Jill Lepore Quotes

• 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

  Self, Defense, Littles

  "Battleground America". www.newyorker.com. April 23, 2012.

  53 Copy quote

• History is a long and endlessly interesting argument, where evidence is everything and storytelling is everything else.

  Jill Lepore

  Long, Interesting, Argument

  "Just the Facts, Ma'am" by Jill Lepore, www.newyorker.com. March 24, 2008.

  13 Copy quote

• 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

  Art, Writing, Past

  Jill Lepore (2012). “The Story of America: Essays on Origins”, p.15, Princeton University Press

  13 Copy quote

• The study of history requires investigation, imagination, empathy, and respect. Reverence just doesnt enter into it.

  Jill Lepore

  Imagination, Empathy, Study

  Jill Lepore (2011). “The Whites of Their Eyes: The Tea Party's Revolution and the Battle over American History”, p.162, Princeton University Press

  15 Copy quote

• 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 to do next, which is why it's worth trying to know where things come from.

  Jill Lepore

  Trying, Way, Next

  "Fixed" by Jill Lepore, www.newyorker.com. March 29, 2010.

  7 Copy quote

• Germ theory, which secularized infectious disease, had a side effect: it sacralized epidemiology.

  Jill Lepore

  Epidemiology, Disease, Sides

  "It's Spreading" by Jill Lepore, www.newyorker.com. June 1, 2009.

  10 Copy quote

• Mainly, the more faddish and newer stages of life are really just marketing schemes. Tweenhood. The young old. The quarter-life crisis.

  Jill Lepore

  Marketing, Quarters, Stage

  10 Copy quote

• 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

  Father, Records, Earth

  Jill Lepore (2013). “Book of Ages: The Life and Opinions of Jane Franklin”, p.16, Vintage

  5 Copy quote

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

  Jill Lepore

  Book, Tree, Way

  "Look It Up: Shelving the Encyclopedia Britannica" by Jill Lepore, www.newyorker.com. March 13, 2012.

  7 Copy quote

• In kindergarten, you can learn how to be a citizen of the world.

  Jill Lepore

  Citizens, World, Kindergarten

  "Flight of Fancy" by Jill Lepore, www.newyorker.com. March 11, 2011.

  8 Copy quote

• 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

  Four, Pages, Facts

  "The Commandments" by Jill Lepore, www.newyorker.com. January 17, 2011.

  5 Copy quote

• Epidemics follow patterns because diseases follow patterns. Viruses spread; they reproduce; they die.

  Jill Lepore

  Epidemics, Viruses, Patterns

  "It's Spreading" by Jill Lepore, www.newyorker.com. June 1, 2009.

  5 Copy quote

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

  Jill Lepore

  Choices, Republican, Democrat

  4 Copy quote

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

  Jill Lepore

  Past, Innovation, Different

  "Wall Street Protests: Cash-Roots" by Jill Lepore, www.newyorker.com. October 6, 2011.

  7 Copy quote

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

  Jill Lepore

  Thinking, Hands, Personality

  Jill Lepore (2014). “The Secret History of Wonder Woman”, p.257, Vintage

  4 Copy quote

• Disrupt, and you will be saved.

  Jill Lepore

  Saved

  "The Disruption Machine". www.newyorker.com. June 23, 2014.

  4 Copy quote

• My mother married my father in 1956. She was twenty-eight, and he was thirty-one. She loved him with a fierce steadiness borne of loyalty, determination, and an unyielding dignity.

  Jill Lepore

  Loyalty, Mother, Determination

  "The Prodigal Daughter" by Jill Lepore, www.newyorker.com. July 8, 2013.

  4 Copy quote

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

  Jill Lepore

  Book, Sleep, Written

  Jill Lepore (2014). “The Secret History of Wonder Woman”, p.163, Vintage

  5 Copy quote

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

  Jill Lepore

  Archives, Generations, Mouths

  8 Copy quote

• Why do beautiful women love ugly men?

  Jill Lepore

  Beautiful, Men, Ugly

  Jill Lepore (2014). “The Secret History of Wonder Woman”, p.177, Vintage

  11 Copy quote

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

  Jill Lepore

  Strong, Hard Work, Boys

  Jill Lepore (2014). “The Secret History of Wonder Woman”, p.319, Vintage

  6 Copy quote

• Nineteenth-century grass-roots populism made twentieth-century progressivism possible.

  Jill Lepore

  Roots, Grass, Century

  "Wall Street Protests: Cash-Roots" by Jill Lepore, www.newyorker.com. October 6, 2011.

  23 Copy quote

• 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

  Senior, Moving, Age

  "Baby Talk" by Jill Lepore, www.newyorker.com. June 29, 2009.

  11 Copy quote

• The world may not be getting better and better, but our devices are getting newer and newer.

  Jill Lepore

  Get Better, World, May

  "Why do we buy phones with so many features, then only play Candy Crush?" by Emma Brockes, www.theguardian.com. June 19, 2014.

  4 Copy quote

• Epidemiologists study patterns in order to combat infection. Stories about epidemics follow patterns, too. Stories arent often deadly, but they can be virulent: spreading fast, weakening resistance, wreaking havoc.

  Jill Lepore

  Epidemics, Order, Stories

  4 Copy quote

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