Quotes About Philosophy

La fatalité triomphe dès que l'on croit en elle.

From a New York Times biography from May 27, 2010 entitled Introduction to Simone de Beauvoir's 'The Second Sex' ] Beauvoir herself was as devout an atheist as she had once been a Catholic, and she dismisses religions — even when they worship a goddess — as the inventions of men to perpetuate their dominion.

Aujourd'hui, je n'ai pas vécu

For the first time I saw her as a dead body under suspended sentence.

Whether you think of it as heavenly or as earthly, if you love life immortality is no consolation for death.

I was too enamored of truth ever to mourn lost illusions.

So not every female human being is necessarily a woman; she must take part in this mysterious and endangered reality known as femininity. Is femininity secreted by the ovaries? Is it enshrined in a Platonic heaven?

I could easily understand why Lambert was bored with this peace which gave us back our lives without giving us back our reasons for living.

Life can't be bought piecemeal; it has to be purchased in bulk- all or nothing. Only there isn't time enough for everything, that's the tragedy of it.

If I were to share Jaques' existence I would find it hard to hold my own against him, for already I found his nihilism contagious.

I was still keenly aware as in my childhood of the inexplicable nature of my presence here on earth; where had I come from here; where was I going? I often thought about these things with a kind of stupefied horror and used to fill my diary with long self-communings

le parole fissano la verità solo dopo averla assassinata; lasciano sfuggire ciò che v'è in essa di più importante: la sua presenza.

Morality resides in the painfulness of an indefinite questioning

I asked Isabelle whether she was happy. "I never ask myself, so I suppose the answer is yes." At all events she likes the moment of waking up. That seems to me a pretty good definition of happiness! It is the same with me: every morning, when I open my eyes, I smile.

Since we do not succeed in fleeing it, let us therefore try to look the truth in the face. Let us try to assume our fundamental ambiguity. It is in the knowledge of the genuine conditions of our life that we must draw our strength to live and our reason for acting.

Saint Thomas declared that woman was an "inessential" being, which, from a masculine point of view, is a way of positing the accidental character of sexuality.

Ik koos het bestaan niet, maar ik besta. Een ongerijmdheid die verantwoordelijk voor zichzelf is, dat ben ik.

One night I summoned God, if He really existed, to show Himself to me. He didn't, and I never addressed another word to Him. In my heart of hearts I was very glad He didn't exist. I should have hated it if what was going on here below had had to end up in eternity.

Existence asserts itself as an absolute which must seek its justification within itself and not suppress itself. To attain this truth, man must not attempt to dispel the ambiguity of his being but, on the contrary, accept the task of realizing it.

The nihilist is right in thinking that the world _possesses_ no justification and that he himself _is_ nothing. But he forgets that it is up to him to justify the world and to make himself exist validly.

I was too much of an extremist to be able to live under the eye of God and at the same time say both yes and no to life

Humans are the beings whose essence is in not having an essence

Me preguntaba como se logra vivir todavia cuando no se espera nada más de sí

Un existant n'est rien d'autre que ce qu'il fait; le possible ne déborde pas le réel, l'essence ne précède pas l'existence; dans sa pure subjectivité, l'être humain n'est rien. On le mesure à ses actes.