He who does not realize to what extent shifting fortune and necessity hold in subjection every human spirit, cannot regard as fellow-creatures nor love as he loves himself those whom chance separated from him by an abyss. The variety of constraints pressing upon man give rise to the illusion of several distinct species that cannot communicate. Only he who has measured the dominion of force, and knows how not to respect it, is capable of love and justice. ✨ Simone Weil (2005). War and the Iliad, New York Review of Books
More Author Quotes
- The only great spirit of our time. ✨ Simone Weil (2014). Letter to a Priest, p.2, Routledge
- Misfortunes leave wounds which bleed drop by drop even in sleep; thus little by little they train man by force and dispose him to wisdom in spite of himself. Man must learn to think ofhimself as a li … ▶
- To get power over is to defile. To possess is to defile. ✨ Simone Weil (2015). First and Last Notebooks: Supernatural Knowledge, p.70, Wipf and Stock Publishers
- There is no detachment where there is no pain. And there is no pain endured without hatred or lying unless detachment is present too.
- Whatever debases the intelligence degrades the entire human being.
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