697 Quotes by Simone de Beauvoir

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

Society cares about the individual only in so far as he is profitable. The young know this. Their anxiety as they enter in upon social life matches the anguish of the old as they are excluded from it.

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

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

The torment that so many young women know, bound hand and foot by love and motherhood, without having forgotten their former dreams.

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

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.

When women act like women, they are accused of being inferior. When women act like human beings, they are accused of behaving like men.

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