Quotes from Sarah Vowell

Idealists are the cruelest monsters of them all.

Along with voting, jury duty, and paying taxes, goofing off is one of the central obligations of American citizenship. So when my friends Joel and Stephen and I play hooky from our jobs in the middle of the afternoon to play Pop-A-Shot in a room full of children, I like to think we are not procrastinators; we are patriots pursuing happiness.

The medieval pilgrimage routes, in which Christians walked from church to church to commune with the innards of saints, are the beginnings of the modern tourism industry.

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.

Before the verb "to electrocute" came to define death by electricity, Edison advocated that the verb be named for his nemesis, that a person who had been electrocuted would have been westinghoused instead. I bet Westinghouse came up with some possible definitions of what it meant to be edisoned himself.

Still, compared to him, compared to the people we descend from, I am free of history. I'm so free of history I have to get in a car and drive seven states to find it.

French was assigned to sculpt allegorical figures of the continents. His America, from 1907, is one of the most concise depictions of our history I've ever seen: a European stepping on a Mayan head.

In his reply, Washington acknowledged his fellow Americans' "fatal tendency of disunion." The

I see plainly that America can defend herself if proper measures are taken," he wrote, adding ominously, "and now I begin to fear she should be lost by herself and her own sons." The

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

Someday, I hope to be just like him. There are people who look forward to spending their sunset years in the sunshine; it is my own retirement dream to await my death indoors, dragging strangers up dusty staircases while coughing up one of the most thrilling phrases in the English language: "It was on this spot . . ." My fantasy is to one day become a docent

we all still bask in the glow and the warmth of Mr. Franklin's rising sun." Sounds good.

I have a friend whose father, a native of Liverpool, refused to eat pineapples his entire life because he held a grudge against Hawaiians for killing Britain's greatest explorer.

it does get on my nerves how easy it is for tall people to make a good first impression.

Congress was soon neck-deep in arrogant boobs whom Beaumarchais or Deane had promised high ranks and higher salaries. "Men cannot be engaged to quit their native country . . . in a cause which is not their own" is how Deane rationalized the incentives to Congress.

more Irish than French).

Personally, I am too vindictively American, too full of hate for the hateful aspects of this country, and too possessed by the things I love here to be too long away. —RALPH ELLISON

Americans' "fatal tendency of disunion.

To me, every plaque, no matter what words are inscribed on it, says the same magic informative thing: Something happened!

The First Amendment, he explained, exposed tolerance as a sham, because tolerance implies one superior group of people deigning to put up with their inferiors.

Tacking an object up on a wall changes things.

It says something about the ugliness of September 11, 1777, that this boy woke up a Lutheran and went to bed a Quaker.

Besides the money and land, Lafayette inherited a six-foot-tall hole in his heart that only a father figure like George Washington could fill.

Never underestimate the corrective lens that is sentimentality.