Jill Lepore Quotes & Sayings

In the trunk of her car, my mother used to keep a collapsible easel, a clutch of brushes, a little wooden case stocked with tubes of paint, and, tucked into the spare-tire well, one of my father's old, tobacco-stained shirts, for a smock. — Jill Lepore

Draw a woman who's as powerful as Superman, as sexy as Miss Fury, as scantily clad as Sheena the jungle queen, and as patriotic as Captain America. — Jill Lepore

In the ancient world, taxes were paid in kind: landowners paid in crops or livestock; the landless paid with their labor. Taxing trade made medieval monarchs rich and funded the early-modern state. — Jill Lepore

Desktop computers - boxes inside boxes - began appearing in those cubicles in the mid-eighties, electrical cords curling on the floor like so many ropes. — Jill Lepore

The very first television ad targeted to women was produced by the Eisenhower-Nixon campaign in 1956. It includes footage of a woman supervising her children doing their homework at the kitchen table. — Jill Lepore

For having lived long, I have experienced many instances of being obliged by better information, or fuller consideration, to change opinions even on important subjects, which I once thought right, but found to be otherwise. — Jill Lepore

In kindergarten, you can learn how to be a citizen of the world. — Jill Lepore

When carrying a concealed weapon for self-defense
is understood NOT as a failure of civil society,
to be mourned,
but as an act of citizenship,
to be vaunted,
there is little civilian life left. — Jill Lepore

The virtue she valued most was faith. It had no place on Franklin's list. She placed her trust in Providence. He placed his faith in man. — Jill Lepore

Few American presidents have been unhappier or lonelier in office than Woodrow Wilson. — Jill Lepore

Why do beautiful women love ugly men? — Jill Lepore

The only difference between the Church of Rome and the Church of England, Franklin joked, is that the former is infallible while the latter is never in the wrong. — Jill Lepore

History is a long and endlessly interesting argument, where evidence is everything and storytelling is everything else. — Jill Lepore

If he had never created Wonder Woman, William Moulton Marston would be remembered for this experiment. He invented the lie detector test. A century on, it's still in use. It's also all over Wonder Woman. "Come, Elva, you'll have to take a lie detector test," Diana Prince tells Elva Dove, a secretary she suspects of spying, as she drags her down a hallway. "I'll ask you questions," Diana says, strapping Elva to the machine while Trevor looks on. "Answer truthfully or your blood pressure curve will go up. "Did you take that rubber report from the secret files?" Diana asks. "No, no!" Elva insists. "Well, I'll be jiggered," Trevor exclaims, reading the graph. "She is lying. — Jill Lepore

That people so often believe themselves to be right is no proof that they are. — Jill Lepore

Wonder Woman' was conceived by Dr. Marston to set up a standard among children and young people of strong, free, courageous womanhood; and to combat the idea that women are inferior to men, and to inspire girls to self-confidence and achievement in athletics, occupations, and professions monopolized by men. She wasn't meant to be a superwoman; she was meant to be an everywoman. — Jill Lepore

In the end, the judge ruled that no woman has "the right to copulate with a feeling of security that there will be no resulting conception": if a woman isn't willing to die in childbirth, she shouldn't have sex. — Jill Lepore

He eyed his class of Harvard men sternly. "Girls are also human beings," he told them, "a point often overlooked!!"17 — Jill Lepore

Historians once assumed that when childhood mortality was high, people must not have loved their children very much; it would have been too painful. Research has since proved that assumption wrong. — Jill Lepore

Wonder Woman didn't begin in 1941 when William Moulton Marston turned in his first script to Sheldon Mayer. Wonder Woman began on a winter day in 1904 when Margaret Sanger dug Olive Byrne out of a snowbank. — Jill Lepore

Damning taxes is a piece of cake. It's defending them that's hard. — Jill Lepore

Throughout the nineteen-seventies and eighties, especially during periods of recession, employees were moved from offices to cubicles. — Jill Lepore

'Doctor Who' is the most original science-fiction television series ever made. It is also one of the longest-running television shows of all time. — Jill Lepore

Taxes, well laid and well spent, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, and promote the general welfare. Taxes protect property and the environment; taxes make business possible. Taxes pay for roads and schools and bridges and police and teachers. Taxes pay for doctors and nursing homes and medicine. — Jill Lepore

Disrupt, and you will be saved. — Jill Lepore

We have discharged one generation of debtors after another, but we do not find that their numbers lessen. We find only that we forget, when times are good, that times were ever bad. — Jill Lepore

Secret government programs that pry into people's private affairs are bound up with ideas about secrecy and privacy that arose during the process by which the mysterious became secular. — Jill Lepore

I always just wanted to be a writer, not necessarily a particular kind of writer. — Jill Lepore

The Constitution is ink on parchment. It is forty-four hundred words. And it is, too, the accreted set of meanings that have been made of those words, the amendments, the failed amendments, the struggles, the debates - the course of events - over more than two centuries. It is not easy, but it is everyone's. — Jill Lepore

Weirdly, there have been a lot of critics of conservatism, but very few critics of innovation. As a culture, we are deeply paranoid about politics, but we gaze upon innovation with rapturous adulation. — Jill Lepore

Detective Comics first appeared in 1937. Superman, written and drawn by Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster, made his debut in Action Comics #1 in June 1938. Superman was unstoppable; soon, a million Superman comics were being sold every month.45 — Jill Lepore

One thing that always frustrated me was that, while Benjamin Franklin's was the best-known face of the eighteenth century, no one ever took his sister's likeness. — Jill Lepore

A problem with a president who leads by stirring the moral sentiments of voters is that he has got to keep stirring them. — Jill Lepore

Early Menstruation renders the Uteri Hard & dry; so that they ought not to prompt the early appearance by obscene books, and frequent touchings. — Jill Lepore

It certainly wasn't the chronicle of a king. The yere of our Lord 1537 was a prince born to king Harry th'eight. It was, instead, the story of a poor boy who learns to read and comes to know as much of politics as a prince. This — Jill Lepore

But everyone tries; trying is the human condition. All anyone can do is ask. — Jill Lepore

History is hereditary only in this way: we, all of us, inherit everything, and then we choose what to cherish, what to disavow, and what do do next, which is why it's worth trying to know where things come from. — Jill Lepore

She found, in visits, relief from the aches of old age. "I have Even in my self in times Past Lost the snse of Paine for some time by the Injoyment of good Company." She — Jill Lepore

The world may not be getting better and better, but our devices are getting newer and newer. — Jill Lepore

In the last years of the nineteen-eighties, I worked not at startups but at what might be called finish-downs. Tech companies that were dying would hire temps - college students and new graduates - to do what little was left of the work of the employees they'd laid off. — Jill Lepore

Some people will always think they know how to make other people's marriages better, and, after a while, they'll get to cudgeling you or selling you something; the really entrepreneurial types will sell you the cudgel. — Jill Lepore

In Middle English, a frankeleyn is a free man, an owner of land but not of title: neither a serf nor a peasant but not a nobleman, either. There — Jill Lepore

Mainly, the more faddish and newer stages of life are really just marketing schemes. Tweenhood. The young old. The quarter-life crisis. You can sell a lot of junk to a lot of people by inventing a stage of life and giving it a name. — Jill Lepore

Fox News's coverage of 9/11 and the war in Iraq improved its ratings, demonstrated its influence, and intensified the controversy over its practices. — Jill Lepore

Magazines were new. The Gentleman's Magazine - the first periodical called a "magazine" - appeared in London in 1731. It offered "a Monthly Collection, to treasure up, as in a Magazine, the most remarkable Pieces."3 The metaphor is to weapons. A magazine is, literally, an arsenal; a piece is a firearm. — Jill Lepore

I was obsessed with George Orwell for years. I remember going to the town library and having to put in interlibrary loan requests to get the compilation of his BBC radio pieces. I had to get everything he ever wrote. — Jill Lepore

As many as two out of every three Europeans who came to the colonies were debtors on arrival: they paid for their passage by becoming indentured servants. — Jill Lepore

Democracy is difficult and demanding. So is history. It can crack your voice; it can stir your soul; it can break your heart. — Jill Lepore

The Olympics is an imperfect interregnum, the parade of nations a fantasy about a peace never won. It offers little relief from strife and no harbor from terror. — Jill Lepore

Accepting money from the federal government to conduct research places academic inquiry in the service of national interests. — Jill Lepore

Between 1900 and 1930, the percentage of PhDs awarded to women doubled, and then, for three decades, it fell.6 The gains made by women in the beginning of the twentieth century were lost, everywhere, as women who had fought their way into colleges and graduate programs found that they were barred from the top ranks of the academy. No structural changes had been made that would have allowed women to pursue a life of the mind while raising children: many quit; many were kicked out; most gave up. — Jill Lepore

We have hands that must work, brains that must think, and personalities that must be developed. — Jill Lepore

He counted thirteen virtues: temperance, silence, order, resolution, frugality, industry, sincerity, justice, moderation, cleanliness, tranquillity, chastity, and humility. Soon — Jill Lepore

Jane Francklyne, born in 1565, had lived for less than a month. She left very little behind. She was buried in the Ecton churchyard, but her father would hardly have paid a carver to engrave so small a stone. If not for the parish register, there would be no record that this Jane Francklyne had ever lived at all. History is what is written and can be found; what isn't saved is lost, sunken and rotted, eaten by the earth. — Jill Lepore

At Universal Studios, Marston had a hand in films like Show Boat, in 1929. He also helped get films past the censors, including All Quiet on the Western Front, in 1930. When Carl Laemmle's son, Junior Laemmle, took over Universal, he turned it into a specialty shop for horror films: Marston's theory of emotions lies behind the particular brand of psychological terror in Laemmle's Frankenstein (1931), Dracula (1931), and The Invisible Man (1933). Before Marston left Hollywood, he also worked for Paramount. For Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1931), he tested audience reaction by strapping viewers to blood pressure cuffs while they watched the rushes.30 — Jill Lepore

My grandmother, who taught me how to cook, didn't know how to read. — Jill Lepore

Nineteenth-century grass-roots populism made twentieth-century progressivism possible. — Jill Lepore

The idea that debt is necessary for trade, and has to be forgiven, is consequent to the rise of a market economy. The idea that debt is wrong and should be punished is a feature of a moral economy. — Jill Lepore

The historian, on the contrary, cannot experiment and can rarely observe. Instead, the historian has to collect his own evidence, knowing, all the while, that some of it is useless and much of it unreliable.
-Professor Charles Homer Haskins — Jill Lepore

If you know a lot about something and apply that information to a vote that matches your policy preferences, your opinion quality is high. — Jill Lepore

Well-reported news is a public good; bad news is bad for everyone. — Jill Lepore

Marston liked to say that Wonder Woman was meant to be "psychological propaganda for the new type of woman who, I believe, should rule the world," but neither he nor Gaines seem to have given much thought to hiring a woman to draw her. — Jill Lepore

The most ignorant young man, who knows nothing of the needs of women, thinks himself a competent legislator, because he is a man," Pankhurst told the crowd, eyeing the Harvard men. "This aristocratic attitude is a mistake. — Jill Lepore

Fiction is the history of the obscure. — Jill Lepore

He took the trouble to offer "a few gentle Reproofs on those who deserve them," including Harvard students. — Jill Lepore

As with the factory, so with the office: in an assembly line, the smaller the piece of work assigned to any single individual, the less skill it requires, and the less likely the possibility that doing it well will lead to doing something more interesting and better paid. — Jill Lepore

The idea of innovation is the idea of progress stripped of the aspirations of the Enlightenment, scrubbed clean of the horrors of the twentieth century, and relieved of its critics. — Jill Lepore

Mary Woolley wasn't only a suffragist; she was also a feminist. "Feminism is not a prejudice," she said, "It is a principle. — Jill Lepore

You can be strong as any boy if you'll work hard and train yourself in athletics, the way boys do. — Jill Lepore

A girl's apprenticeship was girlhood itself. A — Jill Lepore

In the nineteen-thirties, one in four Americans got their news from William Randolph Hearst, who lived in a castle and owned twenty-eight newspapers in nineteen cities. — Jill Lepore

As James Madison explained, the Constitution is of no more consequence than the paper on which it is written, unless it be stamped with the approbation of those to whom it is addressed ... THE PEOPLE THEMSELVES. — Jill Lepore

A mystery, in Christian theology, is what God knows and man cannot, and must instead believe. — Jill Lepore

All feminists are suffragists, but not all suffragists are feminists, as one feminist explained. — Jill Lepore

Scientific management promised to replace rules of thumb with accurate measurements. — Jill Lepore

The stories about epidemics that are told in the American press - their plots and tropes - date to the nineteen-twenties, when modern research science, science journalism, and science fiction were born. — Jill Lepore

It feels silly to watch endless hours of winter sports every four years, when we never watch them any other time, and we don't even understand the rules, which doesn't stop us from scoring everyone, every run, every skate, every race. — Jill Lepore

Old reference books are like tree rings. Without them, there'd be no way to know what a tree had lived through. — Jill Lepore

The idea of progress - the notion that human history is the history of human betterment - dominated the world view of the West between the Enlightenment and the First World War. — Jill Lepore

When business became big business - conglomerates employing hundreds and even thousands of people - companies divided themselves into still smaller units. — Jill Lepore

I would not have you for to think that I am such a Fool, To write against Learning, as such, or to cry down a School. Still, it would always be an error to count School Learning best. — Jill Lepore

The Karen Ann Quinlan case is where the right to life and the right to die got bound together, and I don't think they've ever gotten untangled. — Jill Lepore

'Doctor Who' is, unavoidably, a product of mid-twentieth-century debates about Britain's role in the world as its empire unravelled. — Jill Lepore

Frankly, Wonder Woman is psychological propaganda for the new type of woman who should, I believe, rule the world. - William Moulton Marston, March 1945 — Jill Lepore

We must be tolerant with ourselves and allow ourselves some deviations from the straight line we set up to follow. Even more we must allow others the same prerogative. — Jill Lepore

One Half of the World does not know how the other Half lives, Franklin once wrote. His sister is his other Half. — Jill Lepore

By the Collision of different Sentiments," Franklin wrote, "Sparks of Truth are struck out, and political Light is obtained. — Jill Lepore

Clarence Darrow, America's best-known trial lawyer, was also one of American history's most skilled orators. — Jill Lepore

Political elites vote in a more partisan fashion than the mass public; this tendency, too, follows a curve. The more you know, the more likely you are to vote in an ideologically consistent way, not just following your party but following a set of constraints dictated by a political ideology. — Jill Lepore

I consent, Sir, to this Constitution because I expect no better, and because I am not sure, that it is not the best.18 — Jill Lepore

Folklore used to be passed by word of mouth, from one generation to the next; that's what makes it folklore, as opposed to, say, history, which is written down and stored in an archive. — Jill Lepore

Most men indeed as well as most sects in Religion, think themselves in possession of all truth, and that wherever others differ from them it is so far error. — Jill Lepore

In antihistory, time is an illusion. — Jill Lepore

No woman can be gotten with child without some knowledg, consent and delight in the acting thereof." Charles J. Hoadly, ed., Records of the Colony or Jurisdiction of New Haven, From May, 1653, to the Union (Hartford: Case, Lockwood, 1858), 123; — Jill Lepore

Presidential biography is, by its nature, out of scale; no character is bigger, no action greater, than the person and the doings of the American president. — Jill Lepore

The study of history requires investigation, imagination, empathy, and respect. Reverence just doesn't enter into it. — Jill Lepore

Americans, among the marryingest people in the world, are also the divorcingest. — Jill Lepore

History is the art of making an argument about the past by telling a story accountable to evidence. In the writing of history, a story without an argument fades into antiquarianism; an argument without a story risks pedantry. Writing history requires empathy, inquiry, and debate. It requires forswearing condescension, cant, and nostalgia. The past isn't quaint. Much of it, in fact, is bleak. — Jill Lepore

Epidemics follow patterns because diseases follow patterns. Viruses spread; they reproduce; they die. — Jill Lepore

A great deal of what many Americans hold dear is nowhere written on those four pages of parchment, or in any of the amendments. What has made the Constitution durable is the same as what makes it demanding: the fact that so much was left out. — Jill Lepore