If you live long enough, you'll see that every victory turns into a defeat.
Simone De BeauvoirRead
It must be said in addition that the men with the most scrupulous respect for embryonic life are also those who are most zealous when it comes to condemning adults to death in war.
Interpretation
What this quote means
The quote critiques the contradiction in valuing life at different stages, highlighting hypocrisy in views on life and death.
Simone De Beauvoir points out the inconsistency in societal attitudes toward life, contrasting the respect given to embryonic life with the disregard for adult life in the context of war. This reflects a deeper philosophical examination of how value is assigned to life based on context and circumstance, suggesting a need for a more cohesive ethic regarding the sanctity of life.
Themes
LifeWarHypocrisyEthicsValueEmbryonic
In practice
Example use cases
In a debate about pro-life policies, this quote can emphasize the need for consistent ethical standards.
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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