Let women be provided with living strength of their own. Let them have the means to attack the world and wrest from it their own subsistence, and their dependence will be abolished -- that of man also.
Simone de BeauvoirI think that Freud understood absolutely nothing about women - as he himself said.
Simone de BeauvoirSometimes speech is no more than a device for saying nothing - and a neater one than silence.
Simone de BeauvoirI think that The Second Sex will seem an old, dated book, after a while. But nonetheless, a book which will have made its contribution. At least, I hope so.
Simone de BeauvoirHowever gifted an individual is at the outset, if his or her talents cannot be developed because of his or her social condition, because of the surrounding circumstances, these talents will be still-born.
Simone de BeauvoirWe can reorient science - for example, a kind of medicine much more directed toward the enormous number of women's health problems which are neglected now. But the original givens of this science are the same for men and for women. Women simply have to steal the instrument; they don't have to break it, or try, a priori, to make of it something totally different. Steal it and use it for their own good.
Simone de Beauvoir