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"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. It follows that woman knows and chooses herself not as she exists for herself but as man defines her. She thus has to be described first as men dream of her since her being-for-men is one of the essential factors of her concrete condition."
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"We must stop expecting the government to play the role of national transformation why we sit down and watch."

"Not everybody that says that you suck is a hater. There are people who suck."

"The poor have sometimes objected to being governed badly, the rich have always objected to being governed at all."

"Popular medicine and popular morality belong together and ought not to be evaluated so differently as they still are: both are the most dangerous pseudo-sciences."

"It takes all sorts of people to make a world, as I've often heard, but I think there are some who could be spared,' Anne told her reflection in the east gable mirror that night."

"Show me a man or a woman alone and I'll show you a saint. Give me two and they'll fall in love. Give me three and they'll invent the charming thing we call 'society'. Give me four and they'll build a pyramid. Give me five and they'll make one an outcast. Give me six and they'll reinvent prejudice. Give me seven and in seven years they'll reinvent warfare. Man may have been made in the image of God, but human society was made in the image of His opposite number, and is always trying to get back home."

"Your water is in the bottles, and my water is in the bucket, but we are brothers? I am collecting garbage, and you are in the bed, but we are sisters? My fingers are broken, and your hands are so soft, but we are family? Your God is like an angel, and my God is like an evil, but we are equal? My stomach is empty, and your stomach is so big, but we are humans?"
Explore more quotes by Simone de Beauvoir

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

"When an individual is kept in a situation of inferiority, the fact is that he does become inferior."

"Defending the truth is not something one does out of a sense of duty or to allay guilt complexes, but is a reward in itself."

"The writer of originality, unless dead, is always shocking, scandalous; novelty disturbs and repels."

"I tore myself away from the safe comfort of certainties through my love for truth - and truth rewarded me."

"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 given toward an open future; the existence of others as a freedom defines my situation and is even the condition of my own freedom. I am oppressed if I am thrown into prison, but not if I am kept from throwing my neighbor into prison."
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