Simone de Beauvoir Quotes

A man never begins by presenting himself as an individual of a certain sex; it goes without saying that he is a man.

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

Today, however, we are having a hard time living because we are so bent on outwitting death.

He reflected. ‘I know a lot of different kids of people; what I want is to show each of them how the others really are. You hear so many lies!

Society cares about the individual only in so far as he is profitable. The young know this. Their anxiety as they enter in upon social life matches the anguish of the old as they are excluded from it.

It is dreadful to think that behind me my own past is no longer anything but shifting darkness.

Death itself does not frighten me; it is the jump I am afraid of.

The body is not a thing, it is a situation: it is our grasp on the world and our sketch of our project.

That the child is the supreme aim of woman is a statement having precisely the value of an advertising slogan.

Every war, every revolution, demands the sacrifice of a generation, of a collectivity, by those who undertake it.