Simone de Beauvoir — "I wish that every human being should be a master, a master of himself, a master …"
I wish that every human being should be a master, a master of himself, a master of his own destiny, a master of his own life.
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More from Simone de Beauvoir
"The mind is everything. What you think you become."
"Her wings are cut and then she is blamed for not knowing how to fly."
"I am still a human being, a woman, and I still feel pain."
"What is an adult? A child blown up by age."
"It is in the knowledge of the human heart that we find the true measure of man."
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.