Sarah Vowell Quote

Long before it was known to me as a place where my ancestry was even remotely involved, the idea of a state for Jews (or a Jewish state; not quite the same thing, as I failed at first to see) had been...

During the Bosnian war in the late 1990s, I spent several days traveling around the country with Susan Sontag and her son, my dear friend David Rieff. On one occasion, we made a special detour to the...

From the beginning men used God to justify the unjustifiable.

Conversion and zealotry, just like revelation and apostasy, are flip sides of the same coin, the currency of a political culture having more in common with religion than rational discourse.

Give me a man or woman who has read a thousand books and you give me an interesting companion. Give me a man or woman who has read perhaps three and you give me a very dangerous enemy indeed.

Pit race against race, religion against religion, prejudice against prejudice. Divide and conquer! We must not let that happen here.

Goodness without wisdom always accomplishes evil.

Moderation is a wiser policy than zealotry

The politics of the possible was being replaced by the politics of purity.

It is the certainty that they possess the truth that makes men cruel.