Simone de Beauvoir
Simone de Beauvoir (1908-1986) was a French existentialist philosopher, feminist, novelist, essayist, and writer. She is chiefly known for her study of women's status The Second Sex (1949), which was a central book of the "second wave" of feminism. She had a relationship with the leading existentialist philosopher Jean Paul Sartre.Wisdom & Quotes
- One is not born a woman, one becomes one.
- Society, being codified by man, decrees that woman is inferior; she can do away with this inferiority only by destroying the male's superiority.
- Justice can never be done in the midst of injustice.
- All oppression creates a state of war.
- I wish that every human life might be pure transparent freedom.
- One is not born a genius; one becomes a genius.
- Marriage is traditionally the destiny offered to women by society. Most women are married or have been, or plan to be or suffer from not being.
- Harmony between two individuals is never granted - it has to be conquered indefinitely.
- Writing is a trade ... which is learned by writing.
- What is an adult? A child blown up by age.
- Old age is better for women than for men. First of all, they have less far to fall, since their lives are more mediocre than those of most men.
- It is old age, rather than death, that is to be contrasted with life. Old age is life's parody, whereas death transforms life into a destiny: in a way it reserves it by giving it the absolute dimension - "As unto himself eternity changes him at last."
- The time that one gains cannot be accumulated in a storehouse; it is contradictory to want to save up existence, which, the fact is, exists only by being spent and there is a good case for showing that airplanes, machines, the telephone, and the radio do not make men of today happier than those of former times.
Jacob Bronowski