Simone de Beauvoir Quotes
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To emancipate woman is to refuse to confine her to the relations she bears to man, not to deny them to her; let her have her independent existence and she will continue nonetheless to exist for him also: mutually recognising each other as subject, each will yet remain for the other an other...when we abolish the slavery of half of humanity, together with the whole system of hypocrisy that it implies, then the 'division' of humanity will reveal its genuine significance and the human couple will find its true form.
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All the opportunities you let slip by! The idea, the inspiration just doesn´t come fast enough. Instead of being open, you´re closed up tight. That´s the worst sin of all - the sin of omission.
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Those interested in perpetuating present conditions are always in tears about the marvelous past that is about to disappear, without having so much as a smile for the young future.
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Let women be provided with living strength of their own.
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Art is an attempt to integrate evil.
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At the moment of their emancipation, women have a need to write their own histories.
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To be feminist doesn't mean simply to do nothing, to reduce yourself to total impotence under the pretext of refusing masculine values. There is a problematic, a very difficult dialectic between accepting power and refusing it, accepting certain masculine values, and wanting to transform them. I think it's worth a try.
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Picasso never thought of himself as avant-garde. I just find it a bad way to think of yourself.
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It's not a very big step from contentment to complacency.
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On the day when it will be possible for woman to love not in her weakness but in her strength, not to escape herself but to find herself, not to abase herself but to assert herself – on that day love will become for her, as for man, a source of life and not of mortal danger.
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I consider it almost antifeminist to say that there is a feminine nature which expresses itself differently, that a woman speaks her body more than a man, because after all, men also speak their bodies when they write. Everything is implicated in the work of a writer.
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Self-knowledge is no guarantee of happiness, but it is on the side of happiness and can supply the courage to fight for it.
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Some things I loved have vanished. A great many others have been given to me.
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However gifted an individual is at the outset, if his or her talents cannot be developed because of his or her social condition, because of the surrounding circumstances, these talents will be still-born.
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I cannot be angry at God, in whom I do not believe.
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There is a kind of universality in the human condition, masculine or feminine. That's one thing I continue to believe.
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Oppression tries to defend itself by its utility.
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He reflected. 'I know a lot of different kids of people; what I want is to show each of them how the others really are. You hear so many lies!
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The nearer I come to the end of my days, the more I am enabled to see that strange thing, a life, and to see it whole.
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Christianity gave eroticism its savor of sin and legend when it endowed the human female with a soul.
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It is doubtless impossible to approach any human problems with a mind free from bias.
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The individual is defined only by his relationship to the world and to other individuals; he exists only by transcending himself, and his freedom can be achieved only through the freedom of others. He justifies his existence by a movement which, like freedom, springs from his heart but which leads outside of himself.
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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.
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Jealousy is not contemptible, real love has a beak and claws.