At the moment of their emancipation, women have a need to write their own histories.

Woman is shut up in a kitchen or in a boudoir, and astonishment is expressed that her horizon is limited. Her wings are clipped, and it is found deplorable that she cannot fly.

In 1949, I believed that social progress, the triumph of the proletariat, socialism would lead to the emancipation of women. But I saw that nothing came of it: first of all, that socialism was not achieved anywhere, and that in certain countries which called themselves socialist, the situation of women was no better than it was in so-called capitalist countries.

There is only one solution if old age is not to be an absurd parody of our former life, and that is to go on pursuing ends that give our existence a meaning.

The nearer I come to the end of my days, the more I am enabled to see that strange thing, a life, and to see it whole.

It's not a very big step from contentment to complacency.

To be moral is to discover fundamentally ones own being.