A Darwinian nation of economic fitness abhors idleness, dependence, non-productivity. Simone de Beauvoir More Quotes by Simone de Beauvoir More Quotes From Simone de Beauvoir 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 kindness love life The point is not for women simply to take power out of men’s hands, since that wouldn’t change anything about the world. It’s a question precisely of destroying that notion of power. Simone de Beauvoir men hands world When women act like women, they are accused of being inferior. When women act like human beings, they are accused of behaving like men. Simone de Beauvoir diversity justice men I am too intelligent, too demanding, and too resourceful for anyone to be able to take charge of me entirely. No one knows me or loves me completely. I have only myself Simone de Beauvoir life-and-love feminist intelligent No one is more arrogant toward women, more aggressive or scornful, than the man who is anxious about his virility. Simone de Beauvoir arrogant arrogance men Whatever the country, capitalist or socialist, man was everywhere crushed by technology, made a stranger to his own work, imprisoned, forced into stupidity. The evil all arose from the fact that he had increased his needs rather than limited them; . . . As long as fresh needs continued to be created, so new frustrations would come into being. When had the decline begun? The day knowledge was preferred to wisdom and mere usefulness to beauty. . . . Only a moral revolution - not a social or political revolution - only a moral revolution would lead man back to his lost truth. Simone de Beauvoir frustration loss country 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. Simone de Beauvoir weakness danger men Change your life today. Don't gamble on the future, act now, without delay. Simone de Beauvoir inspirational-life change positive To be free is not to have the power to do anything you like; it is to be able to surpass the given toward an open future. Simone de Beauvoir you-like-it given able I tore myself away from the safe comfort of certainties through my love for truth - and truth rewarded me. Simone de Beauvoir truth comfort inspirational Be loved, be admired, be necessary; be somebody. Simone de Beauvoir Authentic love must be founded on reciprocal recognition of two freedoms. For each of them, love would be the revelation of the self through the gift of the self and the enrichment of the universe. Simone de Beauvoir self would-be two That is what chills your spine when you read an account of a suicide: not the frail corpse hanging from the window bars but what happened inside that heart immediately before. Simone de Beauvoir bars suicide heart All oppression creates a state of war. Simone de Beauvoir oppression historical war As long as the family and the myth of the family ... have not been destroyed, women will still be oppressed. Simone de Beauvoir myth stills long Few tasks are more like the torture of Sisyphus than housework, with its endless repetition: the clean becomes soiled, the soiled is made clean, over and over, day after day. The housewife wears herself out marking time: she makes nothing, simply perpetuates the present … Eating, sleeping, cleaning – the years no longer rise up towards heaven, they lie spread out ahead, grey and identical. The battle against dust and dirt is never won. Simone de Beauvoir dust sleep lying When I was a child, when I was an adolescent, books saved me from despair: that convinced me that culture was the highest of values[...]. Simone de Beauvoir despair book children One is not born, but rather becomes, a woman. No biological, psychological, or economic fate determines the figure that the human female presents in society; it is civilization as a whole that produces this creature, intermediate between male and eunuch, which is described as feminine. Simone de Beauvoir males fate civilization I am awfully greedy; I want everything from life. I want to be a woman and to be a man, to have many friends and to have loneliness, to work much and write good books, to travel and enjoy myself, to be selfish and to be unselfish… You see, it is difficult to get all which I want. And then when I do not succeed I get mad with anger. Simone de Beauvoir selfish loneliness work Women have been burnt as witches simply because they were beautiful. Simone de Beauvoir witch has-beens beautiful
