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Quotes of the day: Simone de Beauvoir
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Published Friday, January 09, 2015 @ 6:12 AM EST
Jan 09 2015

Simone Lucie Ernestine Marie Bertrand de Beauvoir, commonly known as Simone de Beauvoir (January 9, 1908 – April 14 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. De Beauvoir wrote novels, essays, biographies, autobiography and monographs on philosophy, politics and social issues. She is known for her 1949 treatise The Second Sex, a detailed analysis of women's oppression and a foundational tract of contemporary feminism; her novels, including She Came to Stay and The Mandarins; and her lifelong relationship with Jean-Paul Sartre. (Click here for full Wikipedia article)

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Change your life today. Don't gamble on the future, act now, without delay.

Defending the truth is not something one does out of a sense of duty or to allay guilt complexes, but is a reward in itself.

I am incapable of conceiving infinity, and yet I do not accept finity. I want this adventure that is the context of my life to go on without end.

I tore myself away from the safe comfort of certainties through my love for the truth; and truth rewarded me.

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

If you live long enough, you'll see that every victory turns into a defeat.

It is doubtless impossible to approach any human problems with a mind free from bias.

It's frightening to think that you mark your children merely by being yourself... It seems unfair. You can't assume the responsibility for everything you do- or don't do.

Life is occupied in both perpetuating itself and in surpassing itself; if all it does is maintain itself, then living is only not dying.

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

One is not born a woman, but becomes one.

One's life has value so long as one attributes value to the life of others, by means of love, friendship, indignation and compassion.

Retirement may be looked upon either as a prolonged holiday or as a rejection, a being thrown on to the scrap-heap.

Self-knowledge is no guarantee of happiness, but it is on the side of happiness and can supply the courage to fight for it.

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.

The Communists, following Hegel, speak of humanity and its future as of some monolithic individuality. I was attacking this illusion.

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.

The present enshrines the past- and in the past all history has been made by men.

There is only one good. And that is to act according to your conscience.

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

What is an adult? A child blown up by age.

Why one man rather than another? It was odd. You find yourself involved with a fellow for life just because he was the one that you met when you were nineteen.

Work almost always has a double aspect: it is a bondage, a wearisome drudgery; but it is also a source of interest, a steadying element, a factor that helps to integrate the worker with society.


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