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.
Interpretation
This quote highlights the struggle of the marginalized who feel voiceless and powerless in society.
Simone Weil's quote speaks to the profound isolation experienced by those who are suffering and unheard. It likens their plight to that of someone who has lost their ability to communicate, illustrating how the inability to express oneself leads to a diminishing sense of agency and identity. The reference to silence and impotence emphasizes how societal neglect can render individuals invisible and unable to articulate their pain, ultimately leading to a loss of hope and self-worth.
In practice
In a speech addressing social injustices, one might quote Weil to emphasize the need to listen to marginalized voices.
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?
We must not wish for the disappearance of our troubles but for the grace to transform them.
Nothing incites to money-crimes like great poverty or great wealth.
Some people take the view that the universe is simply there, and it runs along - it's a bit as though it just sort of computes, and we happen by accident to find ourselves in this thing. I don't think that's a very fruitful or helpful way of looking at the universe.
The greatest of all crosses is self. If we die in part every day, we shall have but little to do on the last. These little daily deaths will destroy the power of the final dying.
Whenever I hear anyone arguing for slavery, I feel a strong impulse to see it tried on him personally.
The rhinoceros stood ... about five hundred yards away ... not a twentieth-century animal at all, but an odd, grim straggler from the Stone Age.
When I am liberated by silence, when I am no longer involved in the measurement of life, but in the living of it, I can discover a form of prayer in which there is effectively no distraction. My whole life becomes a prayer. My whole silence is full of prayer. The world of silence in which I am immersed contributes to my prayer.
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