Simone De Beauvoir Quotes

Oppression tries to defend itself by its utility.

Women have been burnt as witches simply because they were beautiful.

To make oneself an object, to make oneself passive, is a very different thing from being a passive object.

The body is not a thing, it is a situation: it is our grasp on the world and our sketch of our project

Self-knowledge is no guarantee of happiness, but it is on the side of happiness and can supply the courage to fight for it.

I had never believed in the sacred nature of literature. God had died when I was fourteen.

The curse which lies upon marriage is that too often the individuals are joined in their weakness rather than in their strength - each asking from the other instead of finding pleasure in giving.

The ballot box is a most inadequate mechanism of change.

Old age is life's parody.

There is only one solution if old age is not to be an absurd parody of our former life, and that is to go on pursuing ends that give our existence a meaning.

It's only arrogance if you're wrong.

Legislators, priests, philosophers, writers, ans scientists have striven to show that the subordinate position of woman is willed in heaven and advantageous on earth.

Why one man rather than another? It was odd. You find yourself involved with a fellow for life just because he was the one that you met when you were nineteen.

Christian ideology has contributed no little to the oppression of woman.

...counselling man to treat her as a slave while persuading her that she is a queen.

I think that where you go wrong is that you imagine that your reasons for living ought to fall on you, ready-made from heaven, whereas we have to find them for ourselves.

This has always been a man's world, and none of the reasons that have been offered in explanation have seemed adequate.

Whatever the country, capitalist or socialist, man was everywhere crushed by technology, made a stranger to his own work, imprisoned, forced into stupidity.

One can not start by saying that our earthly destiny has or has not importance, for it depends upon us to give it importance.

The most sympathetic of men never fully comprehend woman's concrete situation.

She would never change, but one day at the touch of a fingertip she would fall to dust.

Self-consciousness is not knowledge but a story one tells about oneself.

At the moment of their emancipation, women have a need to write their own histories.

Defending the truth is not something one does out of a sense of duty or to allay guilt complexes, but is a reward in itself.

But women do not say 'We', except at some congress of feminists or similar formal demonstration; men say 'women', and women use the same word in referring to themselves.

I cannot be angry at God, in whom I do not believe.

One is not born a genius, one becomes a genius; and the feminine situation has up to the present rendered this becoming practically impossible.

Many things would be changed for Americans if they would only admit that there is ill-luck in this world and that misfortune is not a priori a crime.

Patience is one of those feminine qualities which have their origin in our oppression but should be preserved after our liberation.

Society cares for the individual only so far as he is profitable.

Retirement may be looked upon either as a prolonged holiday or as a rejection, a being thrown on to the scrap-heap.

A couple who go on living together merely because that was how they began, without any other reason: was that what we were turning into?

One is not born, but rather becomes, a woman.

Each of us is responsible for everything and to every human being.

Justice can never be done in the midst of injustice.

The emancipation of women must be the work of women themselves, independent of the class struggle.

Only a woman can write what it is to feel as a woman, to be a woman.

Since it is the Other within us who is old, it is natural that the revelation of our age should come to us from outside --from others. We do not accept it willingly.

Why does one exist? That's not my problem. One does exist. The thing to do is to take no notice but go at it on the run and to keep on going right on until you die.

Capabilities are clearly manifested only when they have been realized.

The way I approached a question, my habit of mind, the way I looked at things, what I took for granted - all this was myself and it did not seem to me that I could alter it.

No existence can be validly fulfilled if it is limited to itself.

Let women be provided with living strength of their own.

Art is an attempt to integrate evil.

Given masculine norms, it is clear that women are more likely to be considered crazy - I'm not saying to be crazy.

To be moral is to discover fundamentally ones own being.

Literature is always what the dominant ideology recognizes as literature.

Weakness' is weakness only in light of the aims man sets for himself, the instruments at his disposal and the laws he imposes.

I was made for another planet altogether. I mistook the way.

Si l'on vit assez longtemps, on voit que toute victoire se change un jour en de faite. If you live long enough, you'll find that every victory turns into a defeat.