21 Quotes & Sayings By Jill Lepore

Jill Lepore is a staff writer at The New Yorker, where she has covered history for more than two decades. Her writing has also appeared in the New York Times Magazine, the New York Times Sunday Magazine, the Atlantic, and many other publications. Her first book, "The Secret History of Wonder Woman", was published to critical acclaim in 2015. An Assistant Professor of American History at Harvard University since 2013, she lives in Cambridge with her husband and their two children.

1
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
2
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
3
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
4
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
5
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
6
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
7
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
8
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 as good women are. Women's strong qualities have become despised because of their week ones. Jill Lepore
9
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
10
Why do beautiful women love ugly men? Jill Lepore
11
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. People aren’t disk drives. Public schools, colleges and universities, churches, museums, and many hospitals, all of which have been subjected to disruptive innovation, have revenues and expenses and infrastructures, but they aren’t industries in the same way that manufacturers of hard-disk drives or truck engines or drygoods are industries. Journalism isn’t an industry in that sense, either. Doctors have obligations to their patients, teachers to their students, pastors to their congregations, curators to the public, and journalists to their readers--obligations that lie outside the realm of earnings, and are fundamentally different from the obligations that a business executive has to employees, partners, and investors. Historically, institutions like museums, hospitals, schools, and universities have been supported by patronage, donations made by individuals or funding from church or state. The press has generally supported itself by charging subscribers and selling advertising. (Underwriting by corporations and foundations is a funding source of more recent vintage.) Charging for admission, membership, subscriptions and, for some, earning profits are similarities these institutions have with businesses. Still, that doesn’t make them industries, which turn things into commodities and sell them for gain. Jill Lepore
12
We have hands that must work, brains that must think, and personalities that must be developed. Jill Lepore
13
Reviewing a book written by someone you're living with and sleeping with is, needless to say, wrong. Jill Lepore
14
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
15
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. Jill Lepore
16
You can be strong as any boy if you'll work hard and train yourself in athletics, the way boys do. Jill Lepore
17
All feminists are suffragists, but not all suffragists are feminists, " as one feminist explained. Jill Lepore
18
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
19
Modern political science started in the late nineteenth century as a branch of history. Jill Lepore
20
The study of history requires investigation, imagination, empathy, and respect. Reverence just doesn't enter into it. Jill Lepore