And in the absence of facts, myth rushes in, the kudzu of history.
Stacy SchiffRead
For thousands of years, men have written history, so it seems to me that most of what we've read is from the male point of view.
Interpretation
What this quote means
This quote highlights the historical dominance of male perspectives in recording history.
Stacy Schiff's quote critiques the traditional narrative of history, which has largely been crafted from a male viewpoint for centuries. It suggests that this bias has led to a skewed understanding of past events, emphasizing the need to seek out and value diverse perspectives that may have been overlooked or marginalized in historical accounts.
Themes
HistoryPerspectiveGenderNarrativeBias
In practice
Example use cases
This quote could be used in a lecture on gender studies to illustrate historical biases.
More from Stacy Schiff
All quotes βIt has always been preferable to attribute a woman's success to her beauty rather than to her brains, to reduce her to the sum of her sex life.
Stacy SchiffRead
Cleopatra had one great advantage. She lived at a time when female sovereigns were not anomalies. And when women enjoyed rights they would not again enjoy for another 2,000 years. You could call them early feminists, if I may use a dirty word.
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Power has for so long been a male construct that it distorted the shape of the first women who tried it on, only to find themselves in a sort of straitjacket.
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Women enjoyed rights in Egypt they would not again enjoy for more than 2,000 years. They owned ships, ran vineyards, filed lawsuits, practiced medicine. Their husbands supported them after divorce. Their power was unprecedented.
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A woman can never be too rich or too thin, but until very, very recently, she could be too powerful, for which - if she wasn't smart enough to camouflage herself - she generally paid the price.
Stacy SchiffRead
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