American - Historian | August 27, 1966 -
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
NatureCharacterActionAmericanOut
A problem with a president who leads by stirring the moral sentiments of voters is that he has got to keep stirring them.
ProblemMoralPresidentKeepGotHe
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.
FatherMotherCarOldPaintLittle
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.
MotherHomeMeScaryAlwaysThings
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.
RelationshipSecretsPrivacyNew
A mystery, in Christian theology, is what God knows and man cannot, and must instead believe.
GodManBelieveChristianMystery
Damning taxes is a piece of cake. It's defending them that's hard.
CakeHardTaxesPieceDefending
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.
WorldRichLaborKindTaxesTrade
Taxes are what we pay for civilized society, for modernity, and for prosperity. The wealthy pay more because they have benefitted more.
SocietyProsperityMoreTaxesPay
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.
WomenChildrenWomanKitchenDoing
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.
FatherSchoolWeekSummerGoKid
Old reference books are like tree rings. Without them, there'd be no way to know what a tree had lived through.
TreeKnowWayOldWithoutLived
Copyright © 2024 QuotesDict Jill Lepore quotes