Simone de Beauvoir Quotes

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.

All oppression creates a state of war.

Man is defined as a human being and a woman as a female - whenever she behaves as a human being she is said to imitate the male.

Few tasks are more like the torture of Sisyphus than housework, with its endless repetition: the clean becomes soiled, the soiled is made clean, over and over, day after day.

If you live long enough, you'll see that every victory turns into a defeat.

Representation of the world, like the world itself, is the work of men; they describe it from their own point of view, which they confuse with the absolute truth.

To show your true ability is always, in a sense, to surpass the limits of your ability, to go a little beyond them: to dare, to seek, to invent; it is at such a moment that new talents are revealed, discovered, and realized

I wish that every human life might be pure transparent freedom.

The most mediocre of males feels himself a demigod as compared with women.

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

It is not in giving life but in risking life that man is raised above the animal; that is why superiority has been accorded in humanity not to the sex that brings forth but to that which kills.

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.

Buying is a profound pleasure.

To catch a husband is an art; to hold him is a job.

When we abolish the slavery of half of humanity, together with the whole system of hypocrisy it implies, then the "division" of humanity will reveal its genuine significance and the human couple will find its true form.

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

In order for the artist to have a world to express he must first be situated in this world, oppressed or oppressing, resigned or rebellious, a man among men.

It is old age, rather than death, that is to be contrasted with life. Old age is life's parody, whereas death transforms life into a destiny: in a way it preserves it by giving it the absolute dimension. Death does away with time.

The fact that we are human beings is infinitely more important than all the peculiarities that distinguish human beings from one another.

There is no justification for present existence other than its expansion into an indefinitely open future.

It is in the knowledge of the genuine conditions of our lives that we must draw our strength to live and our reasons for living.

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

In the face of an obstacle which is impossible to overcome, stubbornness is stupid.

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

When an individual is kept in a situation of inferiority, the fact is that he does become inferior.

If you haven't been happy very young, you can still be happy later on, but it's much harder. You need more luck.

It's frightening to think that you mark your children merely by being yourself. It seems unfair. You can't assume the responsibility for everything you do —or don't do.

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. It is even more deceptive to dream of gaining through the child a plenitude, a warmth, a value, which one is unable to create for oneself; the child brings joy only to the woman who is capable of disinterestedly desiring the happiness of another, to one who without being wrapped up in self seeks to transcend her own existence.