Simone de Beauvoir — Quote from The Second Sex
“One is not born, but rather becomes, a woman.”
The Second Sex (1949)
Concepts: authenticity, freedom, oppression
Resonant Quotes
- “Existence precedes essence. Man first of all exists, encounters himself, surg...” — Jean-Paul Sartre, Existentialism Is a Humanism Beauvoir's 'one becomes a woman' is the direct application of Sartre's 'existence precedes essence' — both insist ide...
- “Freedom is what we do with what is done to us.” — Jean-Paul Sartre, Situations Both quotes articulate the existentialist principle that human identity emerges through active response to given cond...
- “We do not know what we want and yet we are responsible for what we are — that...” — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness Both existentialist insights reveal how we bear responsibility for identities we neither chose nor fully understand, ...
- “A woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction.” — Virginia Woolf, A Room of One's Own Woolf's material conditions for creative freedom and Beauvoir's constructed womanhood both insist that liberation req...
- “If I didn't define myself for myself, I would be crunched into other people's...” — Audre Lorde, Sister Outsider Lorde's refusal to let others define her and Beauvoir's insight that identity is constructed both insist on self-defi...
- “The quest for certainty blocks the search for meaning. Uncertainty is the ver...” — Erich Fromm, Man for Himself De Beauvoir's rejection of essential femininity parallels Fromm's insight that human potential unfolds through uncert...
- “Liberation is thus a childbirth, and a painful one. The man or woman who emer...” — Paulo Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed Both theorists reject essentialist notions of fixed identity, understanding human subjectivity as constructed through...
- “Welcome, O life! I go to encounter for the millionth time the reality of expe...” — James Joyce, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man Both quotes articulate the fundamental insight that identity is forged through conscious engagement with existence ra...