Top 160 Sarah Vowell Quotes (2024 Update)

1. “Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you.”

— Sarah Vowell

2. “We are flawed creatures, all of us. Some of us think that means we should fix our flaws. But get rid of my flaws and there would be no one left.”

— Sarah Vowell

3. “If I looked in the mirror someday and saw no dark circles under my eyes, I would probably look better. I just wouldn’t look like me.”

— Sarah Vowell

4. “Being a nerd, which is to say going too far and caring too much about a subject, is the best way to make friends I know.”

— Sarah Vowell

5. “Buffy’s high school was built on top of a vortex of evil, the Hellmouth. And whose wasn’t?”

— Sarah Vowell

6. “You know, it’s always good to have a synonym just for variety.”

— Sarah Vowell

7. “Oh my dear, idealists are the cruelest monsters of them all.”

— Sarah Vowell

8. “My lips are chapped from the winds of change.”

— Sarah Vowell

9. “I no longer drink nearly as much as I used to but, still, my motto is Sine coffea nihil sum. Without coffee, I’m nothing.”

— Sarah Vowell

10. “I don’t know how to describe the magnificence of Carlsbad Caverns without making it sound like a cartoon or a drug trip or a cartoon of a drug trip. The only thing I can say is that it is one of those dear places that make you love the world.”

— Sarah Vowell

11. “The true American patriot is by definition skeptical of the government.”

— Sarah Vowell

12. “Except for the people who were there that one day they discovered the polio vaccine, being part of history is rarely a good idea. History is one war after another with a bunch of murders and natural disasters in between.”

— Sarah Vowell

13. “Behind every bad law, a deep fear.”

— Sarah Vowell

14. “Relics are treasured as something close to the divine.”

— Sarah Vowell

15. “When I think about my relationship with America, I feel like a battered wife: Yeah, he knocks me around a lot, but boy, he sure can dance.”

— Sarah Vowell

16. “My ideal picture of citizenship will always be an argument, not a sing-along.”

— Sarah Vowell

17. “History is full of really good stories. That’s the main reason I got into this racket: I want to make the argument that history is interesting.”

— Sarah Vowell

18. “I resist the urge to raise my hand and utter the four most reassuring words in the English language: I know a guy.”

— Sarah Vowell

19. “I have watched enough science fiction films to accept that humanity’s unchecked pursuit of learning will end with robots taking over the world.”

— Sarah Vowell

20. “Assassins and presidents invite the same basic question: Just who do you think you are?”

— Sarah Vowell

21. “So I say to you read! Read! Something will stick in the mind, be diligent and good will come of it.”

— Sarah Vowell

22. “I’m not really the scented envelope kid of girl, preferring instead to send yellow Jiffy-lite mailers packed with whatever song is on my mind.”

— Sarah Vowell

23. “But when I am around strangers, I turn into a conversational Mount St. Helens. I’m dormant, dormant, quiet, quiet, old-guy loners build log cabins on the slopes of my silence and then, boom, it’s 1980. Once I erupt, they’ll be wiping my verbal ashes off their windshields as far away as North Dakota.”

— Sarah Vowell

24. “The only thing more dangerous than an idea is a belief. And by dangerous I don’t mean thought-provoking. I mean: might get people killed.”

— Sarah Vowell

25. “Lafayette, “I did not hesitate to be disagreeable to preserve my independence.” Spoken like every only child ever. Lafayette.”

— Sarah Vowell

26. “The neighborhood of Gramercy Park, where Edwin used to live, was built to look like London, which is to say that its considerable beauty is skin deep while its heart beats with the ugliness of monarchy. And at its very center, inside the gates keeping out the riffraff that is all New York, stands the statue of the sad and fancy Edwin Booth, dressed as Hamlet, his signature role.”

— Sarah Vowell

27. “The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States.” More important, all of Jefferson’s specific digs at the king were preceded by one self-evident fact that obliterated any and all justifications for monarchy, aristocracy, and colonialism until the end of time, even though neither its author nor his comrades truly believed it: All men are created equal. A.”

— Sarah Vowell

28. “American history is a quagmire, and the more one knows, the quaggier the mire gets.”

— Sarah Vowell

29. “Lafayette took umbrage – just gobs and gobs of umbrage – at the patriots’ vilification of his countrymen for leaving Newport.”

— Sarah Vowell

30. “I discovered that Robert Todd Lincoln was there for each of the first three assassinations. I wanted to write about the Lincoln Memorial, so when I found out he had attended its dedication, that helped focus it further.”

— Sarah Vowell

31. “Once or twice a day, I am enveloped inside what I like to call the Impenetrable Shield of Melancholy. This shield, it is impenetrable. Hence the name. I cannot speak. And while I can feel myself freeze up, I can’t do anything about it.”

— Sarah Vowell

32. “Listening to the radio every day for an entire year was a prison sentence. It was the most depressing, annoying, debilitating project I have ever undertaken, and I have a master’s degree in art history.”

— Sarah Vowell

33. “A humble, bootstrappy patriot, Knox wooed, then married Lucy Flucker, the highbrow daughter of the Loyalist governor of the province of Massachusetts.”

— Sarah Vowell

34. “Washington was referring to his military family or aides-de-camp, the same way John Adams described the aide Alexander Hamilton as “one of General Washington’s Family.” So when Washington said “family,” he meant “chummy minion.” The orphaned Lafayette heard “son.”

— Sarah Vowell

35. “While I gave up God a long time ago, I never shook the habit of wanting to believe in something. So I replaced my creed of everlasting life with life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.”

— Sarah Vowell

36. “I probably am a cranky writer, but I am actually a fairly nice, normal person. Since I’m a grouchy writer, of course I have friends whose books are doing way better than mine.”

— Sarah Vowell

37. “The modern mocha is a bittersweet concoction of imperialism, genocide, invention, and consumerism served with whipped cream on top.”

— Sarah Vowell

38. “I do not think that there can ever be enough books about anything; and I say that knowing that some of them are going to be about Pilates. The more knowledge, the better seems like the a solid rule of thumb, even though I have watched enough science fiction films to accept that humanity’s unchecked pursuit of learning will end with robots taking over the world.”

— Sarah Vowell

39. “Picpus Cemetery, where Lafayette is buried under dirt from Bunker Hill.”

— Sarah Vowell

40. “Abraham Lincoln had a soft spot for deserters, whom he called his “legs cases.” Though many of his military commanders grumbled about Lincoln’s leniency – traditionally, runaways were shot – the president preferred incarceration to execution, asking, “If Almighty God gives a man a cowardly pair of legs how can he help their running away with him?”

— Sarah Vowell

41. “History is one war after another with a bunch of murders and natural disasters in between.”

— Sarah Vowell

42. “In death, you get upgraded into a saint no matter how much people hated you in life.”

— Sarah Vowell

43. “Along with voting, jury duty, and paying taxes, goofing off is one of the central obligations of American citizenship.”

— Sarah Vowell

44. “After Dickinson and Adams had it out over the Olive Branch Petition, Adams wrote to his wife, Abigail, that he and Dickinson “are not to be on speaking terms.” How sad is it that this tiff sort of cheers me up? If two of the most distinguished, dedicated, and thoughtful public servants in the history of this republic could not find a way to agree to disagree, how can we expect the current crop of congressional blockheads to get along?”

— Sarah Vowell

45. “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.”

— Sarah Vowell

46. “Freedom of expression truly exists only when a society’s most repugnant nitwits are allowed to spew their nonsense in public.”

— Sarah Vowell

47. “The irony of informing nearly naked people in a wilderness setting about the story of naked Adam and Eve eating the fruit of knowledge and inventing the fashion industry due to a sudden need for clothing to hide their shame is not lost on Williams.”

— Sarah Vowell

48. “Never have I enjoyed such swearing, before or since. Sir, on that memorable day, he swore like an angel from Heaven.”

— Sarah Vowell

49. “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.”

— Sarah Vowell

50. “As a Frenchman who represented neither North nor South, East nor West, left nor right, Yankees nor Red Sox, Lafayette has always belonged to all of us.”

— Sarah Vowell