Simone de Beauvoir — "The only way to be truly free is to accept the responsibility of one's own freed…"
The only way to be truly free is to accept the responsibility of one's own freedom.
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More from Simone de Beauvoir
"The greatest scandal of the world is the one we get used to."
"To catch a husband is an art; to hold him is a job."
"I choose to be free, and not to be an object."
"She was ready to deny the existence of space and time rather than admit that love might not be eternal."
"Freedom is the right to tell people what they do not want to hear."
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.