If you live long enough, you'll see that every victory turns into a defeat.
Simone De BeauvoirRead
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.
Interpretation
What this quote means
True freedom involves transcending limitations rather than simply having the power to act without restraint.
Simone De Beauvoir's quote emphasizes that freedom is not merely the absence of constraints or the ability to act without limitations; instead, true freedom lies in the capacity to move beyond existing conditions and expectations towards a limitless future. It suggests that authentic freedom requires a conscious effort to challenge and transcend societal norms and personal barriers, allowing for growth, exploration, and new possibilities.
Themes
FreedomFutureLimitationsGrowthTranscendence
In practice
Example use cases
In a discussion about personal growth, one might quote De Beauvoir to illustrate the idea that true liberty involves overcoming obstacles.
More from Simone De Beauvoir
All quotes βTwo 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)
Simone De BeauvoirRead
To catch a husband is an art; to hold him is a job.
Simone De BeauvoirRead
Sex pleasure in woman is a kind of magic spell; it demands complete abandon; if words or movements oppose the magic of caresses, the spell is broken.
Simone De BeauvoirRead
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.
Simone De BeauvoirRead
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 β¦ Eating, sleeping, cleaning β 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.
Simone De BeauvoirRead
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Awake, my St. John! leave all meaner things To low ambition and the pride of kings. Let us (since life can little more supply Than just to look about us, and to die) Expatiate free o'er all this scene of man; A mighty maze! but not without a plan.
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