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.

There were no scruples, no feelings of respect or loyal affection that would stop us from making up our minds by the pure light of reason – and of our own desires.

When I was a child, when I was an adolescent, books saved me from despair: that convinced me that culture was the highest of values[…].

To emancipate woman is to refuse to confine her to the relations she bears to man, not to deny them to her; let her have her independent existence and she will continue nonetheless to exist...

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 no to the sex that brings forth but to...

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...

En tant qu’il existe pour soi l’enfant ne saurait se saisir comme sexuellement différencié. (…) C’est à travers les yeux, les mains, non par les paties sexuelles qu’ils appréhendent l’univers.

Il y a toujours eu des femmes; elles sont femmes par leur structure physiologique; aussi loin que l’histoire remonte, elles ont toujours été subordinnées à l’homme; leur dépendance n’est pas la conséquence d’un événement ou...

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

One is not born a woman, but becomes one.

Le pays latins, comme les pays d’Orient, oppriment la femme par le rigueur des moeurs encore plus que par celle des lois.

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

That’s what I consider true generosity: You give your all, and yet you always feel as if it costs you nothing.

real woman”; nor be won over by men’s enthusiasm for her destiny, a destiny they would not for the world want to share.

In particular those who are condemned to stagnation are often pronounced happy on the pretext that happiness consists in being at rest. This notion we reject, for our perspective is that of existentialist ethics. Every...

Fathers never have exactly the daughters they want because they invent a notion a them that the daughters have to conform to.

La fécondité absurde de la femme l’empêchait de participer activement à l’accroissement de ces ressources tandis qu’elle créait indéfiniment de nouveaux besoins.

Art reveals the transitory as an absolute; & as the transitory existence is perpetuated through the centuries, art too, through the centuries, must perpetuate this never-to-be-finished revelation. Thus, the constructive activities of man tale a...

All the idols made by man, however terrifying they may be, are in point of fact subordinate to him, and that is why he will always have it in his power to destroy them.

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

In itself, homosexuality is as limiting as heterosexuality: the ideal should be to be capable of loving a woman or a man; either, a human being, without feeling fear, restraint, or obligation.

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...

É completamente estúpido escrever cartas de amor, não pode ser transcrito através de uma simples carta, mas o que fazer quando este horrível oceano nos separa do homem que amamos?

One is not born, but rather becomes a woman.

Capabilities are clearly manifested only when they have been realized.

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...

Mais de toute façon, engendrer, allaiter ne sont pas des activités, ce sont des fonctions naturelles; aucun projet n’y est engagé; c’est pourquoi la femme n’y trouve pas le motif d’une affirmation hautaine de son...

In those days we saw every sort of object as though it were one of those tiny handkerchiefs from which a conjuror can produce silk scarfs, streamers, flags, and yards of ribbon. A cup of...

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 the absolute truth.

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...

Two separate beings, in different circumstances, face to face in freedom and seeking justification of their existence through one another, will always live an adventure full of risk and promise.” (p. 248)

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

To be oneself, simply oneself, is so amazing and utterly unique an experience that it’s hard to convince oneself so singular a thing happens to everybody.

A woman’s situation, i.e those meanings derived from the total context in which she comes to maturity, disposes her to apprehend her body not as instrument of her transcendence, but “an object destined for another.

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

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...

Dès l’origine de l’humanité, leur privilège biologique a permis aux m les de s’affirmer seuls comme sujets souverains; ils n’ont jamais abdiqué ce privilège (…) Condamnée à jouer le rôle de l’Autre, la femme était...

Art, literature, and philosophy are attempts to found the world anew on a human freedom: that of the creator; to foster such an aim, one must first unequivocally posit oneself as a freedom. The restrictions...

Society, being codified by man, decrees that woman is inferior; she can do away with this inferiority only by destroying the male’s superiority.

All she had to do was make the simplest of gestures – open her hands and let go her hold. She lifted one hand and moved the fingers of it; they responded, in surprise and...

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.

Men’s economic privilege, their social value, the prestige of marriage, the usefulness of masculine support—all these encourage women to ardently want to please men. They are on the whole still in a state of serfdom....

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...

Constituye una paradoja criminal rehusar a la mujer toda actividad pública, cerrarle las carreras masculinas, proclamar en todos los dominios su incapacidad y confiarle, al mismo tiempo, la empresa más delicada y más grave de...

The misfortune is that although everyone must come to [death], each experiences the adventure in solitude. We never left Maman during those last days… and yet we were profoundly separated from her.

On s’empresse de les décharger de toute t che pénible et de tout souci: c’est les délivrer du même coup de toute responsabilité. On espère qu’ainsi dupées, séduites par la facilité de leur condition, elles...

Le sens de la toilette féminine est manifest: il s’agit de se ‘parer’ et se parer c’est s’offrir; les feministes hétérosexuelles se sont montrées naguère sur ce point aussi intransiseantes que les lesbiennes: elles refusaient...

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...

Art is an attempt to integrate evil.

The day had been spent in the expectation of these hours, and now they were crumbling away, becoming, in their turn, another period of expectancy…It was a journey without end, leading to an indefinite future,...