266 Quotes by Sarah Vowell

Dig deep into its communitarian ethos and it reads more like an America that might have been, an America fervently devoted to the quaint goals of working together and getting along. Of course, this America does exist. It’s called Canada.

In other words, ideas, when implemented, turn into precedents with unpredictable and potentially disturbing consequences. As the British historian and politician Lord Acton described the effect that our Revolutionary War had on our French allies, “What the French took from the Americans was their theory of revolution, not their theory of government – their cutting, not their sewing.

It is unfair of me to say so, but the slogan Booth shouted from the stage of Ford’s Theatre, the over-blown, self-important, pseudo-Shakespearean blather, being etched on the sign marking his death feels like the stamp of approval.

That’s what I like to call him, “the current president.” I find it difficult to say or type his name, George W. Bush. I like to call him “the current president” because it’s a hopeful phrase, implying that his administration is only temporary.

Despicable rabble,” however, pretty much summed up George Washington’s opinion of the troops when he arrived in Cambridge in July. In a letter to his brother John, the new commander in chief grumbled, “I found a mixed multitude of People here, under very little discipline, order, or Government.

I did not hesitate to be disagreeable to preserve my independence.

A couple of times he called the second he’d finished reading a novel and just had to tell me about it, and I know it sounds hokey and librarianish to say so, but I just swooned when he did that.

There are freaky talking mannequins in the Salem Witch Museum that recite the Lord’s Prayer and while they do resemble shrunken apples they nevertheless help the visitor understand how hard it must have been for the condemned to say the line about forgiving those who trespass against us.

I still believe in public radio’s potential. Because it’s the one mass medium that’s still crafted almost entirely by true believers.