Famous Simone de Beauvoir Quotes Explained
Simone de Beauvoir was a 20th-century French philosopher, writer, and political activist, a central figure of post-war French existentialism and a foundational thinker of modern feminist philosophy. Beauvoir's <em>The Second Sex</em> (1949) and <em>The Ethics of Ambiguity</em> (1947) defined twentieth-century existentialist feminism. Below are eight of the most-quoted lines.
“One is not born, but rather becomes, a woman.”
On ne naît pas femme: on le devient.
What it means
On ne naît pas femme: on le devient — the opening sentence of Book II of The Second Sex (1949). Beauvoir's thesis is that femininity is socially constructed rather than biologically given; what looks like a natural feature of women is in fact the cumulative product of upbringing, expectation, and constraint.
“I tore myself away from the safe comfort of certainties through my love for truth, and truth rewarded me.”
All Said and Done (1972), p. 16 ISBN 1569249814
What it means
From The Ethics of Ambiguity (1947) and echoed in Beauvoir's autobiographical works. The line treats truth-seeking as costly: leaving the security of familiar beliefs is required for genuine understanding, and the reward is not comfort but a different kind of integrity.
Attributed to Simone de Beauvoir:
“Change your life today. Don't gamble on the future, act now, without delay.”
What it means
Attributed to Beauvoir and consistent with the existentialist position she shares with Sartre. The future is not a separate territory in which one will eventually act; it is constituted by present actions, and waiting for better conditions defers indefinitely the life one is supposedly preparing for.
“If you live long enough, you'll see that every victory turns into a defeat.”
All Men Are Mortal, 1946
What it means
From All Men Are Mortal (1946). Beauvoir's near-immortal protagonist Fosca discovers that any victory, given enough time, transforms into the conditions of the next defeat. The line is a meditation on the impossibility of permanent political or personal achievement.
Attributed to Simone de Beauvoir:
“I am too intelligent, too demanding, and too resourceful for anyone to be able to take charge of me entirely.”
What it means
From The Prime of Life (1960), Beauvoir's autobiography of the inter-war years. The line is a defence of a life lived on one's own terms: the qualities Beauvoir lists are not boasts but explanations of why conventional partnership has not been an option.
Attributed to Simone de Beauvoir:
“It is in the knowledge of the genuine conditions of our lives that we must draw our strength to live and our reasons for acting.”
What it means
From The Ethics of Ambiguity (1947). Beauvoir's existentialist ethics is grounded in honesty about the human situation: only by accepting the contingency, freedom, and finitude of life can one find the genuine motives to act rather than the false ones supplied by ideology.
Attributed to Simone de Beauvoir:
“On the day when it will be possible for woman to love not in her weakness but in her strength, not to escape herself but to find herself, not to abase herself but to assert herself, on that day love will become for her, as for man, a source of life.”
What it means
From the conclusion of The Second Sex (1949). Beauvoir projects a future in which women's love is grounded in a developed self rather than in dependence — at which point the relationship between the sexes becomes one of mutual recognition rather than asymmetric service.
Attributed to Simone de Beauvoir:
“To will oneself free is also to will others free.”
What it means
From The Ethics of Ambiguity (1947). Beauvoir extends Sartre's account of freedom to a social ethics: my freedom is undermined by the unfreedom of others, since freedom requires a world of free actors to act on. Solidarity is therefore not generous but self-interested.