Skip to content
quotesby

About this quote

What does it mean?
True liberty requires men and women to recognize their shared humanity despite natural differences.
In plain terms
Freedom works when we affirm our brotherhood across gender differences.
What can you take from it?
Affirm shared humanity to build liberty.

Where it applies

  • social movements
  • policy debates
  • activism

Putting it to work

  • advocate for inclusive policies
  • build cross-gender alliances

Questions to consider

  • How do we affirm brotherhood across differences?
  • What blocks this affirmation?

Another view

Natural differentiation may be more contested than the quote assumes.

More from Simone De Beauvoir

  1. It is nonsense to assert that revelry, vice, ecstasy, passion, would become impossible if man and woman were equal in concrete matters; the contradictions that…

    Permalink to quote #58
  2. Work almost always has a double aspect: it is a bondage, a wearisome drudgery; but it is also a source of interest, a steadying element, a factor that helps to…

    Permalink to quote #60
  3. It is vain to apportion praise and blame. The truth is that if the vicious circle is so hard to break, it is because the two sexes are each the victim at once …

    Permalink to quote #57

Related quotes

  1. 'Apartheid - both petty and grand - is obviously evil. Nothing can justify the arrogant assumption that a clique of foreigners has the right to decide on the l…

    Steve BikoSteve Biko quote #4
  2. I must confess that I too am a woman and that I am always prepared to applaud a woman who is more daring than I, and is equal to a man in fighting for freedom …

    Paul GauguinPaul Gauguin quote #8
  3. While we maintain the unity of the human species, we at the same time repel the depressing assumption of superior and inferior races of men. There are nations …

    Alexander von HumboldtAlexander von Humboldt quote #8