Simone de Beauvoir — "Freedom is what you do with what's been done to you."
Freedom is what you do with what's been done to you.
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More from Simone de Beauvoir
"I tore myself away from the safe comfort of certainties through my love for truth—and truth rewarded me."
"The most beautiful thing in the world is to be free."
"The most marvelous thing about writing is that it allows you to be alone with your thoughts, without being lonely."
"Self-consciousness is not a matter of being aware of oneself, but of being aware of oneself as a being-in-the-world."
"The most important task for women is to free themselves from the chains of tradition and men's expectations."
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.