In the face of an obstacle which is impossible to overcome, stubbornness is stupid.

If you live long enough, you'll see that every victory turns into a defeat.

Art is an attempt to integrate evil.

The most mediocre of males feels himself a demigod as compared with women.

Change your life today. Don't gamble on the future, act now, without delay.

Society cares for the individual only so far as he is profitable.

I wish that every human life might be pure transparent freedom.

When an individual is kept in a situation of inferiority, the fact is that he does become inferior.

In itself, homosexuality is as limiting as heterosexuality: the ideal should be to be capable of loving a woman or a man; either, a human being, without feeling fear, restraint, or obligation.

It is old age, rather than death, that is to be contrasted with life. Old age is life's parody, whereas death transforms life into a destiny: in a way it preserves it by giving it the absolute dimension. Death does away with time.

I tore myself away from the safe comfort of certainties through my love for truth - and truth rewarded me.

Why one man rather than another? It was odd. You find yourself involved with a fellow for life just because he was the one that you met when you were nineteen.

What is an adult? A child blown up by age.

One is not born a woman, but becomes one.

To catch a husband is an art; to hold him is a job.

The word love has by no means the same sense for both sexes, and this is one cause of the serious misunderstandings that divide them.

No one is more arrogant toward women, more aggressive or scornful, than the man who is anxious about his virility.

Buying is a profound pleasure.

The writer of originality, unless dead, is always shocking, scandalous; novelty disturbs and repels.

Man is defined as a human being and a woman as a female - whenever she behaves as a human being she is said to imitate the male.

Defending the truth is not something one does out of a sense of duty or to allay guilt complexes, but is a reward in itself.

All oppression creates a state of war.

Life is occupied in both perpetuating itself and in surpassing itself; if all it does is maintain itself, then living is only not dying.

This has always been a man's world, and none of the reasons that have been offered in explanation have seemed adequate.

In the face of an obstacle which is impossible to overcome, stubbornness is stupid.

Sex pleasure in woman is a kind of magic spell; it demands complete abandon; if words or movements oppose the magic of caresses, the spell is broken.

Society, being codified by man, decrees that woman is inferior; she can do away with this inferiority only by destroying the male's superiority.

Retirement may be looked upon either as a prolonged holiday or as a rejection, a being thrown on to the scrap-heap.

To make oneself an object, to make oneself passive, is a very different thing from being a passive object.

It is not in giving life but in risking life that man is raised above the animal; that is why superiority has been accorded in humanity not to the sex that brings forth but to that which kills.

One's life has value so long as one attributes value to the life of others, by means of love, friendship, indignation and compassion.

All the idols made by man, however terrifying they may be, are in point of fact subordinate to him, and that is why he will always have it in his power to destroy them.

Representation of the world, like the world itself, is the work of men; they describe it from their own point of view, which they confuse with the absolute truth.

I am incapable of conceiving infinity, and yet I do not accept finity.

Even if one is neither vain nor self-obsessed, it is so extraordinary to be oneself – exactly oneself and no one else.

To lose confidence in one's body is to lose confidence in oneself.

I did have a very advanced grandmother, my mother's mother, who wanted to buy me a camera. My parents wouldn't let her. Eventually she won, and I got a camera in about 1948, a Voigtlander.

Most private-sector folks don't get a pension.

It is not our job to apply laws that have not yet been written.

Being happy doesnt mean youre perfect. It just means youve decided to look beyond the imperfections.

By the time I was at college, I became very alert to the question of racial discrimination, and I remember one of my first writing attempts had to do with a lynching.

You ask yourself not if this or that is expedient, but if it is right.

I'm trying to bring back 'Top of the Pops.' I don't know why us artists haven't just stood there and said, 'Let's back a campaign and bring it back,' because it would be the most amazing thing ever. 'X Factor' has got the Sunday show, and except for 'Later with Jools Holland,' which is a massive success, there isn't one music show.

You've got to come out and fire on all cylinders and get yourself up the leaderboard and show people that you're there and you're ready to win.

A woodland in full color is awesome as a forest fire in magnitude at least but a single tree is like a dancing tongue of flame to warm the heart.

Who, other than a crazy person, does anything besides hang up on a robo-call? Any call, any person, anywhere, under any circumstances.

Mature love is composed and sustaining; a celebration of commitment, companionship, and trust.

There is just something about starting your day with something luxurious like a bath.

I can't do anything I want to. I mean, I can't have my own TV show. I can't have my own movie. But within my little world, nobody tells me what to put on the albums.