LexBrew
Vol. 06 · Misquoted ·Book ·325 of 348

"Well-behaved women rarely make history."

They never said that.

What people say
"Well-behaved women rarely make history."
What was actually said
"Well-behaved women seldom make history." Laurel Thatcher Ulrich — Laurel Thatcher Ulrich, American Quarterly (1976)

Why it stuck

Ulrich's original was an academic lament that ordinary pious women had been forgotten by historians. The mug-and-tote remix turned it into a rebellion slogan.

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