QuoteProject
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
ShareWTF𝕏

Interpretation

What this quote means

True freedom involves transcending limitations rather than simply having the power to act without restraint.

Simone De Beauvoir's quote emphasizes that freedom is not merely the absence of constraints or the ability to act without limitations; instead, true freedom lies in the capacity to move beyond existing conditions and expectations towards a limitless future. It suggests that authentic freedom requires a conscious effort to challenge and transcend societal norms and personal barriers, allowing for growth, exploration, and new possibilities.

Themes

FreedomFutureLimitationsGrowthTranscendence

In practice

Example use cases

In a discussion about personal growth, one might quote De Beauvoir to illustrate the idea that true liberty involves overcoming obstacles.

More from Simone De Beauvoir

If you live long enough, you'll see that every victory turns into a defeat.
Simone De BeauvoirRead
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)
Simone De BeauvoirRead
To catch a husband is an art; to hold him is a job.
Simone De BeauvoirRead
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 BeauvoirRead
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.
Simone De BeauvoirRead
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 BeauvoirRead

Similar quotes

Among those who share a throne there can be no loyalty; Dominion's ever impatient consort.
LucanRead
Faith means wanting God and wanting to want nothing else.
Brennan ManningRead
The wish to hurt, the momentary intoxication with pain, is the loophole through which the pervert climbs into the minds of ordinary men.
Jacob BronowskiRead
[Praying] demands that you take to the road again and again, leaving your house and looking forward to a new land for yourself and your [fellow human]. This is why praying demands poverty, that is, the readiness to live a life in which you have nothing to lose so that you always begin afresh.
Henri NouwenRead
A society that gives to one class all the opportunities for leisure, and to another all the burdens of work, dooms both classes to spiritual sterility.
Lewis MumfordRead
Content if hence th' unlearn'd their wants may view, The learn'd reflect on what before they knew.
Alexander PopeRead

A little wisdom, now and then

Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.