Simone de Beauvoir — "The present is not a moment, it is an action."
The present is not a moment, it is an action.
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More from Simone de Beauvoir
"I don't know if I'm a good writer, but I'm a good woman."
"One is not born a genius, one becomes one."
"One's life has value so long as one attributes value to the life of others, by means of love, friendship, indignation and compassion."
"The drama of human existence is that one is always in a situation."
"The point is not for a woman to be like a man, but to be a woman, to be an individual with her own identity and her own values."
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.