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

About Simone Weil

Portrait of Simone Weil

Simone Adolphine Weil (; French: [simɔn adɔlfin vɛj]; 3 February 1909 – 24 August 1943) was a French philosopher, mystic, political activist and labourer. Despite her short life, her ideas concerning religion, spirituality and politics have remained widely influential in contemporary philosophy.

More quotations from Simone Weil

Imagination and fiction make up more than three quarters of our real life.

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.

All sins are attempts to fill voids.

sin desire need emptiness

I suffer more from the humiliations inflicted by my country than from those inflicted on her.

war politics patriotism harm humiliation

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.

More quotations tagged with “evil”

Every sweet has its sour; every evil its good.

—Ralph Waldo Emerson

No evil can happen to a good man, either in life or after death.

All things may corrupt when minds are prone to evil.

Don't let us make imaginary evils, when you know we have so many real ones to encounter.

—Oliver Goldsmith

It is bitter to lose a friend to evil, before one loses him to death.

—Mary Renault

History

11 Jul 2015 Added