Quotes by Simone de Beauvoir

Change your life today. Don't gamble on the future, act now, without delay.

— Simone de Beauvoir

Hope

One's life has value so long as one attributes value to the life of others, by means of love, friendship, indignation and compassion.

— Simone de Beauvoir

Love

I wish that every human life might be pure transparent freedom.

— Simone de Beauvoir

Freedom

In itself, homosexuality is as limiting as heterosexuality: the ideal should be to be capable of loving a woman or a man; either, a human being, without feeling fear, restraint, or obligation.

— Simone de Beauvoir

Courage

Sex pleasure in woman is a kind of magic spell; it demands complete abandon; if words or movements oppose the magic of caresses, the spell is broken.

— Simone de Beauvoir

Wisdom

No one is more arrogant toward women, more aggressive or scornful, than the man who is anxious about his virility.

— Simone de Beauvoir

Wisdom

One is not born a woman, but becomes one.

— Simone de Beauvoir

Wisdom

Society cares for the individual only so far as he is profitable.

— Simone de Beauvoir

Wisdom

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

— Simone de Beauvoir

Wisdom

I tore myself away from the safe comfort of certainties through my love for truth - and truth rewarded me.

— Simone de Beauvoir

Love

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

— Simone de Beauvoir

Wisdom

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

— Simone de Beauvoir

Wisdom

The word love has by no means the same sense for both sexes, and this is one cause of the serious misunderstandings that divide them.

— Simone de Beauvoir

Love

Representation of the world, like the world itself, is the work of men; they describe it from their own point of view, which they confuse with the absolute truth.

— Simone de Beauvoir

Success

I am incapable of conceiving infinity, and yet I do not accept finity.

— Simone de Beauvoir

Wisdom

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

— Simone de Beauvoir

Wisdom

This has always been a man's world, and none of the reasons that have been offered in explanation have seemed adequate.

— Simone de Beauvoir

Life

Life is occupied in both perpetuating itself and in surpassing itself; if all it does is maintain itself, then living is only not dying.

— Simone de Beauvoir

Life

Man is defined as a human being and a woman as a female - whenever she behaves as a human being she is said to imitate the male.

— Simone de Beauvoir

Life

All oppression creates a state of war.

— Simone de Beauvoir

Wisdom

If you live long enough, you'll see that every victory turns into a defeat.

— Simone de Beauvoir

Wisdom

Defending the truth is not something one does out of a sense of duty or to allay guilt complexes, but is a reward in itself.

— Simone de Beauvoir

Truth

In the face of an obstacle which is impossible to overcome, stubbornness is stupid.

— Simone de Beauvoir

Wisdom

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.

— Simone de Beauvoir

Life