You have to start from where you are today and from what can be done.

Authentic love must be founded on reciprocal recognition of two freedoms. For each of them, love would be the revelation of the self through the gift of the self and the enrichment of the universe.

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 and not of mortal danger.

The ideal of happiness has always taken material form in the house, whether cottage or castle; it stands for permanence and separation from the world.

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.

There are so many problems. Women can go to work on these as well without giving up their feminism.

I 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.