Simone Weil Quotes

Poor men's reasons are not heard.

Where justice is denied, where poverty is enforced, where ignorance prevails, and where any one class is made to feel that society is an organized conspiracy to oppress, rob, and degrade them, neither persons nor property will be safe.

Men feel that cruelty to the poor is a kind of cruelty to animals. They never feel that it is an injustice to equals; nay it is treachery to comrades.

Society is better off without certain people.

Unrestrained liberalism only makes the strong stronger and the weak weaker and excludes the most excluded.

In poor countries, the rich and powerful crush the poor and powerless.

Inequality causes problems by creating fissures in societies, leaving those at the bottom feeling marginalized or disenfranchised.

Most of human history has consisted of unequal conflicts between the haves and have nots.

An issue between a people and a class

If you are on the wrong side of society you can’t win.

Viciousness and prejudice flow from economic dislocation, and in turn feed it.

When you dehumanize a group, there's lasting consequences because they know that they're being dehumanized.

At the moment we have a ruling class that has one law and the people the other.

It is impossible for one class to appreciate the wrongs of another.

The rich stick together; the poor and the marginalised are thrown together.

What characterizes a member of a minority group is that he is forced to see himself as both exceptional and insignificant, marvelous and awful, good and evil.

I think people really need to think what it's like to have all of society arrayed against you.

What causes terrorism is disrespect, a lack of justice, and poverty.

Sexism, like racism, goes with us into the next century. I see class warfare as overshadowing both.

It's funny how people who ain't never been down there can think that America is so fair and that we should be alright. It's funny that the people who have their foot on our neck are telling us, 'Get up. What's wrong with you?'

As a Londoner I was able to see how the world of power and money cast its shadow on those who failed.

Why do you all push us around?

I usually play disenfranchised youth.

It's a really subtle kind of thing. It makes me feel like Randy Harrison is not a human being to them.

I have a lot of rage about things that didn't happen to me, tied up with watching an immigrant, working-class father struggle to make his way through the world - and seeing how society was modeled to keep him in his place.