Simone de Beauvoir — "Man is a being for whom to be is to choose himself; and to choose himself is to …"
Man is a being for whom to be is to choose himself; and to choose himself is to choose himself as a freedom.
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More from Simone de Beauvoir
"No woman should be authorized to stay at home to raise her children. Society must be changed so that women can earn their living and children are cared for by appropriate services."
"The word 'love' has by now been so debased and distorted that it is almost impossible to use it."
"The only way to be free is to be yourself."
"Change your life today. Don't gamble on the future, act now, without delay."
"For a woman to be a full human being, she must be entirely autonomous, entirely responsible for her own existence."
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.