LEPROSY OF THE MIND

“To achieve celebrity, it is useful to be surrounded by a gang of admirers, all possessed by the partisan spirit.

In the same fashion, there was no great difference between being devoted to a party or being devoted to a church – or being devoted to anti-religion. One was in favour of, or against, belief in God, for or against Christianity, and so on.

Nearly everywhere – often even when dealing with purely technical problems – instead of thinking, one merely takes sides: for or against.

Such a choice replaces the activity of the mind. This is an intellectual leprosy; it originated in the political world and then spread through the land, contaminating all forms of thinking.

This leprosy is killing us.”

Simone Weil