Simone de Beauvoir — "I choose to be free, and not to be an object."
I choose to be free, and not to be an object.
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More from Simone de Beauvoir
"The meaning of life is not to be found in some transcendent realm, but in our concrete existence."
"I am a writer, and I am a woman, and I am an intellectual."
"The most authentic human existence is one that is constantly in flux, constantly becoming."
"The body is not a thing, it is a situation: it is our grasp on the world and our sketch of our project."
"The greatest scandal of the world is the one we are all guilty of: the fact that we are born."
About Simone de Beauvoir (1908-1986)
French existentialist philosopher whose The Second Sex (1949) is the foundational text of modern feminist theory. Closely associated with Jean-Paul Sartre (lifetime partner and existentialist co-founder) and Albert Camus (existentialist contemporary in Paris). For an intellectual contrast, see Camille Paglia, American cultural critic and Sexual Personae author — Paglia argues for biological-essentialist roots of gender that Beauvoir's social-construction view — 'one is not born, but rather becomes, a woman' — explicitly rejects. The two are the cleanest constructed-vs-essentialist poles in feminist theory.
The standard scholarly entry points to Simone de Beauvoir's work: Toril Moi (Duke, James B. Duke Distinguished Professor) — Simone de Beauvoir: The Making of an Intellectual Woman (1994); Margaret A. Simons (Southern Illinois University, Emerita) — Beauvoir and The Second Sex (1999); Kate Kirkpatrick (Oxford, Regent's Park College) — Becoming Beauvoir: A Life (2019). These are the works graduate seminars cite when teaching Simone de Beauvoir.