What a country calls its vital economic interests are not the things which enable its citizens to live, but the things which enable it to make war. Petrol is more likely than wheat to be a cause of international conflict.
Interpretation
This quote emphasizes that a nation's perceived economic interests often prioritize war-making resources over the basic needs of its citizens.
Simone Weil highlights a critical observation about how nations define their 'vital economic interests.' Instead of focusing on what sustains and enriches the lives of ordinary people, these interests often revolve around resources that facilitate conflict and warfare, such as oil. This perspective invites us to reflect on the true priorities of governments and the implications for global peace and welfare, suggesting that the resources that fuel international disputes are often those that don't benefit society as a whole.
In practice
In a speech about economic policies, one might quote this to illustrate the need for a focus on citizen welfare over militarization.
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?
My thoughts are whirled like a potter's wheel; I know not where I am nor what I do.
One does not want to be deceived, under the supposition that it is injurious, dangerous, or fatal to be deceived.
Logic doesn't apply to the real world. D. R. Hofstadter and D. C. Dennett (eds.) The Mind's I, 1981.
The human being is a self-propelled automaton entirely under the control of external influences. Willful and predetermined though they appear, his actions are governed not from within, but from without. He is like a float tossed about by the waves of a turbulent sea.
I did not know then that this is what life is - just when you master the geometry of one world, it slips away, and suddenly again, you're swarmed by strange shapes and impossible angles.
It is not always the same thing to be a good man and a good citizen.
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