Lepore Jill 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

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

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

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

As a matter of historical analysis, the relationship between secrecy and privacy can be stated in an axiom: the defense of privacy follows, and never precedes, the emergence of new technologies for the exposure of secrets. — 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

Jack Byrne's Fiction House became known for its powerful, invincible female heroes. At a time when many publishers had none, Fiction House employed more than twenty women artists.46 The popularity of comics soared. Gaines, who did not tend to hire women to do anything except secretarial work, began publishing All-American Comics in 1939. That same year, Superman became the first comic-book character to have an entire comic book all to himself; he could also be heard on the radio.47 The first episode of Batman appeared in Detective Comics #27, in May 1939. Three months later, Byrne Holloway Marston, staff artist for the Marston Chronicle, drew the first installment of The Adventures of Bobby Doone. — Jill Lepore

History is only written from what remains. — 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

'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

The Mercy of some of these Men is Cruelty itself," he wrote. "It were better for us and the Indians also, that we had no Liberty. — 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 world may not be getting better and better, but our devices are getting newer and newer. — Jill Lepore

When I was a kid, my father would go to our school in the summer to sweep, mop, and wax the floors, room by room, hall by hall, week after week. — Jill Lepore

In antihistory, time is an illusion. — 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

Reviewing a book written by someone you're living with and sleeping with is, needless to say, wrong. — Jill Lepore

Still, it strikes me that, taken together, they do make an argument, and it is this: the rise of American democracy is bound up with the history of reading and writing, which is one of the reasons the study of American history is inseparable from the study of American literature. In the early United States, literacy rates rose and the price of books and magazines and newspapers fell during the same decades that suffrage was being extended. With everything from constitutions and ballots to almanacs and novels, American wrote and read their way into a political culture inked and stamped and pressed in print. — Jill Lepore

Feminists in Greenwich Village had begun bobbing their hair in 1912. In 1915, it was still radical. "The idea, it seems, came from Russia," the New York Times reported. "The intellectual women of that country were revolutionaries. For convenience in disguising themselves when the police trailed them, they cropped their hair."2 Holloway was something of a revolutionary, too. — Jill Lepore

In 1934, after Upton Sinclair was defeated in his campaign to become the next governor of California, he labeled the advertising concern that defeated him a "lie factory." Marston took much the same view. One of Wonder Woman's most sinister adversaries, the Duke of Deception, runs an advertising firm called the Lie Factory. — 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

Girls are important: Remember that very few stories are of great interest without the rustle of a skirt. — Jill Lepore

She was curious, and she could be untoward. But she was dutiful. She was pared to fit. — 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

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

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

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

Taxes are what we pay for civilized society, for modernity, and for prosperity. The wealthy pay more because they have benefitted more. 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. During an emergency, like an earthquake or a hurricane, taxes pay for rescue workers, shelters, and services. For people whose lives are devastated by other kinds of disaster, like the disaster of poverty, taxes pay, even, for food. — 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

Conservatism cherishes tradition; innovation fetishizes novelty. They tug in different directions, the one toward the past, the other toward the future. — Jill Lepore

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

Not long before my mother died, I found a long-lost portrait of Jane Franklin's granddaughter, Jane Flagg, aged nine - oil on canvas - in the basement of a public library not a dozen miles from my mother's house. — Jill Lepore

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

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

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

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

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

In 1911, an "Amazon" meant any woman rebel - which, to a lot of people, meant any girl who left home and went to college. — 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

Politics is a story about the relationship between the past and the future; history is a story about the relationship between the past and the present. It's what history and politics share - a vantage on the past - that makes writing the history of politics fraught. And it's what they don't share that makes the study of history vital. Politics is accountable to opinion; history is accountable to evidence. — Jill Lepore

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

They were growing up in the golden age of comic books. Comic strips, or "funnies," had begun appearing in the pages of newspapers in the 1890s. But comic books date only to the 1930s. They'd been more or less invented by Maxwell Charles Gaines (everyone called him Charlie), a former elementary school principal who was working as a salesman for the Eastern Color Printing Company, in Waterbury, Connecticut, when he got the idea that the pages of funnies that appeared in the Sunday papers could be printed cheaply, stapled together, and sold as magazines, or "comic books." In 1933, Gaines started selling the first comic book on newsstands; it was called Funnies on Parade. — Jill Lepore

Americans like to get rich fast. That this means we go broke fast, too, is something that we have become very good at forgetting. Our ignorance of history is matched only by our unfailing optimism; it's actually part of our optimism. — Jill Lepore

Either hide this well or destroy it. It was the family motto. — 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

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

An ordinary life used to look something like this: born into a growing family, you help rear your siblings, have the first of your own half-dozen or even dozen children soon after you're grown, and die before your youngest has left home. — 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

Media reporters have pointed out that the paragraphs in my Time column this week bear close similarities to paragraphs in Jill Lepore's essay in the April 22nd issue of The New Yorker. They are right. I made a terrible mistake. It is a serious lapse and one that is entirely my fault. I apologize unreservedly to her, to my editors at Time, and to my readers. — Fareed Zakaria

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

My mother liked to command me to do things I found scary. I always wanted to stay home and read. My mother only ever wanted me to get away. — 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

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

In 2010, one in four Americans got the news from Fox News. — Jill Lepore

Republicans were more pro-choice than Democrats up until the late 1980s. — 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

No nation has a single history, no people a single song. — Jill Lepore

And that's the point; not even girls want to be girls so long as our feminine archetype lacks force, strength and power. Not wanting to be girls, they don't want to be tender, submissive, peace-loving as good women are. Women's strong qualities have become despised because of their week ones. — Jill Lepore

Massachusetts's poor laws required that boys be taught to write and girls to read.7 — 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

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

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

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

The fight for women's rights hasn't come in waves. Wonder Woman was a product of the suffragist, feminist, and birth control movements of the 1900s and 1910s and became a source of the women's liberation and feminist movements of the 1960s and 1970s. The fight for women's rights has been a river, wending. — 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

Book reviewing dates only to the eighteenth century, when, for the first time, there were so many books being printed that magazines - they were new, too - started printing essays about them. — Jill Lepore

Theories of history used to be supernatural: the divine ruled time; the hand of God, a special providence, lay behind the fall of each sparrow. If the present differed from the past, it was usually worse: supernatural theories of history tend to involve decline, a fall from grace, the loss of God's favor, corruption. — 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

Many a Man would have been worse, if his Estate had been better.19 — Jill Lepore

Epidemiologists study patterns in order to combat infection. Stories about epidemics follow patterns, too. Stories aren't often deadly, but they can be virulent: spreading fast, weakening resistance, wreaking havoc. — Jill Lepore

Stages of life are artifacts. Adolescence is a useful contrivance, midlife is a moving target, senior citizens are an interest group, and tweenhood is just plain made up. — Jill Lepore