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 More Quotes by Simone de Beauvoir More Quotes From Simone de Beauvoir At bottom, antipsychiatry is still psychiatry. And it doesn't really address itself to women's problems. Simone de Beauvoir psychiatry addresses problem Dwelling-place and food are useful for life but give it no significance: the immediate goals of the housekeeper are only means, not true ends. Simone de Beauvoir dwelling-place giving mean Christianity gave eroticism its savor of sin and legend when it endowed the human female with a soul. Simone de Beauvoir female atheism soul A writer is hoisted up onto a pedestal only to scrutinize him more closely and conclude that it was a mistake to put him up there in the first place. Simone de Beauvoir pedestal mistake firsts History is a great cemetery: men, deeds, ideas are always dying as soon as they are born. Simone de Beauvoir men history ideas Writing is a trade ... which is learned by writing. Simone de Beauvoir trade worship writing Woman is determined not by her hormones or by mysterious instincts, but by the manner in which her body and her relation to the world are modified through the action of others than herself. Simone de Beauvoir women body world The day knowledge was preferred to wisdom and mere usefulness to beauty. . . . Only a moral revolution -- not a social or a political revolution -- only a moral revolution would lead man back to his lost truth. Simone de Beauvoir political-revolution moral men The time that one gains cannot be accumulated in a storehouse; it is contradictory to want to save up existence, which, the fact is, exists only by being spent and there is a good case for showing that airplanes, machines, the telephone, and the radio do not make men of today happier than those of former times. Simone de Beauvoir airplane technology men She was trying to get rid of a religious hangover. Simone de Beauvoir hangover women religious Old age is better for women than for men. First of all, they have less far to fall, since their lives are more mediocre than those of most men. Simone de Beauvoir age men fall If you haven't been happy very young, you can still be happy later on, but it's much harder. You need more luck. Simone de Beauvoir luck happiness needs Living by proxy is always a precarious expedient. Simone de Beauvoir precarious proxy When someone you love dies you pay for the sin of outliving her with a thousand piercing regrets. Simone de Beauvoir regret grief loss Americans are nature-lovers: but they only admit of nature proofed and corrected by man. Simone de Beauvoir united-states nature men from one minute to the next the present is merely an honorary past. It must be filled unceasingly anew to dissemble the curse it carries within itself; that is why Americans like speed, alcohol, thriller films and any sensational news: the demand for new things, and ever newer things, is feverish since nowhere will they rest. Simone de Beauvoir united-states alcohol past Cooking is revolution and creation. Simone de Beauvoir creation revolution cooking it is so difficult not to become vain about one's own good luck. Simone de Beauvoir complacency vain good-luck Woman has always been man's dependent, if not his slave; the two sexes have never shaped the world in equality. And even today woman is heavily handicapped, though her situation is beginning to change. Simone de Beauvoir equality men sex It is not mere chance that makes families speak of a child who is 'extraordinary for his age' and also of an old man who is 'extraordinary for his age'; the extraordinariness lies in their behaving like human beings when they are either not yet or no longer men. Simone de Beauvoir men lying children
