There can be a true grandeur in any degree of submissiveness, because it springs from loyalty to the laws and to an oath, and not from baseness of soul.
Interpretation
True grandeur can be found in selflessness and loyalty, not in weakness.
Simone Weil's quote emphasizes that genuine nobility arises from a deep sense of loyalty to principles and commitments rather than from a place of inferiority or submission due to fear or lack of strength. It suggests that true dignity and greatness stem from upholding one's ideals and responsibilities voluntarily, rather than being forced or manipulated into submission out of a sense of worthlessness.
In practice
This quote could be used in a speech about integrity and loyalty to principles during a leadership seminar.
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?
The most fatal seductive lie that has yet existed
And so, from hour to hour, we ripe and ripe._x000D_ _x000D_ And then, from hour to hour, we rot and rot;_x000D_ _x000D_ And thereby hangs a tale.
I think the whole policy of pre-emptive war is a serious, serious mistake.
We can't live in a state of perpetual doubt, so we make up the best story possible and we live as if the story were true.
It is not all of life to live, nor yet all of death to die. For life and death are one, and only those who will consider the experience as one may come to understand or comprehend what peace indeed means.
Somewhere along the line we started misinterpreting the First Amendment and this idea of the freedom of speech the amendment grants us. We are free to speak as we choose without fear of prosecution or persecution, but we are not free to speak as we choose without consequence.
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