About Simone de Beauvoir:

Simone Lucie Ernestine Marie Bertrand de Beauvoir 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. She is also known for her open relationship with French philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre.

A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

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

Simone de Beauvoir

Ethics is the triumph of freedom over facticity.

Simone de Beauvoir

A freedom which is interested only in denying freedom must be denied. And it is not true that the recognition of the freedom of others limits my own freedom: to be free is not to have the power to do anything you like; it is to be able to surpass the...

Simone de Beauvoir

Regardless of the staggering dimensions of the world about us, the density of our ignorance, the risks of catastrophes to come, and our individual weakness within the immense collectivity, the fact remains that we are absolutely free today if we choo...

Simone de Beauvoir

As long as there have been men and they have lived, they have all felt this tragic ambiguity of their condition, but as long as there have been philosophers and they have thought, most of them have tried to mask it.

Simone de Beauvoir

I should like to be the landscape which I am contemplating, I should like this sky, this quiet water to think themselves within me, that it might be I whom they express in flesh and bone, and I remain at a distance. But it is also by this distance th...

Simone de Beauvoir

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

Simone de Beauvoir

But this element of failure is a very condition of his life; one can never dream of eliminating it without immediately dreaming of death. This does not mean that one should consent to failure, but rather one must consent to struggle against it withou...

Simone de Beauvoir

Therefore the misfortune which comes to man as a result of the fact that he was a child is that his freedom was first concealed from him and that all his life he will be nostalgic for the time when he did not know it's exigencies.

Simone de Beauvoir

The present is a transitory existence which is made in order to be abolished: it retrieves itself only by transcending itself toward the permanence of future being; it is only as an instrument, as a means, it is only by it's efficacy with regard to t...

Simone de Beauvoir

My contemplation is an excruciation only because it is also a joy.

Simone de Beauvoir

Life is occupied in both perpetuating itself & in surpassing itself; if all it does is maintain itself, then living is only not dying, & human existence is indistinguishable from an absurd vegetation; a life justifies itself only if its effort to per...

Simone de Beauvoir

To re-establish man at the heart of his destiny is, they claim, to repudiate all ethics. However, far from God's absence authorizing all license, the contrary is the case, because man is abandoned on the earth, because his acts are definitive, absolu...

Simone de Beauvoir

But an action which wants to serve man ought to be careful not to forget him on the way, if it chooses to fulfill itself blindly, it will lose its meaning or will take on an unforeseen meaning; for the goal is not fixed once & for all; it is defined ...

Simone de Beauvoir

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

Simone de Beauvoir

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 preserves it by giving it the absolute dimension. Death does away with time.

Simone de Beauvoir

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

Simone de Beauvoir

Art is an attempt to integrate evil.

Simone de Beauvoir

La fatalité triomphe dès que l'on croit en elle.

Simone de Beauvoir

Be loved, be admired, be necessary; be somebody.

Simone de Beauvoir

Author Bio

NameSimone de Beauvoir
DescriptionFrench writer, intellectual, existentialist philosopher, political activist, feminist, and social theorist
AliasesSimone-Lucie-Ernestine-Marie Bertrand de Beauvoir
BornJanuary 9, 1909
DiedApril 14, 1986
CountryFrance
ProfessionPolitical Philosopher; Journalist; Existentialist; Woman Of Letters; Novelist; Autobiographer; Essayist; Political Activist; Diarist; Women Letter Writer
WorksThe Mandarins
AwardsPrix Goncourt; Austrian State Prize For European Literature

Quotes by Simone de Beauvoir

About Simone de Beauvoir:

Author Bio