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The idea that defines all humanism is that the world is not a given world, foreign to man, one to which he has to force himself to yield without. It is the world willed by man, insofar as his will expresses his genuine reality.

— Simone de Beauvoir

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More quotes by Simone de Beauvoir

I tore myself away from the safe comfort of certainties through my love for truth — and truth rewarded me.

All Said and Done (1972)

Self-knowledge is no guarantee of happiness, but it is on the side of happiness and can supply the courage to fight for it.

Force of Circumstances Vol. III (1963)

I wish that every human life might be pure transparent freedom.

The Blood of Others [Le sang des autres (1946)

One is not born a genius, one becomes a genius; and the feminine situation has up to the present rendered this becoming practically impossible.

The Second Sex (1949)

One is not born, but rather becomes, a woman.

The Second Sex (1949)

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The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents.

H. P. Lovecraft The Call of Cthulhu (1926)

All the world's a stage,
And all the men and women merely players:
They have their exits and their entrances;
And one man in his time plays many parts.

William Shakespeare As You Like It (1599)

One country, one constitution, one destiny.

Daniel Webster

Since, in the long run, every planetary society will be endangered by impacts from space, every surviving civilization is obliged to become spacefaring — not because of exploratory or romantic zeal, but for the most practical reason imaginable: staying alive.

Carl Sagan Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space (1994)

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Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: Simone de Beauvoir (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.