It is not the cause for which men took up arms that makes a victory more just or less, it is the order that is established when arms have been laid down.
Interpretation
True justice in victory is determined not by the reasons for conflict, but by the peace established afterward.
Simone Weil's quote emphasizes that the morality of a victory in war is not defined by the initial cause for which people fought, but rather by the quality and justice of the order that follows the cessation of hostilities. It suggests that the outcomes of war, particularly the peace and order they produce, hold greater significance than the principles or motivations that initiated the conflict.
In practice
In a discussion about the consequences of war, this quote serves to highlight the importance of achieving a lasting peace.
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.
The appetite for power, even for universal power, is only insane when there is no possibility of indulging it; a man who sees the possibility opening before him and does not try to grasp it, even at the risk of destroying himself and his country, is either
As soon as men know that they can kill without fear of punishment or blame, they kill; or at least they encourage killers with approving smiles.
Evil is license, and that is why it is monotonous: everything has to be drawn from ourselves. One is condemned to false infinity. That is hell itself.
I am not a Catholic; but I consider the Christian idea, which has its roots in Greek thought and in the course of the centuries has nourished all of our European civilization, as something that one cannot renounce without becoming degraded.
How many people have been thus led, through lack of self-confidence, to stifle their most justified doubts?
Without free speech no search for truth is possible... no discovery of truth is useful.
The proximity of an army causes prices to go up; and high prices cause people's substance to be drained away. When their substance is drained away, they will be afflicted by heavy exactions. With this loss of substance and exhaustion of strength, the homes of the people will be stripped bare, and their incomes dissipated.
Mathematics is a logical method. . . . Mathematical propositions express no thoughts. In life it is never a mathematical proposition which we need, but we use mathematical propositions only in order to infer from propositions which do not belong to mathematics to others which equally do not belong to mathematics.
In the truest sense, freedom cannot be bestowed; it must be achieved.
Nothing is miserable unless you think it so.
In the post-enlightenment Europe of the 19th century the highest authority was no longer the Church. Instead it was science. Thus was born racial anti-Semitism, based on two disciplines regarded as science in their day - the 'scientific study of race' and the Social Darwinism of Herbert Spencer and Ernst Haeckel.
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