Quotes by 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.”

“And that's the point! Not even girls want to be girls so long as our feminine archetype lacks force strength power. Not wanting to be girls, they don't want to be tender, submissive, peace-loving a...”

“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 d...”

“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 str...”

“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...”

“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,...”

“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-lov...”

“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 thi...”

“Innovation and disruption are ideas that originated in the arena of business but which have since been applied to arenas whose values and goals are remote from the values and goals of business. Peo...”

“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 ...”

“We have hands that must work, brains that must think, and personalities that must be developed.”

“Why do beautiful women love ugly men?”

“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.”

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

“Replacing progress with innovation skirts the question of whether a novelty is an improvement: the world may not be getting better and better but our devices are getting newer and newer.”

“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...”

“Modern political science started in the late nineteenth century as a branch of history.”

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

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

“All feminists are suffragists, but not all suffragists are feminists," as one feminist explained.”