Virginia Woolf Quotes

The progress of man has never been impeded by preconceived ideas regarding his abilities, his proper interests, and his appropriate activities. Woman has always been so hampered.

There will never be any really great women writers in the theatre, because women do not know as much as men.

I remember becoming aware of women's issues and inequality. It became glaringly clear to me when I was living in America that women are regarded as less intelligent than men.

I never realized until lately that women were supposed to be the inferior sex.

Land belongs to the men folk.

It is better to be a male for one day than a female for ten

Women played no part in Athenian high culture. They could not vote, attend the theatre, or walk in the stoa talking philosophy. But the male orientation of Greek culture was inseparable of its genius. Athens became great not despite but because of its misogyny.

Clever and attractive women do not want to vote; they are willing to let men govern as long as they govern men.

Men think a woman should not have an opinion.

Women are a sisterhood. They make common cause in behalf of the sex; and, indeed, this is natural enough, when we consider the vast power that the law gives us over them.

To conclude that women are unfitted to the task of our historic society seems to me the equivalent of closing male ideas to female facts.

a nation would not profit under a woman as its leader

Women have served all these centuries as looking glasses possessing the magic and delicious power of reflecting the figure of man at twice its natural size.

Women have to stand up to tremendous discriminatory practices, whether inherited traditions, whether imposed norms, male perceptions of power and control. The women always have to go through that and cannot take any privilege for granted.

We're not sexists, we're chauvinists -- we're male chauvinist pigs, and we're happy to be because we think that's what men were destined to be. We think that's what women want.

I have often thought there has not been sufficient pains taken in finding out proper employment and diversions for the fair ones. Their amusements seem contrived for them rather as they are women than as they are reasonable creatures; and are more adapted to the sex than to the species.

The veil is the mask of Egyptian women in a power struggle against the dictatorship of men…. The veil gives women more power in a man’s world.

I don't think a woman should be in any government job whatever. I mean, I really don't. The reason why I do is mainly because they are erratic. And emotional.

A woman cannot be herself in the society of the present day, which is an exclusively masculine society, with laws framed by men and with a judicial system that judges feminine conduct from a masculine point of view.

Women are only children of a larger growth. A man of sense only trifles with them, plays with them, humours and flatters them, as he does with a sprightly and forward child; but he neither consults them about, nor trusts them with, serious matters.

The notion that somehow women are wildly different infuriates me.

There's still prejudice and that resistance regarding women, not only on female football but in various activities. Men think that women are a bit fragile to perform some types of activities or don't have the ability and aren't strong enough.

The most casual examination will reveal the fact that all the jokes about the horrible results of masculine cooking and sewing are written by men. It is all part of a great scheme of sex propaganda.

I grew up in a time when many people believed that men and women should not always be treated equally.

Ironically, women who acquire power are more likely to be criticized for it than are the men who have always had it.