If you live long enough, you'll see that every victory turns into a defeat.
Simone De BeauvoirRead
There are cases where the slave does not know his servitude and where it is necessary to bring the seed of his liberation to him from the outside: his submission is not enough to justify the tyranny which is imposed upon him.
Interpretation
What this quote means
The quote emphasizes that ignorance can lead to unrecognized oppression, and liberation may require external intervention.
Simone De Beauvoir's quote highlights the idea that individuals may not always be aware of their own oppression or subservience. It suggests that there are situations where a person, through lack of knowledge or awareness, may accept a status of servitude, and that it is the responsibility of others to help illuminate this reality and guide the oppressed towards liberation. The quote critiques the notion that mere acceptance of one’s situation legitimizes oppression and calls for an ethical duty to challenge such tyranny.
Themes
OppressionLiberationIgnoranceTyrannyAwareness
In practice
Example use cases
This quote can be used in a discussion about social justice to highlight the importance of awareness in combating oppression.
More from Simone De Beauvoir
All quotes →Two separate beings, in different circumstances, face to face in freedom and seeking justification of their existence through one another, will always live an adventure full of risk and promise." (p. 248)
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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.
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As long as there have been men and they have lived, they have all felt this tragic ambiguity of their condition, but as long as there have been philosophers and they have thought, most of them have tried to mask it.
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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.
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