Edmund Burke: Don't throw out the good in the old system in your zeal to reform!

Graham Blaine: But marriage is implied in our very anatomy, ordained by God, the foundation of society.

Simone: Nothing is ordained by anatomy. We are conscious beings: there is our greatness.

Phyllis McGinley: You dried-up old hag. What would you know about woman's natural instincts? You never even had a baby.

Gandhi: I understand perfectly, my dear. Transcendence of the flesh.

Simone: Well I don't mean to go that far, exactly. (Whispers from Sartre). Oh yes, wait a minute, transcendence is a good thing. Women must, after having gained this minimum of social and economic equality that I mentioned before, transcend the human condition. They must think of themselves as subject, instead of object; they must stop only embodying life for men and begin living life themselves. They must choose.

Doris Day: But a woman is a woman, you know.

Simone: Okay! But men don't shape their whole lives to fulfill their idea of "masculinity," do they? They are human first. In being male they in no way interfere with their being human: the two go along in the same direction: forward. But as soon as a woman starts trying to live up to her femininity first and foremost, it directly conflicts with her humanity. It pulls her down into sex, torpor, uncreativeness, dependency, subordination. All of these can have a part in her life, but not the basic part.

J. Doe: C'mon, don't you like having doors held for you? Are you so "independent?"

Freud: "Penis envy," I call it.

Cleopatra: Now, Simone, don't be so terribly explicit. Let them think we need them to hold doors for us, it makes them feel more manly. . . But then . . . You know . . .

Brigitte Bardot: (To nearby garage mechanic) Wanna come up to my apartment?

Mothers for a Moral America: Get that woman out of here!

Simone: Bardot is great, isn't she? Perfectly frank sexuality. A little heartless, maybe, a little unemotional, but no trickery, no "feminine wiles," no bangles and baubles. That's why she upsets European men so much: she doesn't keep in her place. They can't ravish her. She meets them on their own ground.

Norman Vincent Peale: But you are taking all the beauty out of the relations between the sexes. Without the male warrior and the female captive princess, what joy will there be in sex?