Simone de Beauvoir - The Second Sex (1949)

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Woman has always been man's dependent, if not his slave; the two sexes have never shaped the world in equality. And even today woman is heavily handicapped, though her situation is beginning to change.

Simone de Beauvoir
When we abolish the slavery of half of humanity, together with the whole system of hypocrisy that it implies, then the "division" of humanity will reveal its genuine significance and the human couple will find its true form.

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

Simone de Beauvoir
Woman is shut up in a kitchen or in a boudoir, and astonishment is expressed that her horizon is limited. Her wings are clipped, and it is found deplorable that she cannot fly.

Simone de Beauvoir
It is not in giving life but in risking life that man is raised above the animal; that is why superiority has been accorded in humanity not to the sex that brings forth but to that which kills.

Simone de Beauvoir
The representation of the world, like the world itself, is the work of men; they describe it from the point of view which is theirs and which they confuse with the absolute truth.

Simone de Beauvoir
The curse which lies upon marriage is that too often the individuals are joined in their weakness rather than in their strength, each asking from the other instead of finding pleasure in giving. It is even more deceptive to dream of gaining through the child a plenitude, a warmth, a value, which one is unable to create for oneself; the child brings joy only to the woman who is capable of disinterestedly desiring the happiness of another, to one who without being wrapped up in self seeks to transcend her own existence.

Simone de Beauvoir
Sex pleasure in woman, as I have said, is a kind of magic spell; it demands complete abandon; if words or movements oppose the magic of caresses, the spell is broken.

Simone de Beauvoir
It is for man to establish the reign of liberty in the midst of the world of the given. To gain the supreme victory, it is necessary, for one thing, that by and through their natural differentiation men and women unequivocally affirm their brotherhood.

Simone de Beauvoir
By merely collecting observations it can be decided whether the mare is as fast as the stallion, or whether male chimpanzees excel their mates in intelligence tests — whereas the human species is forever in a state of change, forever becoming.

Simone de Beauvoir
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.

Simone de Beauvoir
It is not the inferiority of women that has caused their historical insignificance; it is rather their historical insignificance that has doomed them to inferiority.

Simone de Beauvoir
To be a woman, if not a defect, is at least a peculiarity.

Simone de Beauvoir
To be sure, the ego is not always odious. Few books are more thrilling than certain confessions, but they must be honest, and the author must have something to confess.

Simone de Beauvoir
A man is in the right in being a man; it is the woman who is in the wrong.

Simone de Beauvoir
In order to be an artist, one must be deeply rooted in the society.

Simone de Beauvoir
The word love has by no means the same sense for both sexes, and this is one cause of the serious misunderstandings that divide them.

Simone de Beauvoir
The fact that we are human beings is infinitely more important than all the peculiarities that distinguish human beings from one another.

Simone de Beauvoir
The writer of originality, unless dead, is always shocking, scandalous; novelty disturbs and repels.

Simone de Beauvoir
Those interested in perpetuating present conditions are always in tears about the marvelous past that is about to disappear, without having so much as a smile for the young future.

Simone de Beauvoir
One is not born, but rather becomes, a woman.

Simone de Beauvoir
There is a poetry in making preserves; the housewife has caught duration in the snare of sugar, she has enclosed life in jars.

Simone de Beauvoir
Weakness' is weakness only in light of the aims man sets for himself, the instruments at his disposal and the laws he imposes.

Simone de Beauvoir
Few tasks are more like the torture of Sisyphus than housework, with its endless repetition…The housewife wears herself out marking time: she makes nothing, simply perpetuates the present.

Simone de Beauvoir
The ideal of happiness has always taken material form in the house, whether cottage or castle; it stands for permanence and separation from the world.

Simone de Beauvoir
Dwelling-place and food are useful for life but give it no significance: the immediate goals of the housekeeper are only means, not true ends.

Simone de Beauvoir
Personal accomplishment is almost impossible in the human categories that are maintained collectively in an inferior situation.

Simone de Beauvoir
The products of domestic work, then, must necessarily be consumed; a continual renunciation is required of the woman whose operations are completed only in their destruction.

Simone de Beauvoir
The individuals who seem to us most outstanding, who are honored with the name of genius, are those who have proposed to enact the fate of all humanity in their personal existences.

Simone de Beauvoir
No one is more arrogant toward women, more aggressive or scornful, than the man who is anxious about his virility.

Simone de Beauvoir