Quotes from Simone de Beauvoir

Vengeance is pointless, but certain men do not have a place in the world we sought to construct

Vengeance is pointless, but certain men did not have a place in the world we sought to construct

it is so difficult not to become vain about one's own good luck.

Marriage is a career which brings about more benefits than many others.

A man attaches himself to woman -- not to enjoy her, but to enjoy himself.

...counselling man to treat her as a slave while persuading her that she is a queen.

This has always been a man's world, and none of the reasons that have been offered in explanation have seemed adequate.

The most sympathetic of men never fully comprehend woman's concrete situation.

When women act like women, they are accused of being inferior. When women act like human beings, they are accused of behaving like men.

As long as the family and the myth of the family ... have not been destroyed, women will still be oppressed.

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.

But women do not say 'We', except at some congress of feminists or similar formal demonstration; men say 'women', and women use the same word in referring to themselves.

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

If women really did have complete equality with men, society would be completely overturned.

History is a great cemetery: men, deeds, ideas are always dying as soon as they are born.

At the moment of their emancipation, women have a need to write their own histories.

One is not born, but rather becomes, a woman.

Women aren't more easily swayed by fascism than men, but I believe that their situation makes them in effect more slavish than men.

I think it's wrong to write in a totally esoteric language when you want to talk about things which interest a multitude of women.

To create a language all of a piece which would be a women's language, that I find quite insane. There does not exist a mathematics which is only a women's mathematics, or a feminine science.

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.

I am not at all for a feminism which is entirely separatist, which would say, "this domain is purely for women." I don't believe that at all.

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.

There was a time, in the nineteenth century, for example, when women spoke mostly about the house, children, birth, and so forth, because it was their domain. That's changing a little, now.