Sarah Vowell Quotes

An idea isn't responsible for the people who believe in it.

Bolsheviks are sincere. Fascists are sincere. Lunatics are sincere. People who believe the earth is flat are sincere. They can’t all be right. Better make certain that you’ve got something to be sincere about and with.

The opposite of faith is not doubt: It is certainty. It is madness. You can tell you have created God in your own image when it turns out that he or she hates all the same people you do.

With most people disbelief in a thing is founded on a blind belief in some other thing.

A faith is something you die for, a doctrine is something you kill for. There is all the difference in the world.

What do we believe? Why do we believe it?

Men will die upon dogma but will not fall victim to a conclusion.

We call a man a bigot or a slave of dogma because he is a thinker who has thought thoroughly and to a definite end.

Principles are a dangerous form of social dynamite.

Ultimately, blind faith is the only kind.

Within orthodoxy, there is always a danger of faith collapsing into fear.

There is a holy mistaken zeal in politics as religion. By persuading others, we convince ourselves.

Men are not necessarily more zealous for truth than they are for error.

If religion is about truth, why is it so afraid of error?

Those who cavalierly reject the Theory of Evolution, as not adequately supported by facts, seem quite to forget that their own theory is supported by no facts at all. Like the majority of men who are born to a given belief, they demand the most rigorous proof of any adverse belief, but assume that their own needs none.

To me, ideology is corrupt; it's a parasite on religious structures. To be an ideologue is to have all of the terrible things that are associated with religious certainty and none of the utility. If you're an ideologue, you believe everything that you think. If you're religious, there's a mystery left there.

When we become advocates of a creed, something dies; we do not believe God, we only believe our belief about Him.

As Hitler himself later enunciated, it matters not how idiotic the creed, what matters is the firmness with which it is enunciated.

Vast ills have followed a belief in certainty.

No, no, no - you don't argue with concepts. You have to claim Dogma, and therefore leave no room for rational thought.

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.

I'm convinced that the most important division in human affairs is probably not the one between left and right, liberal and conservative. It's the one between zealotry and understanding, between absolute conviction and compromise, between preachers and politicians.

Don't shut down the feedback loop with judgment, rigid beliefs, and prejudices.

If a man is right, he can't be too radical; if he is wrong, he can't be too conservative.