To make oneself an object, to make oneself passive, is a very different thing from being a passive object.

One is not born, but rather becomes, a woman. No biological, psychological, or economic fate determines the figure that the human female presents in society; it is civilization as a whole that produces this creature, intermediate between male and eunuch, which is described as feminine.

If you haven't been happy very young, you can still be happy later on, but it's much harder. You need more luck.

When an individual (or a group of individuals) is kept in a situation of inferiority, the fact is that he is inferior.

Sometimes speech is no more than a device for saying nothing - and a neater one than silence.

The women of today are in a fair way to dethrone the myth of femininity; they are beginning to affirm their independence in concrete ways; but they do not easily succeed in living completely the life of a human being.

Woman has always been man's dependent, if not his slave; the two sexes have never shaped the world in equality. And even today woman is heavily handicapped, though her situation is beginning to change.