Simone de Beauvoir

I am a feminist, and I am proud of it.

The future is a gaping wound.

One must not let oneself be caught by surprise by death.

I have always been a stranger to myself.

There are admirable women, but they all have something masculine about them.

I am not a philosopher, I am a writer.

The great advantage of the present-day bourgeoisie is to possess no moral, no ideal, no religion, no God, no sacred values.

Man is defined as a human being and woman as a female – whenever she behaves as a human being she is said to imitate the male.

For a woman to be a full human being, she must be entirely autonomous, entirely responsible for her own existence.

The word 'love' has by now been so debased and distorted that it is almost impossible to use it.

All oppression creates a state of war.

The 'eternal feminine' is a concept invented by men to perpetuate the myth of woman as the 'Other'.

To be oneself, one must be for oneself.

It is in the recognition of the ambiguities of existence that the human being can achieve his freedom.

Man is a creature of flesh and bone, but also of ideas and dreams.

The meaning of life is what you make it.

Self-consciousness is not a matter of being aware of oneself, but of being aware of oneself as a being-in-the-world.

The true meaning of life is to plant trees, under whose shade you do not expect to sit.

To make oneself a thing is to cease to be human.

The most marvelous thing about love is that it can make us forget our own existence.