Simone de Beauvoir quotes - page 6

All the idols made by man, however terrifying they may be, are in point of fact subordinate to him, and that is why he will always have it in his power to destroy them. (Simone de Beauvoir)
In the face of an obstacle which is impossible to overcome, stubbornness is stupid. View quote
Simone de Beauvoir
Buying is a profound pleasure. View quote
Simone de Beauvoir
Retirement may be looked upon either as a prolonged holiday or as a rejection, a being thrown on to the scrap-heap. View quote
Simone de Beauvoir
If I had amnesia, I'd be almost like other men. Perhaps I'd even be able to love you. View quote
Simone de Beauvoir
I'm never afraid. But in my case it's nothing to be proud of. View quote
Simone de Beauvoir
When an individual (or a group of individuals) is kept in a situation of inferiority, the fact is that he is inferior. But the significance of the verb to be must be rightly understood here; it is in bad faith to give it a static value when it really has the dynamic Hegelian sense of "to have become." Yes, women on the whole are today inferior to men; that is, their situation affords them fewer possibilities. The question is: should that state of affairs continue? Many men hope that it will continue; not all have given up the battle. View quote
Simone de Beauvoir
... counselling man to treat her as a slave while persuading her that she is a queen. View quote
Simone de Beauvoir
Society, being codified by man, decrees that woman is inferior; she can do away with this inferiority only by destroying the male's superiority. View quote
Simone de Beauvoir
Youth and what the Italians so prettily call stamina. The vigor, the fire, that enables you to love and create. When you've lost that, you've lost everything. View quote
Simone de Beauvoir
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. (Simone de Beauvoir)
And without a doubt it is more comfortable to endure blind bondage than to work for one's liberation; the dead, too, are better suited to the earth than the living. View quote
Simone de Beauvoir
When an individual is kept in a situation of inferiority, the fact is that he does become inferior. View quote
Simone de Beauvoir
The Universe was somewhere else, always somewhere else! And it isn't anywhere: there are only men, men eternally divided. View quote
Simone de Beauvoir
In Plato, art is mystification because there is the heaven of Ideas; but in the earthly domain all glorification of the earth is true as soon as it is realized. View quote
Simone de Beauvoir
Men of today seem to feel more acutely than ever the paradox of their condition. View quote
Simone de Beauvoir
This does not mean that one should consent to failure, but rather one must consent to struggle against it without respite. View quote
Simone de Beauvoir
It is nonsense to assert that revelry, vice, ecstasy, passion, would become impossible if man and woman were equal in concrete matters. View quote
Simone de Beauvoir
It was said that I refused to grant any value to the maternal instinct and to love. This was not so. View quote
Simone de Beauvoir
A conquest of this kind is never finished; the contingency remains, and, so that he may assert his will, man is even obliged to stir up in the world the outrage he does not want. View quote
Simone de Beauvoir
It is not in vain that man nullifies being. Thanks to him, being is disclosed and he desires this disclosure. There is an original type of attachment to being which is not the relationship "wanting to be” but rather "wanting to disclose being.” Now, here there is not failure, but rather success. (Simone de Beauvoir)
In the original helplessness from which man surges up, nothing is useful, nothing is useless. View quote
Simone de Beauvoir
The failure described in Being and Nothingness is definitive, but it is also ambiguous. View quote
Simone de Beauvoir
He walks in the street, a picture of modesty in his felt hat and his gabardine suit, and all the while he's thinking, "I'm immortal." View quote
Simone de Beauvoir
It is vain to apportion praise and blame. View quote
Simone de Beauvoir