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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

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Sarah Vowell
Age: 54
Born: 1969
Born: December 27
Actor
Author
Journalist
Voice Actor
Writer
Muskogee
Oklahoma
Sarah Jane Vowell
People
Dangerous
Belief
Idea
Thought
Ideas
Might
Mean
Provoking
Thing
Killed

More quotes by Sarah Vowell

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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.
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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.
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Even writers need relief from words.
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There are two kinds of people in the world: the kind who alphabetize their record collections, and the kind who don't.
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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.
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In these fast and fickle times, it’s nice to know that there are some things you can always count on: the enduring brilliance of the last page of The Great Gatsby the near-religious harmonies of the Beach Boys’ “California Girls” and the lifelong friendship of Matt Damon and Ben Affleck.
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I talk about going to his [George W. Bush's] Inauguration and crying when he took the oath, 'cause I was so afraid he was going to wreck the economy and muck up the drinking water... the failure of my pessimistic imagination at that moment boggles my mind now.
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History is one war after another with a bunch of murders and natural disasters in between.
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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
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Why is America the last best hope of Earth? What if it's Liechtenstein? Or, worse, Canada?
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The only people who know about me are people who would know about me.
Sarah Vowell
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I didn't come from any kind of academic background, but I lived in a college town and I knew people who weren't without pretense. There was this idea in the town that if something was European it would be good.
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Clemenza's overriding responsibility is to his family. He takes a moment out of his routine madness to remember that he had promised his wife that he would bring dessert home. His instruction to his partner in crime is an entire moral manifesto in six little words: 'Leave the gun. Take the cannoli.
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Buffy's high school was built on top of a vortex of evil, the Hellmouth. And whose wasn't?
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The Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, the Civil War-when I really think about them they all seem about as likely as the parting of the Red Sea.
Sarah Vowell
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Oh my dear, idealists are the cruelest monsters of them all.
Sarah Vowell
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I guess if I had to pick a spiritual figurehead to possess the deed to the entirety of Earth, I'd go with Buddha, but only because he wouldn't want it.
Sarah Vowell
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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
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Being a nerd, which is to say going to far and caring too much about a subject, is the best way to make friends I know. For me, the spark that turns an acquaintance into a friend has usually been kindled by some shared enthusiasm like detective novels or Ulysses S. Grant.
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No cowboys for Canada. Canada got Mounties instead - Dudley Do-Right, not John Wayne. It's a mind-set of Here I come to save the day versus Yippee-ki-yay, motherfucker.
Sarah Vowell