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It Is Doubtless Impossible To Approach Any Human Problems With A Mind Free From Bias.
-Simone De Beauvoir
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It Is Doubtless Impossible

Simone De Beauvoir
...
It Is Doubtless Impossible To Approach Any Human Problems With A Mind Free From Bias.

Understanding the Quote: "it is doubtless impossible to approach any human problems with a mind..."

This quote by Simone De Beauvoir reflects deeply on the theme of mind. It connects to the universal human journey of purpose, motivation, and reflection. Often categorized under Mind, Impossible, Problem, the quote offers insight, emotional clarity, and intellectual inspiration to readers worldwide.

Whether you’re a student exploring new ideas, a leader trying to motivate your team, or someone seeking direction in life — this quote provides value. It resonates because it’s more than words — it’s a bridge between experience and wisdom. It shows how Simone de Beauvoir interprets life's core challenges and triumphs.

Lessons From the Quote

This quote teaches resilience and focus. It reminds readers that no matter where they stand in life, reflection and self-awareness lead to growth. Each word has meaning, and when studied, it becomes clear how impactful thoughtful language can be.

About Simone De Beauvoir

Simone De Beauvoir is celebrated for insightful thoughts on mind and impossible. Their legacy lives on through writings that guide, comfort, and inspire. Discover more on their profile page.

Actionable Takeaways

  • Reflect on how this quote applies to your current life path.
  • Share the message with someone who needs inspiration.
  • Write your thoughts on this quote in a journal or blog post.
  • Use it as a daily affirmation or reminder.

Closing Thoughts

Quotes like this endure because they capture universal truths. They comfort us in solitude and empower us in groups. Carry this quote forward — live by its wisdom, share its message, and keep its essence alive.

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Topic
Mind
Impossible
Problem
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Only A Woman Can Write What It Is To Feel As A Woman, To Be A Woman.
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There Is Only One Good. And That Is To Act According To The Dictates Of One's Conscience.
Conscience
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.
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To Create A Language All Of A Piece Which Would Be A Women's Language, That I Find Quite Insane. There Does Not Exist A Mathematics Which Is Only A Women's Mathematics, Or A Feminine Science.
Insane
Doe
Would Be
The Most Sympathetic Of Men Never Fully Comprehend Woman's Concrete Situation.
Men
Sympathetic
Situation
To Will Freedom And To Will To Disclose Being Are One And The Same Choice; Hence, Freedom Takes A Positive And Constructive Step Which Causes Being To Pass To Existence In A Movement Which Is Constantly Surpassed.
Choices
Movement
Causes
A Darwinian Nation Of Economic Fitness Abhors Idleness, Dependence, Non-productivity.
Economic
Dependence
Nations
Literature In France Seems To Be Undergoing A Crisis Now, And Nothing Comes Immediately To Mind.
Mind
France
Literature
Literature Is Always What The Dominant Ideology Recognizes As Literature.
Literature
Ideology
Dominant
It Is In Great Part The Anxiety Of Being A Woman That Devastates The Feminine Body.
Anxiety
Body
Being A Woman
All The Opportunities You Let Slip By! The Idea, The Inspiration Just Doesn´t Come Fast Enough. Instead Of Being Open, You´re Closed Up Tight. That´s The Worst Sin Of All - The Sin Of Omission.
Inspiration
Opportunity
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Existentialism Does Not Offer To The Reader The Consolations Of An Abstract Evasion: Existentialism Proposes No Evasion. On The Contrary, Its Ethics Is Experienced In The Truth Of Life, And It Then Appears As The Only Proposition Of Salvation Which One Can Address To Men.
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Writing Is A Trade ... Which Is Learned By Writing.
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Work Would Be Terribly Boring If One Did Not Play The Game All Out, Passionately.
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Work Almost Always Has A Double Aspect: It Is A Bondage, A Wearisome Drudgery; But It Is Also A Source Of Interest, A Steadying Element, A Factor That Helps To Integrate The Worker With Society. Retirement May Be Looked Upon Either As A Prolonged Holiday Or As A Rejection, A Being Thrown On To The Scrap-heap.
Retirement
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Holiday
The Role Of A Retired Person Is No Longer To Possess One.
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Buying Is Profound Pleasure.
Profound
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I Was Struck By The Absence, Even Among Very Young Boys And Girls, Of Any Interior Motivation; They Were Incapable Of Thinking, Of Inventing, Of Imagining, Of Choosing, Of Deciding For Themselves; This Incapacity Was Expressed By Their Conformism; In Every Domain Of Life They Employed Only The Abstract Measure Of Money, Because They Were Unable To Trust To Their Own Judgment.
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The Earthly Meaning Of Eternal Life Was Death, And She Refused To Die.
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One Is Not Born A Genius, One Becomes A Genius; And The Feminine Situation Has Up To The Present Rendered This Becoming Practically Impossible.
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Becoming
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He Formed His Sentences Hesitantly And Then Threw Them At Me With Such Force That I Felt As If I Were Receiving A Present Each Time
Receiving
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It's Not A Very Big Step From Contentment To Complacency.
Contentment
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I Don't Want To Be Just Another Blade Of Grass.
Want
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When I Was A Child, When I Was An Adolescent, Books Saved Me From Despair: That Convinced Me That Culture Was The Highest Of Values[...].
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What Is An Adult? A Child Blown Up By Age.
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I Believe That We Must Use Language. If It Is Used In A Feminist Perspective, With A Feminist Sensibility, Language Will Find Itself Changed In A Feminist Manner. It Will Nonetheless Be The Language. You Can't Not Use This Universal Instrument; You Can't Create An Artificial Language, In My Opinion. But Naturally, Each Writer Must Use It In His/her Own Way.
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Obviously, Everything Has Always Been Defined By The Dominant Ideology. But The Dominant Ideology Has Been Able To Accept Women's Literature As Well As Men's Literature. I Would Say That Women Have Been Hindered From Creating For A Variety Of Reasons, As Virginia Woolf So Admirably Explained In A Room Of One's Own. When They Have Created, On The Whole They Have Been Recognized. In Literature It Hasn't Been Nearly As Oppressive As In, Say, Painting, Where Even The Existence Of So Many Women Painters Has Always Been Denied.
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It Is In The Knowledge Of The Genuine Conditions Of Our Lives That We Must Draw Our Strength To Live And Our Reasons For Living.
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Marriage Is Traditionally The Destiny Offered To Women By Society. Most Women Are Married Or Have Been, Or Plan To Be Or Suffer From Not Being.
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Existence Must Be Asserted In The Present If One Does Not Want All Life To Be Defined As An Escape Toward Nothingness.
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You Have Never Had Any Confidence In Him. And If He Has No Confidence In Himself It Is Because He Sees Himself Through Your Eyes.
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I Realized That Even If We Went On Talking Till Judgment Day, I Would Still Find The Time All Too Short.
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One Can Not Start By Saying That Our Earthly Destiny Has Or Has Not Importance, For It Depends Upon Us To Give It Importance.
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To Make Oneself An Object, To Make Oneself Passive, Is A Very Different Thing From Being A Passive Object.
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If You Are Truly On The Left, If You Reject Ideas Of Power And Hierarchy, What You Want Is Equality. Otherwise, It Won't Work At All.
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In Itself, Homosexuality Is As Limiting As Heterosexuality: The Ideal Should Be To Be Capable Of Loving A Woman Or A Man; Either, A Human Being, Without Feeling Fear, Restraint, Or Obligation.
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The Way I Approached A Question, My Habit Of Mind, The Way I Looked At Things, What I Took For Granted - All This Was Myself And It Did Not Seem To Me That I Could Alter It.
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Art Is An Attempt To Integrate Evil.
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Feminism Is One Way Of Attacking Society As It Now Exists.
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There Are Cases Where The Slave Does Not Know His Servitude And Where It Is Necessary To Bring The Seed Of His Liberation To Him From The Outside: His Submission Is Not Enough To Justify The Tyranny Which Is Imposed Upon Him.
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If Her Functioning As A Female Is Not Enough To Define Woman, If We Decline Also To Explain Her Through "the Eternal Feminine," And If Nevertheless We Admit, Provisionally, That Women Do Exist, Then We Must Face The Question: What Is A Woman?
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Even If One Is Neither Vain Nor Self-obsessed, It Is So Extraordinary To Be Oneself - Exactly Oneself And No One Else - And So Unique, That It Seems Natural That One Should Also Be Unique For Someone Else.
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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.
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If The Unconscious Must Express Itself It Will Do So Through The Work That You Do Consciously Or Subconsciously, With Words, With What You Have To Say.
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To Be A Woman, If Not A Defect, Is At Least A Peculiarity.
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In Truth We Need To Change The Society Itself, Men As Well As Women, To Change Everything.
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A Freedom Which Is Interested Only In Denying Freedom Must Be Denied. And It Is Not True That The Recognition Of The Freedom Of Others Limits My Own Freedom: To Be Free Is Not To Have The Power To Do Anything You Like; It Is To Be Able To Surpass The Given Toward An Open Future; The Existence Of Others As A Freedom Defines My Situation And Is Even The Condition Of My Own Freedom. I Am Oppressed If I Am Thrown Into Prison, But Not If I Am Kept From Throwing My Neighbor Into Prison.
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On Ne Na|"t Pas Femme: On Le Devient. One Is Not Born A Woman: One Becomes A Woman.
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She Was Ready To Deny The Existence Of Space And Time Rather Than Admit That Love Might Not Be Eternal.
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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.
Understanding
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From One Minute To The Next The Present Is Merely An Honorary Past. It Must Be Filled Unceasingly Anew To Dissemble The Curse It Carries Within Itself; That Is Why Americans Like Speed, Alcohol, Thriller Films And Any Sensational News: The Demand For New Things, And Ever Newer Things, Is Feverish Since Nowhere Will They Rest.
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It's Frightening To Think That You Mark Your Children Merely By Being Yourself. It Seems Unfair. You Can't Assume The Responsibility For Everything You Do --or Don't Do.
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Children
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Many Things Would Be Changed For Americans If They Would Only Admit That There Is Ill-luck In This World And That Misfortune Is Not A Priori A Crime.
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As Long As The Family And The Myth Of The Family ... Have Not Been Destroyed, Women Will Still Be Oppressed.
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Myth
Stills
It's True That This Is One Of The Problems Which Often Arises Among My Radical, Revolutionary Feminist Friends: Do You Have To Join The System Or Not? On The One Hand, If You Don't, You Risk Being Ineffectual. But If You Do, From That Moment On, You Place Your Feminism At The Service Of A System Which You Want To Take Apart.
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They [americans] Want To Believe That Good And Evil Can Be Defined In Precise Categories, That Good Is Already, Or Will Be Easily Achieved. ... If This Optimism Appears Too Superficial, They Will Try To Create A Kind Of Anti-god: The U.s.s.r. That Is Evil, And It Only Needs To Be Annihilated To Re-establish The Reign Of Good.
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Man Is A Talking Animal And He Will Always Let Himself Be Swayed By The Power Of The Word. Machines Won't Change Human Nature.
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I Think There Is A Great Tendency Toward Autobiography Among Women Today. It Is Perhaps Facile - And I Say That Even Though I Have Written One Myself.
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Regardless Of The Staggering Dimensions Of The World About Us, The Density Of Our Ignorance, The Risks Of Catastrophes To Come, And Our Individual Weakness Within The Immense Collectivity, The Fact Remains That We Are Absolutely Free Today If We Choose To Will Our Existence In Its Finiteness, A Finiteness Which Is Open On The Infinite. And In Fact, Any Man Who Has Known Real Loves, Real Revolts, Real Desires, And Real Will Knows Quite Well That He Has No Need Of Any Outside Guarantee To Be Sure Of His Goals; Their Certitude Comes From His Own Drive.
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Legislators, Priests, Philosophers, Writers, Ans Scientists Have Striven To Show That The Subordinate Position Of Woman Is Willed In Heaven And Advantageous On Earth.
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As Soon As A Woman Re- Fuses To Be Perfectly Happy Doing Housework Eight Hours A Day, Society Has A Tendency To Want To Do A Lobotomy On Her.
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One Is Not Born, But Rather Becomes, A Woman.
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It Is True That Nothing Is Gained Without Something Being Lost: Everyone Knows That In Fulfilling Oneself One Necessarily Sacrifices Some Possibilities.
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If The Feminine Issue Is So Absurd, Is Because The Male's Arrogance Made It "a Discussion
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A Couple Who Go On Living Together Merely Because That Was How They Began, Without Any Other Reason: Was That What We Were Turning Into?
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There's Something Tragic About You. Your Feeling For The Absolute. You Were Made To Believe In God And Spend Your Life In A Convent.' There Are Too Many With That Vocation. God Would Have Had To Love Only Me.
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Whatever The Country, Capitalist Or Socialist, Man Was Everywhere Crushed By Technology, Made A Stranger To His Own Work, Imprisoned, Forced Into Stupidity. The Evil All Arose From The Fact That He Had Increased His Needs Rather Than Limited Them; . . . As Long As Fresh Needs Continued To Be Created, So New Frustrations Would Come Into Being. When Had The Decline Begun? The Day Knowledge Was Preferred To Wisdom And Mere Usefulness To Beauty. . . . Only A Moral Revolution - Not A Social Or Political Revolution - Only A Moral Revolution Would Lead Man Back To His Lost Truth.
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To Catch A Husband Is An Art; To Hold Him Is A Job.
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My Worst Mistake Has Been Not Grasping That Time Goes By. It Was Going By And There I Was, Set In The Attitude Of The Ideal Wife Of An Ideal Husband. Instead Of Bringing Our Sexual Relationship To Life Again I Brooded Happily Over Memories Of Our Former Nights Together.
Memories
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The Renewed Use Of Lobotomy Today Is Particularly Applicable To Women: Because They Do Routine Things, It Is Possible To Take Away Their Spirit Of Revolt, Of Debate, Of Criticism, And Still Leave Them Perfectly Capable Of Making Stews Or Washing Dishes. It's Terrible, This Tendency To Consider Women Something Dangerous To Society.
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Because We Are Separated Everything Separates Us, Even Our Efforts To Join Each Other.
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I Had Never Believed In The Sacred Nature Of Literature. God Had Died When I Was Fourteen.
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It Is So Difficult Not To Become Vain About One's Own Good Luck.
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Society Turns Away From The Aged Worker As Though He Belonged To Another Species. That Is Why The Whole Question Is Buried In A Conspiracy Of Silence. Old Age Exposes The Failure Of Our Entire Civilization.
Civilization
Silence
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You Can't Address Yourself To Women By Speaking A Language Which No Average Woman Will Understand. In My Opinion, It's Wrong.
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Addresses
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It's Only Arrogance If You're Wrong.
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I Tore Myself Away From The Safe Comfort Of Certainties Through My Love For Truth - And Truth Rewarded Me.
Inspirational
Truth
Comfort
All The Idols Made By Man, However Terrifying They May Be, Are In Point Of Fact Subordinate To Him, And That Is Why He Will Always Have It In His Power To Destroy Them.
Men
Idols
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Every War, Every Revolution, Demands The Sacrifice Of A Generation, Of A Collectivity, By Those Who Undertake It.
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Sacrifice
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Immortality Is A Terrible Curse.
Immortality
Terrible
Curse
Love And Action Always Imply A Failure, But This Failure Must Not Keep Us From Loving And Acting. For We Have Not Only To Establish What Our Situation Is, We Have To Choose It In The Very Heart Of Its Ambiguity.
Heart
Acting
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What Is Very Troubling Is That People Who Have Tried To Write Literature, Even, For Example, Proletarian Writers, Seem To Write Within The Norms Of The Dominant Class.
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Class
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At The Moment Of Their Emancipation, Women Have A Need To Write Their Own Histories.
Writing
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Why Does One Exist? That's Not My Problem. One Does Exist. The Thing To Do Is To Take No Notice But Go At It On The Run And To Keep On Going Right On Until You Die.
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To Lose Confidence In One’s Body Is To Lose Confidence In Oneself.
Self Esteem
Bad Day
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All Oppression Creates A State Of War.
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Historical
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Women Have Been Burnt As Witches Simply Because They Were Beautiful.
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Witch
Has Beens
Tonight, Once More, Life Sinks Its Teeth Into My Heart.
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Tonight
I Am Too Intelligent, Too Demanding, And Too Resourceful For Anyone To Be Able To Take Charge Of Me Entirely. No One Knows Me Or Loves Me Completely. I Have Only Myself
Life And Love
Intelligent
Feminist
One Day I'll Be Old, Dead, Forgotten. And At This Very Moment, While I'm Sitting Here Thinking These Things, A Man In A Dingy Hotel Room Is Thinking, "i Will Always Be Here."
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Thinking
One Day
When We Abolish The Slavery Of Half Of Humanity, Together With The Whole System Of Hypocrisy It Implies, Then The "division" Of Humanity Will Reveal Its Genuine Significance And The Human Couple Will Find Its True Form.
Couple
Justice
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Few Tasks Are More Like The Torture Of Sisyphus Than Housework, With Its Endless Repetition: The Clean Becomes Soiled, The Soiled Is Made Clean, Over And Over, Day After Day. The Housewife Wears Herself Out Marking Time: She Makes Nothing, Simply Perpetuates The Present … Eating, Sleeping, Cleaning – The Years No Longer Rise Up Towards Heaven, They Lie Spread Out Ahead, Grey And Identical. The Battle Against Dust And Dirt Is Never Won.
Lying
Sleep
Dust
Sign Of Old Age: Distress At All Leave-takings, All Separations. And The Sadness Of Memories, Because I'm Aware They're Condemned To Death.
Memories
Sadness
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From The Very Beginning, Existentialism Defined Itself As A Philosophy Of Ambiguity.
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Existentialism
Ambiguity
Man Is Defined As A Human Being And A Woman As A Female - Whenever She Behaves As A Human Being She Is Said To Imitate The Male.
Inspiring
Men
Males
It Is Old Age, Rather Than Death, That Is To Be Contrasted With Life. Old Age Is Life's Parody, Whereas Death Transforms Life Into A Destiny: In A Way It Preserves It By Giving It The Absolute Dimension. Death Does Away With Time.
Death
Time
Destiny
I Was Very Fond Of Lagneau’s Phrase: “i Have No Comfort But In My Absolute Despair.
Despair
Comfort
Phrases
Cooking Is Revolution And Creation.
Cooking
Revolution
Creation
To Be Feminist Doesn't Mean Simply To Do Nothing, To Reduce Yourself To Total Impotence Under The Pretext Of Refusing Masculine Values. There Is A Problematic, A Very Difficult Dialectic Between Accepting Power And Refusing It, Accepting Certain Masculine Values, And Wanting To Transform Them. I Think It's Worth A Try.
Mean
Thinking
Feminist
Choice Springs From The Totality Of The Person. Thus, To Study, To Analyze What A Person Is, Does Not Eliminate The Idea Of Freedom.
Spring
Ideas
Choices
When Goya Was 80 He Drew An Ancient Man Propped On Two Sticks, With A Great Mass Of White Hair And Beard All Over His Face, And The Inscription, "i Am Still Learning."
Men
Hair
Two
One Can Hardly Tell Women That Washing Up Saucepans Is Their Divine Mission, [so] They Are Told That Bringing Up Children Is Their Divine Mission. But The Way Things Are In The World, Bringing Up Children Has A Great Deal In Common With Washing Up Saucepans.
Children
Women
World
The Point Is Not For Women Simply To Take Power Out Of Men’s Hands, Since That Wouldn’t Change Anything About The World. It’s A Question Precisely Of Destroying That Notion Of Power.
Men
Hands
World
The Ballot Box Is A Most Inadequate Mechanism Of Change.
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Ballots
Mechanism
Old Age Was Growing Inside Me. It Kept Catching My Eye From The Depths Of The Mirror. I Was Paralyzed Sometimes As I Saw It Making Its Way Toward Me So Steadily When Nothing Inside Me Was Ready For It.
Eye
Mirrors
Age
The Individuals Who Seem To Us Most Outstanding, Who Are Honored With The Name Of Genius, Are Those Who Have Proposed To Enact The Fate Of All Humanity In Their Personal Existences.
Fate
Names
Humanity
Change Your Life Today. Don't Gamble On The Future, Act Now, Without Delay.
Change
Positive
Inspirational Life
Weakness' Is Weakness Only In Light Of The Aims Man Sets For Himself, The Instruments At His Disposal And The Laws He Imposes.
Men
Light
Law
Self-knowledge Is No Guarantee Of Happiness, But It Is On The Side Of Happiness And Can Supply The Courage To Fight For It.
Fighting
Self
Guarantees
…but All Day Long I Would Be Training Myself To Think, To Understand, To Criticize, To Know Myself; I Was Seeking For The Absolute Truth: This Preoccupation Did Not Exactly Encourage Polite Conversation.
Thinking
Long
Training
I Admire Freud A Great Deal As A Person And Thinker. Despite Everything, I Find His Work Very, Very Rich, But I Think That For Women He Has Been Absolutely Disastrous. And Even More So, Everyone Who Came After Him.
Thinking
Rich
Admire
The Day Knowledge Was Preferred To Wisdom And Mere Usefulness To Beauty. . . . Only A Moral Revolution -- Not A Social Or A Political Revolution -- Only A Moral Revolution Would Lead Man Back To His Lost Truth.
Men
Political Revolution
Moral
No Existence Can Be Validly Fulfilled If It Is Limited To Itself.
Existential
Existence
Fulfilled
A Life Is Such A Strange Object, At One Moment Translucent, At Another Utterly Opaque, An Object I Make With My Own Hands, An Object Imposed On Me, An Object For Which The World Provides The Raw Material And Then Steals It From Me Again, Pulverized By Events, Scattered, Broken, Scored Yet Retaining Its Unity; How Heavy It Is And How Inconsistent: This Contradiction Breeds Many Misunderstandings.
Hands
Broken
Unity
The Word Love Has By No Means The Same Sense For Both Sexes, And This Is One Cause Of The Serious Misunderstandings That Divide Them.
Sex
Women
Mean
And Without A Doubt It Is More Comfortable To Endure Blind Bondage Than To Work For One's Liberation; The Dead, Too, Are Better Suited To The Earth Than The Living.
Doubt
Earth
Blind
Each Person Has His Or Her Own Very Particular History And After All, The Unconscious Is The Most Secret Part Of Ourselves.
Secret
Unconscious
Persons
If You Try Consciously To Be Avant-garde, It's A Little Dangerous, Like The Present State Of Modern Painting, Where Dealers Try To Be Avant-garde, And Under This Pretext, Painters Take Some Old Scraps And Call It Avant-garde.
Trying
Avant Garde
Littles
I Would Certainly Like To See Some Young Women Take Up Psychoanalysis Seriously And Reconstruct It From An Absolutely New Viewpoint.
Viewpoints
Young
Young Women
Live With No Time-out.
Inspirational
Time
Inspiration
There Are Topics Which Are Common To Men And Women. I Think That If A Woman Speaks Of Oppression, Of Misery, She Will Speak Of It In Exactly The Same Way As A Man. But If She Speaks Of Her Own Personal Problems As A Woman, She Will Obviously Speak In Another Way.
Men
Thinking
Way
Old Age Is Better For Women Than For Men. First Of All, They Have Less Far To Fall, Since Their Lives Are More Mediocre Than Those Of Most Men.
Fall
Men
Age
Eating, Sleeping, Cleaning - The Years No Longer Rise Up Toward Heaven, They Lie Spread Out Ahead, Gray And Identical. The Battle Against Dust And Dirt Is Never Won. Washing, Ironing, Sweeping, Ferreting Out Rolls Of Lint From Under Wardrobes - All This Halting Of Decay Is Also The Denial Of Life; For Time Simultaneously Creates And Destroys, And Only Its Negative Aspect Concerns The Housekeeper.
Lying
Sleep
Dust
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.
Country
Lying
Moving
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.
Women
Independence
Today
Feminism Is A Revolutionary Movement Which Is Different From The Class Struggle Movement, The Proletarian Movement, But Which Is A Movement Which Must Be Leftist. By That I Mean At The Extreme Left, A Movement Working To Overthrow The Whole Society.
Struggle
Mean
Class
Sometimes You Can Accept An Important Post, On Condition That It Really Puts You In A Position To Help Women. Unfortunately, Women Who Have Important Posts Very Often Adopt Masculine Standards-power, Ambition, Personal Success - And Cut Themselves Off From Other Women.
Ambition
Cutting
Important
Few Books Are More Thrilling Than Certain Confessions, But They Must Be Honest, And The Author Must Have Something To Confess.
Book
Honest
Confession
The Writer Can't Stop Her Unconscious From Showing Up, That's Certain.
Showing Up
Certain
Unconscious
At Bottom, Antipsychiatry Is Still Psychiatry. And It Doesn't Really Address Itself To Women's Problems.
Addresses
Problem
Psychiatry
I Discovered Feminism Around 1970-72-precisely The Time When Feminism Began To Exist In France. Before That, There Was No Feminism.
Feminism
France
There Are Moments When You Have To Write Certain Things And You Don't Have To Think Of Your Sex. If You Are Writing About The Population Of The Thirteenth District In Paris, Even If You Are Writing On The Women In The Thirteenth District, There's No Need To Consider Your Sex.
Sex
Writing
Thinking
Americans Are Nature-lovers: But They Only Admit Of Nature Proofed And Corrected By Man.
Nature
Men
United States
Dwelling-place And Food Are Useful For Life But Give It No Significance: The Immediate Goals Of The Housekeeper Are Only Means, Not True Ends.
Mean
Dwelling Place
Giving
It Is A Difficult Matter For Man To Realize The Extreme Importance Of Social Discriminations Which Seem Outwardly Insignificant But Which Produce In Woman Moral And Intellectual Effects So Profound That They Appear To Spring From Her Original Nature.
Spring
Men
Profound
The Younger And Healthier A Woman Is And The More Her New And Glossy Body Seems Destined For Eternal Freshness, The Less Useful Is Artifice; But The Carnal Weakness Of This Prey That Man Takes And Its Ominous Deterioration Always Have To Be Hidden From Him...in Any Case, The More Traits And Proportions Of A Woman Seem Contrived, The More She Delighted The Heart Of Man Because She Seemed To Escape The Metamorphosis Of Natural Things. The Result Is This Strange Paradox That By Desiring To Grasp Nature, But Transfigured, In Woman, Man Destines Her To Artifice.
Heart
Men
Weakness
Can One Say That There Is A Way Of Crying Out, Of Speaking, Which Is Properly Feminine? Personally, I Don't Think So. In The End, I Find This Is Another Way Of Putting Women In A Kind Of Singularity, A Ghetto, Which Is Not What I Want. I Want Them To Be Singular And Universal At The Same Time.
Ghetto
Thinking
Want
The Human Species Is Forever In A State Of Change, Forever Becoming.
Forever
Becoming
States
If The Writer Is A Woman, Feminist Or Not, It Will Give The Language Something That It Would Not Have If It Had Been Used By A Man.
Men
Giving
Feminist
We Belong To This Earth. Now I Can See The Truth ... I Love You On This Earth Of Ours. Love Me, Do!
Love You
Earth
I Can
Why One Man Rather Than Another? It Was Odd. You Find Yourself Involved With A Fellow For Life Just Because He Was The One That You Met When You Were Nineteen.
Men
Finding Yourself
Nineteen
A Man Is In The Right In Being A Man; It Is The Woman Who Is In The Wrong.
Men
The Body Is The Instrument Of Our Hold On The World.
World
Body
Instruments
Marriage Is A Career Which Brings About More Benefits Than Many Others.
Marriage
Careers
Benefits
To Will Oneself Moral And To Will Oneself Free Are One And The Same Decision.
Decision
Moral
Oneself
I Think That Where You Go Wrong Is That You Imagine That Your Reasons For Living Ought To Fall On You, Ready-made From Heaven, Whereas We Have To Find Them For Ourselves.
Fall
Thinking
Heaven
If I Were Proud Of Anything In My Life, It Would Be Of Our Love. I Feel We Have To Tell To Each Other As Many Things As We Can, So We Are Not Only Lovers, But The Closest Of Friends At The Same Time.
Would Be
Our Love
Proud
I Went To Get A Detective Story. You Have To Kill Time. But Time Will Kill Me Too - And There´s The True, Preestablished Balance.
Balance
Stories
Detectives
If Women Really Did Have Complete Equality With Men, Society Would Be Completely Overturned.
Men
Would Be
Ifs
There Is Something In The New York Air That Makes Sleep Useless.
Travel
New York
Sleep
I Have Never Read A Really Good Novel Written By A Man Where Women Are Portrayed As They Truly Are. They Can Be Portrayed Externally Very Well - Stendhal's Madame De Renal, For Example - But Only As Seen From The Outside.
Men
Example
Novel
There Is A Poetry In Making Preserves; The Housewife Has Caught Duration In The Snare Of Sugar, She Has Enclosed Life In Jars.
Sugar
Duration
Jars
To Emancipate Woman Is To Refuse To Confine Her To The Relations She Bears To Man, Not To Deny Them To Her; Let Her Have Her Independent Existence And She Will Continue Nonetheless To Exist For Him Also: Mutually Recognising Each Other As Subject, Each Will Yet Remain For The Other An Other...when We Abolish The Slavery Of Half Of Humanity, Together With The Whole System Of Hypocrisy That It Implies, Then The 'division' Of Humanity Will Reveal Its Genuine Significance And The Human Couple Will Find Its True Form.
Couple
Independent
Men
For Me, The Problem Of Time Is Linked Up With That Of Death, With The Thought That We Inevitably Draw Closer And Closer To It, With The Horror Of Decay.
Time
Decay
Problem
Two Separate Beings, In Different Circumstances, Face To Face In Freedom And Seeking Justification Of Their Existence Through One Another, Will Always Live An Adventure Full Of Risk And Promise." (p. 248)
Adventure
Two
Risk
There Has To Be A Certain Relationship Between The Life And The Writing Style, And That Is Really A Problem.
Writing
Style
Problem
He Reflected. 'i Know A Lot Of Different Kids Of People; What I Want Is To Show Each Of Them How The Others Really Are. You Hear So Many Lies!
Lying
Kids
People
Fathers Never Have Exactly The Daughters They Want Because They Invent A Notion A Them That The Daughters Have To Conform To.
Daughter
Father
Expectations
When An Individual (or A Group Of Individuals) Is Kept In A Situation Of Inferiority, The Fact Is That He Is Inferior.
Feminism
Doe
Inferiority
Christian Ideology Has Contributed No Little To The Oppression Of Woman.
Christian
Littles
Oppression
For Years I Thought My Work Still Lay Ahead, And Now I Find It Is Behind Me: There Was No Moment When It Took Place.
Time
Years
Moments
The Curse Which Lies Upon Marriage Is That Too Often The Individuals Are Joined In Their Weakness Rather Than In Their Strength - Each Asking From The Other Instead Of Finding Pleasure In Giving.
Marriage
Lying
Giving
You Can't Define The Future. And In My Opinion, You Can't Define The Avant-garde.
Avant Garde
Opinion
However 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.
Individuality
Talent
Social
The Innumerable Conflicts That Set Men And Women Against One Another Come From The Fact That Neither Is Prepared To Assume All The Consequences Of This Situation Which The One Has Offered And The Other Accepted.
Men
Facts
Assuming
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.
Truth
Guilt
Rewards
Few Tasks Are More Like The Torture Of Sisyphus Than Housework, With Its Endless Repetition: The Clean Becomes Soiled, The Soiled Is Made Clean, Over And Over, Day After Day.
Tasks
Cleaning
Endless
The Body Is Not A Thing, It Is A Situation: It Is Our Grasp On The World And Our Sketch Of Our Project
World
Body
Projects
I Wish That Every Human Life Might Be Pure Transparent Freedom.
Inspirational
Freedom
4th Of July
I Consider It Almost Antifeminist To Say That There Is A Feminine Nature Which Expresses Itself Differently, That A Woman Speaks Her Body More Than A Man, Because After All, Men Also Speak Their Bodies When They Write. Everything Is Implicated In The Work Of A Writer.
Writing
Men
Body
The Writer Of Originality, Unless Dead, Is Always Shocking, Scandalous; Novelty Disturbs And Repels.
Powerful
Writing
Bad Ass
What Would Prince Charming Have For Occupation If He Had Not To Awaken The Sleeping Beauty?
Sleep
Occupation
Charming
Insects Were Scurrying About In The Shade Cast By The Grass, And The Lawn Was A Huge Monotonous Forest Of Thousands Of Little Green Blades, All Equal, All Alike, Hiding The World From Each Other. Anguished, She Thought, "i Don't Want To Be Just Another Blade Of Grass."
World
Green
Want
Men Create Their Own Gods And Thus Have Some Slight Understanding That They Are Self-fabricated. Women Are Much More Susceptible, Because They Are Completely Oppressed By Men; They Take Men At Their Word And Believe In The Gods That Men Have Made Up. The Situation Of Women, Their Culture, Makes Them Kneel More Often Before The Gods That Have Been Created By Men Than Men Themselves Do, Who Know What They've Done. To This Extent, Women Will Be More Fanatical, Whether It Is For Fascism Or For Totalitarianism.
Believe
Men
Self
Sometimes Speech Is No More Than A Device For Saying Nothing - And A Neater One Than Silence.
Silence
Speech
Saying Nothing
Whatever The Country, Capitalist Or Socialist, Man Was Everywhere Crushed By Technology, Made A Stranger To His Own Work, Imprisoned, Forced Into Stupidity.
Country
Technology
Men
Old Age Is Life's Parody.
Age
Parody
Old Age
There Is No Justification For Present Existence Other Than Its Expansion Into An Indefinitely Open Future.
Expansion
Existence
Justification
...counselling Man To Treat Her As A Slave While Persuading Her That She Is A Queen.
Queens
Men
Slave
‎a Day In Which I Don't Write Leaves A Taste Of Ashes.
Writing
Ashes
Taste
But I Must Admit I Didn´t Like That Idea; Do The Same Thing As Everyone Else. Eating To Live, Living To Eat - That Had Been The Nightmare Of My Adolescence. If It Meant Going Back To That, If Would Be Just As Well To Turn On The Gas At Once. But I Suppose Everyone Thinks Of Things Like That: Let´s Turn On The Gas At Once. And You Don´t Turn It On.
Thinking
Ideas
Would Be
As Long As There Have Been Men And They Have Lived, They Have All Felt This Tragic Ambiguity Of Their Condition, But As Long As There Have Been Philosophers And They Have Thought, Most Of Them Have Tried To Mask It.
Men
Long
Philosopher
I Think That Feminism Permits Women To Speak Among Themselves, Instead Of Simply Being Resentful, Having Personal Complaints, Which Get Them Nowhere And Which Make Them Sick And Ill-tempered, Depressive And Poison The Lives Of Their Husbands And Children. It's Much Better To Arrive At A Collective Consciousness Of This Problem, Which Is Both A Kind Of Therapy And The Basis For A Struggle.
Children
Husband
Struggle
The Emancipation Of Women Must Be The Work Of Women Themselves, Independent Of The Class Struggle.
Struggle
Independent
Class
The Misfortune Is That Although Everyone Must Come To [death], Each Experiences The Adventure In Solitude. We Never Left Maman During Those Last Days... And Yet We Were Profoundly Separated From Her.
Adventure
Solitude
Lasts
It's True That What You Find In New York Is Something Other Than America. Only Small Towns And Small Countries Are Self-satisfied; A Real Capital Goes Beyond Its Borders.
Country
New York
Real
Literature Takes Its Revenge On Reality By Making It The Slave Of Fiction.
Revenge
Reality
Fiction
I Take On A Shape And An Existence Only If I First Throw Myself Into The World By Loving, By Doing.
World
Shapes
Firsts
The Individual Is Defined Only By His Relationship To The World And To Other Individuals; He Exists Only By Transcending Himself, And His Freedom Can Be Achieved Only Through The Freedom Of Others. He Justifies His Existence By A Movement Which, Like Freedom, Springs From His Heart But Which Leads Outside Of Himself.
Spring
Heart
Movement
Françoise Could Not Help Taking A Surreptitious Glance At Xavière: She Gave A Start Of Amazement. Xavière Was No Longer Watching, Her Head Was Lowered. Françoise Barely Suppressed A Scream. The Girl Was Pressing The Lighted End Against Her Skin, A Bitter Smile Curling Her Lips. It Was An Intimate, Solitary Smile, Like That Of A Half-wit; The Voluptuous, Tortured Smile Of A Woman Possessed Of Some Secret Pleasure.
Girl
Secret
Skins
Given Masculine Norms, It Is Clear That Women Are More Likely To Be Considered Crazy - I'm Not Saying To Be Crazy.
Crazy
Given
Masculine
Oppression Tries To Defend Itself By Its Utility.
Trying
Oppression
Utility
La Femme?sait Que Quand On La Regarde On Ne La Distingue Pas De Son Apparence: Elle Est Juge E, Respecte E, De Sire E A' Travers Sa Toilette. Woman?knows That When She Is Looked At She Is Not Considered Apart From Her Appearance: She Is Judged, Respected, Desired, By And Through Her Toilette.
Son
Appearance
Femme
To Be Moral Is To Discover Fundamentally Ones Own Being.
Moral
A Man Of The Right Doesn't Write In The Same Way As A Man Of The Left, You Can See That Right Away, Or A Woman Of The Right Or A Woman Of The Left.
Writing
Men
Way
Those Interested In Perpetuating Present Conditions Are Always In Tears About The Marvelous Past That Is About To Disappear, Without Having So Much As A Smile For The Young Future.
Change
Past
Tears
Picasso Never Thought Of Himself As Avant-garde. I Just Find It A Bad Way To Think Of Yourself.
Thinking
Avant Garde
Way
There Are So Many Problems. Women Can Go To Work On These As Well Without Giving Up Their Feminism.
Giving Up
Feminism
Problem
Patience Is One Of Those Feminine Qualities Which Have Their Origin In Our Oppression But Should Be Preserved After Our Liberation.
Quality
Oppression
Feminine
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