not study other people; we invent what they are thinking, saying, and doing. Reality provides us with some raw material, just as novelists often take a theme from a news item, but we envelop it in a fog in which, as in all fiction, values are reversed, so that evil is attractive and good is tedious.
|
| ~ Simone Weil ~
|
| If you say to someone who has ears to hear: "What you are doing to me is not just," you may touch and awaken at its source the spirit of attention and love. But it is not the same with words like, "I have the right..." or "you have no right to..." They evoke a latent war and awaken the spirit of contention.
|
| ~ Simone Weil ~
|
| We should desire neither the immortality nor the death of any human being, whoever he may be, with whom we have to do.
|
| ~ Simone Weil ~
|
| The recognition of human wretchedness is difficult for whoever is rich and powerful because he is almost invincibly led to believe that he is something. It is equally difficult for the man in miserable circumstances because he is almost invincibly led to believe that the rich and powerful man is something.
|
| ~ Simone Weil ~
|
| The struggle between the opponents and defenders of capitalism is a struggle between innovators who do not know what innovation to make and conservatives who do not know what to conserve.
|
| ~ Simone Weil ~
|
| Capitalism has brought about the emancipation of collective humanity with respect to nature. But this collective humanity has itself taken on with respect to the individual the oppressive function formerly exercised by nature.
|
| ~ Simone Weil ~
|
| 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.
|
| ~ Simone Weil ~
|
| Human history is simply the history of the servitude which makes men — oppressed and oppressors alike — the plaything of the instruments of domination they themselves have manufactured, and thus reduces living humanity to being the chattel of inanimate chattels.
|
| ~ Simone Weil ~
|
| We do not obtain the most precious gifts by going in search of them but by waiting for them. Man cannot discover them by his own powers, and if he sets out to seek for them he will find in their place counterfeits of which he will be unable to discern falsity.
|
| ~ Simone Weil ~
|
- 3 ♞☤☮♌︎Kalki ⚚⚓︎⊙☳☶⚡ 07:29, 2 February 2015 (UTC)with a very strong lean torward 4.
| The collective is the object of all idolatry, this it is which chains us to the earth. In the case of avarice: gold is of the social order. In the case of ambition: power is of the social order. Science and art are full of the social element also. And love? Love is more or less of an exception: that is why we can go to God through love, not through avarice and ambition.
|
| ~ Simone Weil ~
|
| The Great Beast is the only object of idolatry, the only ersatz of God, the only imitation of something which is infinitely far from me and which is I myself.
|
| ~ Simone Weil ~
|
| The real sin of idolatry is always committed on behalf of something similar to the State.
|
| ~ Simone Weil ~
|
| 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 ~
|
| Conscience is deceived by the social. Our supplementary energy (imaginative) is to a great extent taken up with the social. It has to be detached from it. That is the most difficult of detachments.
|
| ~ Simone Weil ~
|
| It is only by entering the transcendental, the supernatural, the authentically spiritual order that man rises above the social. Until then, whatever he may do, the social is transcendent in relation to him.
|
| ~ Simone Weil ~
|
| Although people seem to be unaware of it today, the development of the faculty of attention forms the real object and almost the sole interest of studies.
|
| ~ Simone Weil ~
|
| Humility consists of knowing that in this world the whole soul, not only what we term the ego in its totality, but also the supernatural part of the soul, which is God present in it, is subject to time and to the vicissitudes of change. There must be absolutely acceptance of the possibility that everything material in us should be destroyed. But we must simultaneously accept and repudiate the possibility that the supernatural part of the soul should disappear.
|
| ~ Simone Weil ~
|
| There is nothing that comes closer to true humility than the intelligence. It is impossible to feel pride in one's intelligence at the moment when one really and truly exercises it.
|
| ~ Simone Weil ~
|
| It is because of my wretchedness that I am "I." It is on account of the wretchedness of the universe that, in a sense, God is "I" (that is to say a person).
|
| ~ Simone Weil ~
|
Above all our thought should be empty, waiting, not seeking anything, but ready to receive in its naked truth the object that is to penetrate it.
All wrong translations, all absurdities in geometry problems, all clumsiness of style, and all faulty connection of ideas in compositions and essays, all such things are due to the fact that thought has seized upon some idea too hastily, and being thus prematurely blocked, is not open to the truth.
|
| ~ Simone Weil ~
|
| There are two atheisms of which one is a purification of the notion of God.
|
| ~ Simone Weil ~
|
| St. John of the Cross calls faith a night. With those who have received a Christian education, the lower parts of the soul become attached to these mysteries when they have no right at all to do so. That is why such people need a purification of which St. John of the Cross describes the stages. Atheism and incredulity constitute an equivalent of such a purification.
|
| ~ Simone Weil ~
|
| Religion in so far as it is a source of consolation is a hindrance to true faith; and in this sense atheism is a purification. I have to be an atheist with that part of myself which is not made for God. Among those in whom the supernatural part of themselves has not been awakened, the atheists are right and the believers wrong.
|
| ~ Simone Weil ~
|
| The human soul has need of security and also of risk. The fear of violence or of hunger or of any other extreme evil is a sickness of the soul. The boredom produced by a complete absence of risk is also a sickness of the soul.
|
| ~ Simone Weil ~
|
| No human being escapes the necessity of conceiving some good outside himself towards which his thought turns in a movement of desire, supplication, and hope. consequently, the only choice is between worshipping the true God or an idol. Every atheist is an idolater — unless he is worshipping the true God in his impersonal aspect. The majority of the pious are idolaters.
|
| ~ Simone Weil ~
|
| It is written that the tree shall be known by its fruits. The Church has borne too many evil fruits for there not to have been some mistake at the beginning.… It would be strange, indeed, that the word of Christ should have produced such results if it had been properly understood.
|
| ~ Simone Weil ~
|
| There is a certain kind of morality which is even more alien to good and evil than amorality is.
|
| ~ Simone Weil ~
|
| Reintegration with the good is what punishment is. Every man who is innocent, or who has finally expiated guilt, needs to be recognized as honourable to the same extent as anyone else.
|
| ~ Simone Weil ~
|
| If people were told: what makes carnal desire imperious in you is not its pure carnal element. It is the fact that you put into it the essential part of yourself — the need for Unity, the need for God — they wouldn’t believe it. To them it seems obvious that the quality of imperious need belongs to the carnal desire as such. In the same way it seems obvious to the miser that the quality of desirability belongs to gold as such, and not to its exchange value.
|
| ~ Simone Weil ~
|
| Words like virtue, nobility, honor, honesty, generosity, have become almost impossible to use or else they have acquired bastard meanings; language is no longer equipped for legitimately praising a man’s character.
|
| ~ Simone Weil ~
|
| Every time that a man has, with a pure heart, called upon Osiris, Dionysus, Buddha, the Tao, etc., the Son of God has answered him by sending the Holy Spirit. And the Holy Spirit has acted upon his soul, not by inciting him to abandon his religious tradition, but by bestowing upon him light—and in the best of cases the fullness of light — in the heart of that same religious tradition.
|
| ~ Simone Weil ~
|
There is a reality outside the world, that is to say, outside space and time, outside man's mental universe, outside any sphere whatsoever that is accessible to human faculties.
Corresponding to this reality, at the centre of the human heart, is the longing for an absolute good, a longing which is always there and is never appeased by any object in this world.
|
| ~ Simone Weil ~
|
| It is impossible to feel equal respect for things that are in fact unequal unless the respect is given to something that is identical in all of them. Men are unequal in all their relations with the things of this world, without exception. The only thing that is identical in all men is the presence of a link with the reality outside the world.
|
| ~ Simone Weil ~
|
| The link which attaches the human being to the reality outside the world is, like the reality itself, beyond the reach of human faculties. The respect that it makes us feel as soon as it is recognized cannot be shown to us by evidence or testimony.
|
| ~ Simone Weil ~
|
In order to be exercised, the intelligence requires to be free to express itself without control by any authority. There must therefore be a domain of pure intellectual research, separate but accessible to all, where no authority intervenes.
The human soul has need of some solitude and privacy and also of some social life.
The human soul has need of both personal property and collective property.
|
| ~ Simone Weil ~
|
| Liberty, taking the word in its concrete sense, consists in the ability to choose.
|
| ~ Simone Weil ~
|
The reality of this world is necessity. The part of man which is in this world is the part which is in bondage to necessity and subject to the misery of need.
The one possibility of indirect expression of respect for the human being is offered by men's needs, the needs of the soul and of the body, in this world.
|
| ~ Simone Weil ~
|
- 3 ♞☤☮♌︎Kalki ⚚⚓︎⊙☳☶⚡ 07:29, 2 February 2015 (UTC) with a strong lean toward 4.
| 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 ~
|
- 3 ♞☤☮♌︎Kalki ⚚⚓︎⊙☳☶⚡ 18:42, 27 March 2015 (UTC) with a lean toward 4.
- 3 ♞☤☮♌︎Kalki ⚚⚓︎⊙☳☶⚡ 18:42, 27 March 2015 (UTC) with a lean toward 4.
