Simone de Beauvoir Quotes

On deciding how much of your identity was chosen versus assigned:

One is not born, but rather becomes, a woman.

On being called too ambitious for simply acting like yourself:

Man is defined as a human being and woman as a female, whenever she behaves as a human being she is said to imitate the male.

On whether a relationship should ever feel like a performance:

To catch a husband is an art; to hold him is a job.

On questioning the default assumptions everyone treats as neutral:

Representation of the world, like the world itself, is the work of men; they describe it from their own point of view, which they confuse with absolute truth.

On refusing to be the supporting character in your own story:

He is the Subject, he is the Absolute. She is the Other.

On deciding whether to fight the system or work around it:

Society, being codified by man, decrees that woman is inferior; she can do away with this inferiority only by destroying the male's superiority.

On choosing a path nobody in your family approves of:

I wish that every human life might be pure transparent freedom.

On deciding whether to keep helping people who never say thank you:

One's life has value so long as one attributes value to the life of others.

On refusing to pick just one dream to pursue:

I am awfully greedy; I want everything from life.