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)
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 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
Similar quotes
Not only is the Universe stranger than we think, it is stranger than we can think.
Werner HeisenbergRead
Some people are born good-looking. Some have the gift of gab. And some are lucky enough to be born smarter than the rest of us. Whether we like it or not, Mother Nature does not dole these characteristics out evenly.
Simon SinekRead
A house isn't a home without the ineffable contentment of a cat with its tail folded about its feet. A cat gives mystery, charm, suggestion.
Lucy Maud MontgomeryRead
Most animals are pragmatic about mysteries: If they run across something they don't understand, all they care about is whether it's edible and whether it's dangerous. Humans, on the other hand, are drawn to the mystery for its own sake.
Tana FrenchRead
The ordinary, utterly mundane reason behind the massacre makes it somehow more terrible, and far more depressing. The word 'senseless' springs to mind, and Idris thwarts it. It's what people always say. A senseless act of violence. A senseless murder. As if you could commit sensible murder.
Khaled HosseiniRead
Imagine" he said, "never even thinking, 'We are alone,' simply because it has never occurred to you to think that there's any other way to be.
Douglas AdamsRead