Oppression tries to defend itself by its utility.

It's so easy to be mistaken about the future. Sometimes there are avant-gardes which believe themselves to be the avant-garde and which later find themselves to be absolutely dated.

Women's mutual understanding comes from the fact that they identify themselves with each other; but for the same reason each is against the others.

The past is not a peaceful landscape lying there behind me, a country in which I can stroll wherever I please, and will gradually show me all its secret hills and dales. As I was moving forward, so it was crumbling. Most of the wreckage that can be seen is colourless, distorted, frozen: its meaning escapes me... all that's left is a skeleton. I shall never find my plans again, my hopes and fears - I shall not find myself.

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

It must be said in addition that the men with the most scrupulous respect for embryonic life are also those who are most zealous when it comes to condemning adults to death in war.

Christianity gave eroticism its savor of sin and legend when it endowed the human female with a soul.