We are like plants which have the one choice of being in or out of the light.
Interpretation
This quote suggests that just like plants, we must choose whether to embrace enlightenment or stay in ignorance.
Simone Weil uses the metaphor of plants to emphasize the importance of light, which represents knowledge, awareness, and truth. Just as plants thrive in light, humans flourish when they seek understanding and clarity, while remaining in darkness leads to stagnation and lack of growth. The quote invites introspection about our choices in life and encourages us to seek the light that nourishes our development.
In practice
During a motivational speech about personal development.
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?
If you're living with a scientist, you see the world differently than you do with a humanist. It's in some ways very subtle, the differences in perceiving reality.
I'n'I nah come to fight flesh and blood, But spiritual wickedness in 'igh and low places. So while they fight you down, Stand firm and give Jah thanks and praises. 'Cos I'n'I no expect to be justified by the laws of men - by the laws of men. Oh, true they have found me guilty, But through - through Jah proved my innocency.
To be a man, to have been born without knowing it or wanting it, to be thrown into the ocean of existence, to be obliged to swim, to exist; to have an identity; to resist the pressure and shocks from the outside and the unforeseen and unforeseeable acts - one's own and those of others - which so often exceed one's capacities? And what is more, to endure one's own thoughts about all this: in a word, to be human.
I do not know what the heart of a bad man is like. But i do know what the heart of a good man is like. And it is terrible.
If you can see the terrorists as a relative who's dangerously sick and we have to give them medicine and the medicine is love and compassion. There's nothing better.
War is not the continuation of politics with different means, it is the greatest mass-crime perpetrated on the community of man.
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