Jill Lepore Quotes & Sayings (Page 2)

“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.”

“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.”

“As many as two out of every three Europeans who came to the colonies were debtors on arrival: they paid for their passage by becoming indentured servants.”

“Disruptive innovation is competitive strategy for an age seized by terror.”

“Few American presidents have been unhappier or lonelier in office than Woodrow Wilson.”

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

“A mystery, in Christian theology, is what God knows and man cannot, and must instead believe.”

“A problem with a president who leads by stirring the moral sentiments of voters is that he has got to keep stirring them.”

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

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