If you live long enough, you'll see that every victory turns into a defeat.
Simone De BeauvoirRead
The most mediocre of males feels himself a demigod as compared with women.
Interpretation
What this quote means
This quote highlights the inflated self-perception that some men have in relation to women, suggesting a sense of superiority.
Simone De Beauvoir's quote critiques the notion of male superiority, emphasizing that even average men often perceive themselves as being much more significant or capable than women. It speaks to the wider issues of gender inequality and the social constructs that allow such beliefs to flourish, indicating a deep-rooted sexism prevalent in society.
Themes
GenderSuperiorityInequalitySexismSociety
In practice
Example use cases
In a discussion about gender roles, this quote can be cited to illustrate male perception.
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
If multiculturalism succeeds in making us a nation of independently empowered tribes, each tribe will be deprived of the comfort of victimhood and be forced to confront human limitation for what it is: a fixture of life.
Jonathan FranzenRead
I believe I never knew what the word round meant until I saw Earth from space.
Alexey LeonovRead
If it had not been for the pernicious power of envy, men would not so have exalted vengeance above innocence and profit above justice... in these acts of revenge on others, men take it upon themselves to begin the process of repealing those general laws of humanity which are there to give a hope of salvation to all who are in distress.
ThucydidesRead
As buds give rise by growth to fresh buds, and these, if vigorous, branch out and overtop on all sides many a feebler branch, so by generation I believe it has been with the great Tree of Life, which fills with its dead and broken branches the crust of the earth, and covers the surface with its ever branching and beautiful ramifications.
Charles DarwinRead
Pour out wine till I become a wanderer from myself; for in selfhood and existence I have felt only fatigue.
RumiRead
It's not the voting that's democracy; it's the counting.
Tom StoppardRead