Well-behaved women rarely make history.

Quote Investigator traces the saying to Laurel Thatcher Ulrich’s article in American Quarterly (Spring 1976), p. 20, fourteen years after Monroe’s death. Ulrich wrote the seldom version. A rarely version credited to Monroe appears on p. 42 of Hazel Dixon-Cooper’s Born on a Rotten Day, in an edition bearing copyright 2003. Quote Investigator also reports a retailer release date of 7 January 2002; that bibliographic discrepancy was not resolved here, so the trail labels the copyright-dated edition rather than asserting an exact first-publication date. Both print citations are secondary here. Wikiquote independently lists the Monroe credit as misattributed. No full Monroe corpus is held by the atlas, and no exhaustive manuscript search is claimed.

1. 1976Earliest found · credited to Laurel Thatcher UlrichUlrich publishes the seldom wording while discussing the historical neglect of pious colonial women.Well-behaved women seldom make history;Laurel Thatcher Ulrich, “Vertuous Women Found: New England Ministerial Literature, 1668–1735,” American Quarterly 28, no. 1 (Spring 1976), pp. 20–40, p. 20. Checked on another researcher’s citation, not seen first-hand. Source
2. 2003Credited to Marilyn MonroeThe copyright-2003 edition of Born on a Rotten Day credits a rarely version to Monroe; a reported 2002 retailer date remains unresolved.Hazel Dixon-Cooper, Born on a Rotten Day: Illuminating and Coping with the Dark Side of the Zodiac (Fireside/Simon & Schuster, copyright 2003; retailer release date reported as 7 January 2002), p. 42. Checked on another researcher’s citation, not seen first-hand. Source

Ulrich used the seldom version in the opening of a 1976 historical article about pious women in colonial New England. She was explaining why women who neither challenged authorities nor attracted scandal tended to disappear from historical accounts, before studying the religious literature that could recover their lives.

In Ulrich’s argument, ordinary, conforming women often go unrecorded by historians. The later slogan is commonly read as encouragement to break rules.

The original is an observation about historical visibility, not simply an instruction to misbehave. Monroe’s name and the replacement of seldom with rarely belong to the later circulation, not the 1976 article.

• A misquotationWell behaved women do not make history. A-Z Quotes credits this wording to Mae West without a source. This is a variant of the saying already filed under Marilyn Monroe: that entry marks the Monroe attribution as wrong and names Laurel Thatcher Ulrich as the real author. No primary West source was established here. Quote Investigator traces Ulrich’s seldom wording to her American Quarterly article (Spring 1976), p. 20; this publication and page are secondary evidence here, because the journal page image was not inspected. The Harvard Gazette’s interview with Ulrich independently confirms her authorship and the saying’s original historical context. No date for the first West attribution was established. Research references: https://quoteinvestigator.com/2012/11/03/well-behaved-women/ ; https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2007/09/ulrich-explains-that-well-behaved-women-should-make-history/ . Where it was seen

Power, Society

• What a man thinks of himself becomes his fate. (paraphrase) Henry David Thoreau
• To love at all is to be vulnerable. C. S. Lewis
• The art of living is more like wrestling than dancing. (paraphrase) Marcus Aurelius
• No scientific statement is final: it is a likely formulation of observation and analysis. Carl Gustav Jung
• A sex symbol is a heavy load to carry when one is tired, hurt and bewildered. (misattributed)

• quoteinvestigator.com/2012/11/03/well-behaved-women
• en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Marilyn_Monroe#Misattributed

“Well-behaved women rarely make history.” Attributed to Marilyn Monroe. No. Laurel Thatcher Ulrich wrote it, not Monroe. Quotogeny, https://quotogeny.com/q/well-behaved-women-rarely-make-history/ (checked 26 October 2026).

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