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.
Interpretation
The quote suggests that a lack of accountability leads to violence and a culture that condones such behavior.
Simone Weil's quote highlights the inherent dangers of a society where individuals believe they can act violently without facing consequences. It implies that when people feel they can kill with impunity, they are likely to either commit acts of violence themselves or condone such behaviors in others, fostering an environment that encourages brutality and moral decay.
In practice
In a discussion on societal norms and violence, this quote can illustrate the consequences of a lack of accountability.
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
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.
A government can be compared to our lungs. Our lungs are best when we don't realize they are helping us breathe. It is when we are constantly aware of our lungs that we know they have come down with an illness.
The subliminal mind receives and remembers all those touches that delight the soul. Our soul takes joy in this right touching by the Essence of all experience.
Taxing is an easy business. Any projector can contrive new impositions; any bungler can add to the old; but is it altogether wise to have no other bounds to your impositions than the patience of those who are to bear them?
A man is sorry to be honest for nothing.
There is "what is" only when there is no comparing and to live with "what is" is to be peaceful.
Abstract truth has no value unless it incarnates in human beings who represent it, by proving their readiness to die for it.
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