"Well behaved women rarely make history" - Laurel Thatcher Ulrich, 1976

This was almost funny… today I decided to look up an old badge I’d found, with words and no quoter’s name on it. Typically. The first quote was acknowledged from Laurel Thatcher Ulrich, but then it got flicked to Marilyn Monroe, and passed onto Eleanor Roosevelt! 

Quotes Valley said that Eleanor Roosevelt had said it. The second one I found was some page called Law of Modern Women which had entered the quote allegedly from Eleanor Roosevelt to Quotesgram’s page. No evidence, but LMW had included a Wikipaedia page link, which didn’t tell anyone that Eleanor Roosevelt had said this. 

The first one about Marilyn Monroe showed up in Amazon.com, where they were selling a poster they had made which said that Marilyn Monroe had said this. No evidence from them, just the advertisement. Aliexpress had advertised this in their ‘wellness quotes’ site. No evidence. Buzz Quotes had shown both Eleanor Roosevelt and Marilyn Monroe, apparently both having said it! 

Sadly, Almighty Girl didn’t quote anyone and yet they are selling the un-named vinyl wall art! 

I found it definitely for Laurel Thatcher Ulrich, a Pulitzer Prize winning historian, in a blog written by a woman who seemed to feel the same as I did about these incorrect quotes. Ulrich had written a book in 2007 after she’d seen her words on car bumper stickers, coffee clubs, wall hangings and t-shirts – and most of them with some other name… not hers. 

These words had come out of her mouth in 1976, in an article about Puritan funeral services. “Did you ever read it?” asked Kim Z Dale in her blog. No? 

Perhaps you’re just… too young. Common words. I used them.

This type of mistake, which seems to be too often made by companies simply making money selling the words, is not a real “mistake”. Any company, which makes whatever they want to for printing whatever they think is okay, might, maybe one day in the near future, get sued by the real speaker who is still here. Alive. Knowing it. 

Laurel, you’ve made history!