Quotes About Progress

the "modern" woman accepts masculine values: she prides herself on thinking, acting, working, and creating on the same basis as males; instead of trying to belittle them, she declares herself their equal.

Dac? tr?ieÅŸti destul de mult, vei vedea c? fiecare victorie se transform? într-o înfrângere.

It is not a matter of approaching a fixed limit: absolute Knowledge or the happiness of man or the perfection of beauty; all human effort would then be doomed to failure, for with each step forward the horizon recedes a step; for man it is a matter of pursuing the expansion of his existence and of retrieving this very effort as an absolute. Science

One can not, without absurdity, indefinitely sacrifice each generation to the following one; human history would then be only an endless succession of negations which would never return to the positive.

On n'a jamais fini d'apprendre parce qu'on n'a jamais fini d'ignorer.

El fin no es fin sino al término del camino; desde que es logrado, se vuelve un nuevo punto de partida.

He forgets that every goal is at the same time a point of departure and that human freedom is the ultimate, the unique end to which man should destine himself.

Resistance put up by the old capitalist paternalism prevents this equality from being concretely achieved: it will be achieved the day this resistance is broken down.

No se modifica la vida sin modificarse a uno mismo

What is beyond doubt is that until now women's possibilities have been stifled and lost to humanity, and in her and everyone's interest it is high time she be left to take her own chances.

Women's actions have never been more than symbolic agitation; they have won only what men have been willing to concede to them; they have taken nothing; they have received.

Moreover, humanity is something other than a species: it is an historical becoming; it is defined by the way it assumes natural facticity.

Art and science do not establish themselves despite failure but through it;

To 'remake woman', society would have had to have already made her really man's equal.

Essere donna non è un dato naturale, ma il risultato di una storia. Non c'è un destino biologico e psicologico che definisce la donna in quanto tale. Tale destino è la conseguenza della storia della civiltà, e per ogni donna la storia della sua vita.

C'est seulement depuis que les femmes commencent à se sentir chez elles sur cette terre qu'on a vu apparaître une Rosa Luxembourg, une Mme. Curie. Elles démontrent avec éclat que ce n'est pas l'inferiorité des femmes qui a déterminé leur insignifiance historique: c'est leur insignifiance historique qui les à vouées à l'inferiorité.

It is quite certain that the surpassing of the past toward the future always demands sacrifices; to claim that in destroying an old quarter in order to build new houses on its ruins one is preserving it dialectically is a play on words; no dialectic can restore the old port of Marseilles; the past as something not surpassed, in its flesh and blood presence, has completely vanished.

The past is an appeal; it is an appeal toward the future which sometimes can save it only by destroying it.

One is not born a genius, one becomes a genius.

The goal toward which I surpass myself must appear to me as a point of departure toward a new act of surpassing.

Let us beware lest our lack of imagination impoverish the future; the future is only an abstraction for us; each of us secretly laments the absence in it of what was; but tomorrow's humankind will live the future in its flesh and in its freedom; that future will be its present, and humankind will in turn prefer it;

Recordemos que el hombre es trascendencia; lo que reclama, no lo reclama sino para superarlo.

In 1949 Beauvoir could see that women would be able to shed their old skins and cut their own clothes, only 'if there is a collective change' (see here).

Lynching is an absolute evil; it represents the survival of an obsolete civilization, the perpetuation of a struggle of races which has to disappear;