If you live long enough, you'll see that every victory turns into a defeat.
Simone De BeauvoirRead
When an individual is kept in a situation of inferiority, the fact is that he does become inferior.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Being placed in an inferior position can lead to a sense of true inferiority over time.
Simone De Beauvoir's quote highlights the psychological impact of social structures that enforce inferiority on individuals. It suggests that when a person is consistently treated as inferior, they may internalize this status and come to believe in their own diminished capabilities or worth, demonstrating the power of societal perceptions in shaping self-identity and potential.
Themes
InferioritySelf-IdentitySocietyPsychologyEmpowerment
In practice
Example use cases
In a speech about overcoming stereotypes in the workplace.
More from Simone De Beauvoir
All quotes βTwo 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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To catch a husband is an art; to hold him is a job.
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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 β¦ Eating, sleeping, cleaning β 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
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