Simone de Beauvoir — Quote from The Second Sex
“The oppressor would not be so strong if he did not have accomplices among the oppressed.”
The Second Sex (1949)
Concepts: oppression, conformity, agency
Resonant Quotes
- “The person who gives up his individual self and becomes an automaton, identic...” — Erich Fromm, Escape from Freedom Beauvoir's complicity of the oppressed and Fromm's automaton who surrenders selfhood both reveal how domination is su...
- “Free election of masters does not abolish the masters or the slaves.” — Herbert Marcuse, One-Dimensional Man These quotes form a powerful critique of how oppressive systems maintain themselves through the illusion of choice an...
- “To speak a language is to take on a world, a culture. The Antillean who wants...” — Frantz Fanon, Black Skin, White Masks Both reveal how oppression operates through internalized participation, with de Beauvoir identifying complicity among...
- “Washing one's hands of the conflict between the powerful and the powerless me...” — Paulo Freire, The Politics of Education Beauvoir's accomplices among the oppressed and Freire's false neutrality both expose how passivity perpetuates the sy...
- “The lust for power is not rooted in strength but in weakness. It is the expre...” — Erich Fromm, Escape from Freedom De Beauvoir's observation about complicity among the oppressed provides the social mechanism for Fromm's psychologica...
- “Liberation is thus a childbirth, and a painful one. The man or woman who emer...” — Paulo Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed De Beauvoir's insight about internalized complicity illuminates precisely why Freire's liberation must be so painful ...
- “Tolerance becomes a crime when applied to evil.” — Thomas Mann, The Magic Mountain Both authors illuminate how passive complicity with injustice becomes an active form of moral failure, whether throug...
- “At the level of individuals, violence is a cleansing force. It frees the nati...” — Frantz Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth These quotes form a dialectical pair where de Beauvoir diagnoses how oppression perpetuates itself through complicity...