Jill Lepore Quotes

We all have the temptation to be backseat drivers when it comes to decisions that don't work out the way we want.

No vice is so bad as advice.

One sure way to lose another woman's friendship is to try to improve her flower arrangements.

It's always dangerous to prescribe an idea on other people.

When people don't want 'em, when they profit from the division, however, be it politically or financially, that's when I abhor it.

In business there's people who have talent and there's people whose talent is to take advantage of people who have talent.

Back seat drivers don’t know the feel of the wheel but they sho’ know how to make a fuss" Bob Dylan/Bonnie Raitt, “Let’s Keep It Between Us,” 1982

Advice is priceless: when it becomes interference it is preposterous.

A man who flatters a woman hopes either to find her a fool or to make her one.

The Admiral's using us," he says to the kids around him. "Don't you see that?" Most of the kids just shrug, but Hayden's there, and he never misses an opportunity to add his peculiar wisdom to a situation. "I'd rather be used whole than in pieces," Hayden says.

We give nothing so freely as advice.

So, that’s what they wanted: lies. Beautiful lies. That’s what they needed. People were fools. It was going to be easy for me.

Do you take me for a sponge, my lord? hamlet: Ay, sir; that soaks up the king's countenance, his rewards, his authorities. But such officers do the king best service in the end: he keeps them, like an ape, in the corner of his jaw; first mouthed, to be last swallowed: when he needs what you have gleaned, it is but squeezing you, and, sponge, you shall be dry again. rosencrantz: I understand you not, my lord. hamlet: I am glad of it: a knavish speech sleeps in a foolish ear.

The most intangible, and therefore the worst, kind of a lie is a half truth. This is the peculiar device of a conscientious detractor.

A veritable incubator of short cuts, schemes and devices to overcome the truth.

Inevitably the party trying to resolve a matter had to contend with the party most willing to exploit it.

The most that can be said of flattery is that it is sometimes a cheap psychological trick with which charlatans and dishonest people lull others into a state of carelessness while they pick their pockets.

There was a whole army of people who seemed not to have anything better to do than to try to disrupt her life, and , if they were given the opportunity, to correct the way she had chosen to live it.

I get my fingers in all our pies. Before you know it, your little fingers including all your toes are in all the pies.

Kick him when he's down, he's easier to reach.

He did not care upon what terms he satisfied his passion. He had even a mad, melodramatic idea to drug her.

If you're doing well, you're a target, nobody's interested in you except how you can be of use to them.

There is no urge so great as for one man to edit another man's work.

I never take advice, good or bad. That would only encourage more of it.

Yeah, that's a cool name, but it's a monstrous intrusion into our affairs.