Weakness' is weakness only in light of the aims man sets for himself, the instruments at his disposal and the laws he imposes.

Men’s economic privilege, their social value, the prestige of marriage, the usefulness of masculine support—all these encourage women to ardently want to please men. They are on the whole still in a state of serfdom. It follows that woman knows and chooses herself not as she exists for herself but as man defines her. She thus has to be described first as men dream of her since her being-for-men is one of the essential factors of her concrete condition.

Le privilège économique détenu par les hommes, leur valeur sociale, le prestige du mariage, l'utilité d'un appui masculin, tout engage les femmes à vouloir ardenment plaire aux hommes. Elles sont encore dans l'ensemble en situation de vassalité. Il s'ensuit que la femme se connaît et se choisit non en tant qu'elle existe pour soi mais telle que l'homme la définit.

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.

Society, being codified by man, decrees that woman is inferior; she can do away with this inferiority only by destroying the male's superiority.

A man would never get the notion of writing a book on the peculiar situation of the human male.

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.

When Goya was 80 he drew an ancient man propped on two sticks, with a great mass of white hair and beard all over his face, and the inscription, "I am still learning."

Americans are nature-lovers: but they only admit of nature proofed and corrected by man.