Simone de Beauvoir
Simone de Beauvoir
Simone Lucie Ernestine Marie Bertrand de Beauvoir; 9 January 1908 – 14 April 1986) was a French writer, intellectual, existentialist philosopher, political activist, feminist and social theorist. Though she did not consider herself a philosopher, she had a significant influence on both feminist existentialism and feminist theory...
NationalityFrench
ProfessionWriter
Date of Birth9 January 1908
CountryFrance
believe evil optimism
They [Americans] want to believe that Good and Evil can be defined in precise categories, that Good is already, or will be easily achieved. ... if this optimism appears too superficial, they will try to create a kind of anti-God: the U.S.S.R. That is Evil, and it only needs to be annihilated to re-establish the reign of Good.
writing profession
Writing ... is a profession that can only be learned by writing.
artist outsiders remains
In every society the artist or writer remains an outsider ...
mean circles intellectual
We always come back to the same vicious circle - an extreme degree of material or intellectual poverty does away with the means of alleviating it.
christian littles oppression
Christian ideology has contributed no little to the oppression of woman.
retirement loss solitude
Retirement revives the sorrow of parting, the feeling of abandonment, solitude and uselessness that is caused by the loss of some beloved person.
time years moments
For years I thought my work still lay ahead, and now I find it is behind me: there was no moment when it took place.
women defects ifs
To be a woman, if not a defect, is at least a peculiarity.
book past doubt
Every time I start on a new book, I am a beginner again. I doubt myself, I grow discouraged, all the work accomplished in the past is as though it never was, my first drafts are so shapeless that it seems impossible to go on with the attempt at all, right up until the moment - always imperceptible, there, too, there is a break - when it is has become impossible not to finish it.
mistake firsts pedestal
A writer is hoisted up onto a pedestal only to scrutinize him more closely and conclude that it was a mistake to put him up there in the first place.
mother children circumstances
I'm not against mothers. I am against the ideology which expects every woman to have children, and I'm against the circumstances under which mothers have to have their children.
shapes firsts world
I take on a shape and an existence only if I first throw myself into the world by loving, by doing.
heart acting action
Love and action always imply a failure, but this failure must not keep us from loving and acting. For we have not only to establish what our situation is, we have to choose it in the very heart of its ambiguity.
lying men giving
Oppression tries to defend itself by its utility. But we have seen that it is one of the lies of the serious mind to attempt to give the word "useful" an absolute meaning; nothing is useful if it is not useful to man; nothing is useful to man if the latter is not in a position to define his own ends and values, if he is not free.