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Who really said it

A feminist is any woman who tells the truth about her life

Not Virginia Woolf — no source in her writings Unknown author Origin undocumented · circulating online as Woolf’s by January 2016
Disputed Rights unconfirmed

The Virginia Woolf Society of Great Britain ↗ lists this line with “Source: None,” and Woolf scholar Stuart N. Clarke called it made up in 2018. Nobody has identified who first wrote it. By January 2016 it was already being passed around online with Woolf’s name on it.

Last verified 2 Nov 2026 · how we verify · spot an error?

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Disputed credit — copy with the correction

“A feminist is any woman who tells the truth about her life” Author unknown; widely misattributed to Virginia Woolf (no source in her writings, per the Virginia Woolf Society of Great Britain).

The slide-ready mistake: crediting this to Virginia Woolf. Use the credit shown above instead.

Can you use it?

We couldn’t verify where this wording comes from, so there’s no rights status to give. Safe to present as an unverified or anonymous line — just don’t assert a specific author or source.

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In context

Evoking the themes of truth, courage and freedom. Theme: "A feminist is any woman who tells the truth about her life". Atmospheric and restrained, cinematic directional light, a muted period-appropriate palette, fine grain and texture. Compose with generous empty space for the quote and a small credit line. No lettering in the image itself.

Minimalist

Minimalist editorial slide for the quote "A feminist is any woman who tells the truth about her life". Clean background, a single muted accent color, generous negative space, subtle paper or linen texture, no literal illustration — let the words carry it. Reserve clear space for a serif quote and a small credit line. No lettering in the image itself.

Provenance

What the record shows

Source in Woolf’s works
None found (Virginia Woolf Society of Great Britain)
Seen online
BUST listicle by Olivia Harrison, 25 January 2016 (an early documented appearance, not shown to be the first)
Closest genuine line
“The Leaning Tower” (Folios of New Writing, Autumn 1940)

A feminist is any woman who tells the truth about her life. Not found in Woolf

No text by Woolf contains this sentence. The Woolf Society suggests that the nearest genuine line is in “The Leaning Tower”: “If you do not tell the truth about yourself you cannot tell it about other people.”

Virginia Woolf Society of Great Britain: Misquotations and Misattributions

How the attribution was checked

  • The Virginia Woolf Society of Great Britain’s misquotations page ↗ lists the line with “Source: None.” It notes thousands of occurrences online, including one academic journal, and observes that “Woolf is known as a feminist, so it is convenient to credit her.”
  • In April 2018 a scholar on the Vwoolf mailing list (archived April 2018 thread) ↗ said they could not find the line anywhere in Woolf’s writing. Stuart N. Clarke replied “It’s madey-uppy,” and later annotated it as “MADE UP, but cf. the speech of 21 Jan. 1931 in ‘The Pargiters’.”
  • A BUST listicle dated 25 January 2016 (Wayback capture) ↗, “30 Virginia Woolf Photos And Quotes In Celebration Of Her Birthday” by Olivia Harrison, opens with the line. On the Vwoolf list, Clarke identified this piece as the reference an academic book review gave for the quotation.
  • The nearest genuine Woolf passage on the theme comes from “Professions for Women,” collected in The Death of the Moth, and Other Essays ↗: “telling the truth about my own experiences as a body, I do not think I solved.”

The wording can’t be traced to Woolf or to any other identifiable author or work, so we make no copyright claim about it. Woolf’s real lines quoted on this page come from essays first published in 1940 (“The Leaning Tower”) and 1942 (The Death of the Moth). Neither date falls before 1931.

Rights status is our research, not legal advice — and copyright varies by country and edition. For commercial or published use, confirm with the rightsholder. See terms.

Fact-check

How the line got pinned on Woolf

This is one of the most widely shared “Woolf” quotations online. It is short and feminist and it suits her reputation, but nobody has found it in her novels, essays, letters or diaries.

Virginia Woolf No source

The Virginia Woolf Society of Great Britain ↗ gives “Source: None” for this line and suggests her fame as a feminist is what makes the credit “convenient.”

BUST (Olivia Harrison, 25 January 2016) Amplifier

A birthday round-up of Woolf quotations opens with the line ↗ and gives no source. In 2018 Clarke annotated this list’s version as “MADE UP.”

A book review in the International Feminist Journal of Politics Repeated in print

According to the Vwoolf list discussion ↗, this review opens with the quotation and cites the BUST listicle (“Harrison 2017”) as its source, not any work by Woolf.

The sentence does not appear anywhere in Woolf’s writing. According to the Woolf Society ↗, the closest genuine line is from “The Leaning Tower” (1940): “If you do not tell the truth about yourself you cannot tell it about other people.”

Context

What Woolf actually wrote about truth-telling

Woolf did write about how hard it is for a woman to tell the truth about her own life. She did not put it as a slogan. In “Professions for Women,” first given as a talk in 1931 to the London branch of the National Society for Women’s Service ↗, she says she managed to kill “the Angel in the House,” but that telling the truth about her own experiences as a body remained unsolved: “I doubt that any woman has solved it yet.”

Woolf was also wary of the word “feminist” itself. In Three Guineas ↗ (1938) she proposes to destroy “a vicious and corrupt word”: “The word ‘feminist’ is the word indicated.” A Vwoolf list member made the same point in 2018, arguing that a writer who said this was unlikely to define a feminist the way the internet quote does.

Telling the truth about my own experiences as a body, I do not think I solved.

Why scholars point to a 1931 speech

When Stuart N. Clarke annotated the BUST list in 2018, he marked this line “MADE UP,” but added “cf. the speech of 21 Jan. 1931 in ‘The Pargiters’.” That speech is the talk that became “Professions for Women.” The theme is related, but the sentence is not Woolf’s.

Quote Investigator has no article on this line, and the line is not among the sourced quotations on Wikiquote’s Woolf page ↗. That page sends readers to the Woolf Society’s misquotations list for further examples.

Explore

Filed under

More provenance-checked quotes on the same theme, each with its reuse status.

Truth Courage Freedom

Go further

Dig deeper

Trusted places to keep pulling the thread — primary archives, fact-checks, and scholarship. We show how we used each one before you leave.

Misquotations and Misattributionsvirginiawoolfsociety.org.uk

The Virginia Woolf Society of Great Britain's list of false Woolf quotations. This line's entry reads "Source: None".
Vwoolf mailing list, April 2018 (archived)web.archive.org

The scholars' thread "(Mis?)Attributed Woolf Quotation", in which Stuart N. Clarke calls the line made up (gzipped text archive).
BUST: 30 Virginia Woolf Photos And Quotes (2016)web.archive.org

Archived listicle dated 25 January 2016 that opens with the unsourced line.
The Death of the Moth, and Other Essaysgutenberg.net.au

Full text, including "Professions for Women" and its passage on telling the truth about a woman's experience.
Three Guineasgutenberg.net.au

Full text, including Woolf's proposal to destroy the word "feminist".
Virginia Woolf on Wikiquoteen.wikiquote.org

Sourced Woolf quotations. This line is not among them, and the page links to the Woolf Society's misquotations list.

The author

About Virginia Woolf

Virginia Woolf

1882–1941 · English novelist & essayist

Virginia Woolf wrote Mrs Dalloway, To the Lighthouse and A Room of One’s Own, and is one of the central figures of literary modernism. Readers know her as a feminist, and the Woolf Society notes that this is why unsourced lines about women are so “convenient” to credit to her. Her real writing on truth-telling, such as “Professions for Women” and “The Leaning Tower,” is more qualified than the slogan.

For writers & researchers

Cite this

Best available documentation

Virginia Woolf Society of Great Britain, “Misquotations and Misattributions,” entry “A feminist is any woman who tells the truth about her life” (Source: None), https://virginiawoolfsociety.org.uk/resources/misquotations/. Line seen online in Olivia Harrison, “30 Virginia Woolf Photos And Quotes In Celebration Of Her Birthday,” BUST, January 25, 2016.

This verification page

Quotle.info. “Who really said ‘A feminist is any woman who tells the truth about her life’?” Last verified 2 Nov 2026. https://quotle.info/who-said/a-feminist-is-any-woman-who-tells-the-truth-about-her-life/

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