If you live long enough, you'll see that every victory turns into a defeat.
Simone De BeauvoirRead
The point is not for women simply to take power out of men’s hands, since that wouldn’t change anything about the world. It’s a question precisely of destroying that notion of power.
Interpretation
What this quote means
The quote emphasizes the need to change the concept of power rather than just shifting it from men to women.
Simone De Beauvoir discusses the importance of redefining power dynamics in society. She suggests that simply transferring power from men to women is insufficient; instead, the fundamental notions of power must be challenged and transformed to create a more equitable world. This perspective invites a deeper understanding of power itself, proposing that true change requires a dismantling of existing hierarchies and assumptions around power, rather than merely a gender swap.
Themes
PowerGenderFeminismChangeEquality
In practice
Example use cases
During a women's rights panel discussion to emphasize the need for systemic changes in power structures.
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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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.
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
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