697 Quotes by Simone de Beauvoir

This privilege, which he alone possesses, of being a sovereign and unique subject amidst a universe of objects, is what he shares with all his fellow-men. In turn an object for others, he is nothing more than an individual in the collectivity on which he depends.

Man is a talking animal and he will always let himself be swayed by the power of the word. Machines won’t change human nature.

If I had rediscovered in Heaven, amplified to infinity, the monstrous alliance of fragility and implacability, of caprice and artificial necessity which had oppressed me since my birth, rather than worship Him I would have chosen damnation.

There was still a question in her eyes – one that she did not like to put into words.

Lynching is an absolute evil; it represents the survival of an obsolete civilization, the perpetuation of a struggle of races which has to disappear;.

Literature takes its revenge on reality by making it the slave of fiction...

To protest in the name of morality against ‘excesses’ or ‘abuses’ is an error which hints on active complicity. There are no ‘abuses’ or ‘excesses’ here, simpily an all-pervasive system.

One night I summoned God, if He really existed, to show Himself to me. He didn’t, and I never addressed another word to Him. In my heart of hearts I was very glad He didn’t exist. I should have hated it if what was going on here below had had to end up in eternity.

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.