Explore Quotes by Simone De Beauvoir

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.

What is an adult? A child blown up by age.

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

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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

However gifted an individual is at the outset, if his or her talents cannot be developed because of his or her social condition, because of the surrounding circumstances, these talents will be still-born.

Ah, if only there were two of me, she thought, one who spoke and the other who listened, one who lived and one who watched, how I would love myself! I would envy no one.

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.

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.

There is only one good. And that is to act according to the dictates of one's conscience.

A man is in the right in being a man; it is the woman who is in the wrong.

To emancipate woman is to refuse to confine her to the relations she bears to man, not to deny them to her; let her have her independent existence and she will continue nonetheless to exist for him also: mutually recognising each other as subject, each will yet remain for the other an other...when we abolish the slavery of half of humanity, together with the whole system of hypocrisy that it implies, then the 'division' of humanity will reveal its genuine significance and the human couple will find its true form.

People seem to think that if you keep your head empty you automatically fill your balls.