Simone de Beauvoir — "To be oneself, one must be for oneself."
To be oneself, one must be for oneself.
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More from Simone de Beauvoir
"The great advantage of living in a pigsty is that the standards are so low, nothing can really disappoint you."
"Her wings are cut and then she is blamed for not knowing how to fly."
"The body is not a thing, it is a situation: it is our grasp on the world and our sketch of our project."
"There is no such thing as a natural woman. Woman is a social construction."
"I am going to die, and I don't know what to do with myself."
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.