697 Quotes by Simone de Beauvoir

Une éthique véritablement socialiste, c'est-à-dire qui cherche la justice sans supprimer la liberté, qui impose aux individus des charges mais sans abolir l'individualité, se trouvera fort embarrassée par les problèmes que pose la condition de la femme.

The moment you acknowledge my conscience, you know that I acknowledge one in you, too. That makes all the difference.’ ‘Perhaps,’ said Françoise . . . ‘In short, that is friendship. Each renounces individual self-importance. But what if either refuses to renounce it?’ ‘In that case, friendship is impossible,’ said Pierre. Xavière never renounced any part of herself. No matter how high she placed one, even if it amounted to worship, one remained an object to her.

He made of his sexuality an ethic; he expressed this ethic in works of literature. It is by this deliberate act that Sade attains a real originality.

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

To lose confidence in one’s body is to lose confidence in oneself.

In oppressing, one becomes oppressed. Men are enchained by reason of their very sovereignty; it is because they alone earn money that their wives demand checks, it is because they alone engage in a business or profession that their wives require them to be successful, it is because they alone embody transcendence that their wives wish to rob them of it by taking charge...

As far as I am concerned sexuality no longer exists. I used to call this indifference serenity: all at once I have come to see it in another light—it is a mutilation; it is the loss of a sense. The lack of it makes me blind to the needs, the pains, and the joys of those who do possess it.

Tous les enfants essaient de compenser la séparation du sevrage par des conduites de séduction et de parade; on oblige le garçon à dépasser ce stade, on le délivre de son narcissisme en le fixant sur son pénis; tandis que la fillette est confirmée dans cette tendance à se faire objet qui est commune à tous les enfants.

Capabilities are clearly manifested only when they have been realized.