Simone Weil Quotes

Let me tell you about weakness! Killing the strong to prove your strength is foolish weakness. Killing fools is easy weakness. Killing the weak is evil weakness. Accomplishing your ends without killing, mastering your mind when you want to kill--that is strength!

I've always been strongly on the side of non-violence.

The right things to do are those that keep our violence in abeyance; the wrong things are those that bring it to the fore.

I wasn’t being non-nonviolent, I was just protectin’ my family.

I think that just as we're in the nuclear era we're also in an era of non-violence. It's undefeatable.

Those who don't understand any language other than the language of force and violence don't respect human dignity. They seek violence because they will be irrelevant without it. We should not go their way.

Non-violence does not signify that man must not fight against the enemy, and by enemy is meant the evil which men do, not the human beings themselves.

The ultimate weakness of violence is that it is a descending spiral, begetting the very thing it seeks to destroy. Instead of diminishing evil, it multiplies it. Through violence you may murder the liar, but you cannot murder the lie, nor establish the truth. Through violence you may murder the hater, but you do not murder hate. In fact, violence merely increases hate... Darkness cannot drive out darkness: only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate: only love can do that.

If you have an enemy, do not requite him evil with good, for that would put him to shame. Rather prove that he did you some good.

I came to carry out the struggle, not to kill people.

I think one of the things we must constantly keep in mind is, 'If anybody hits you on one cheek, turn the other.'

You have to be able to decide, 'Well no, I'm not going to be violent, I'm going to suppress that impulse; I'm not going to be greedy.' Unless you're able to do that you're stuck with adversarial politics that leads nowhere and creates ever greater violence.

To answer brutality with brutality is to admit one's moral and intellectual bankruptcy.

The strong man is the man who can stand up for his rights and not hit back.

Eliminating wickedness is a different project from eliminating violence. Eliminating violence - the destruction associated with wickedness - is a practical program that I'm very willing to pursue.

If you resort to violent methods because the other side has destroyed your monastery, for example, you then have lost not only your monastery, but also your special Buddhist practices of detachment, love, and compassion.

A good man prefers to suffer rather than overcome injustice with evil.

In the application of the method of non-violence, one must believe in the possibility of every person, however depraved, being reformed under humane and skilled treatment.

I don't think anybody who carries a rifle carries the future. Because I don't believe that you can really change the world by killing and shooting. You have the change it by creating and competing.

I contend that non-violent acts exert pressure far more effective than violent acts, for the pressure comes from goodwill and gentleness.

If somebody stamps on your head in that way, you wouldn't say, 'Thank you very much, can I turn the other cheek'. Only Jesus Christ did that.

For he that does good, having the unlimited power to do evil, deserves praise not only for the good which he performs, but for the evil which he forbears.

Through violence, you may murder the hater, but you do not murder the hate.

Peace is our passion.

The non-violent resistor not only avoids external, physical violence, but he avoids internal violence of spirit. He not only refuses to shoot his opponent, but he refuses to hate him. And he stands with understanding, goodwill at all times.