“Security is mostly a superstition. It does not exist in nature, nor do the children of men as a whole experience it. Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. Life is either a daring adventure, or nothing.”

— Helen Keller

Source: The Open Door (1957) This quotation is often contracted into: Security is mostly a superstition... Life is either a daring adventure, or nothing. or paraphrased: Life is either a daring adventure or nothing at all.

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Helen Keller 156

American author and political activist 1880–1968

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“Security is mostly a superstition. It does not exist in nature, nor do the children of men as a whole experience it. Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. Life is either a daring adventure, or nothing.”

Helen Keller (1880–1968) American author and political activist

“Life is either a daring adventure or nothing. Security does not exist in nature, nor do the children of men as a whole experience it. Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than exposure.”

Helen Keller (1880–1968) American author and political activist

“Life is security and daring,/ Life is protection and risk,/ Life is openness and closure,/ It is safety and adventure.”

Kuruvilla Pandikattu (1957) Indian philosopher

Life: Relish It!
Life: Relish It! (2012)

“Do not consider either the security of your personal lives or the transitory happiness of your wives, husbands, children, parents and relatives; for the security of all of your children and their children is in jeopardy.”

Mohamed Nasheed (1967) Maldivian politician, 4th president of the Maldives

After his arrest, and getting dragged into court, quoted on The guardian, "Former Maldives president Mohamed Nasheed jailed for 13 years" http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/mar/14/former-maldives-president-mohamed-nasheed-jailed-for-13-years, March 14, 2015.

“So many people live within unhappy circumstances and yet will not take the initiative to change their situation because they are conditioned to a life of security, conformity, and conservatism, all of which may appear to give one peace of mind, but in reality nothing is more damaging to the adventurous spirit within a man than a secure future. The very basic core of a man's living spirit is his passion for adventure. The joy of life comes from our encounters with new experiences, and hence their [sic] is no greater joy than to have an endlessly changing horizon, for each day to have a new and different sun.”

Christopher McCandless (1968–1992) American hiker and explorer

In a letter to Russell Fritz (as known as Ron Franz), April 1992
Source: Mary Ellen Barnes (ed.). Back to the Wild (2nd ed.). Twin Star Press, 2013. ISBN 978-0-9833955-0-8. (pp. 135-137)

“Nowadays we raise our children in a cocoon of domesticated security, far from any sense of risk or adventure.”

Alan Hirsch (1959) South African missionary

Source: The Faith of Leap (2011), p. 141

“What men call treasure, and the gods call dross,
Life seems a jest of Fate's contriving,
Only secure in every one's conniving,
A long account of nothings paid with loss.”

James Russell Lowell (1819–1891) American poet, critic, editor, and diplomat

St. 3.
Ode Recited at the Harvard Commemoration http://www.readbookonline.net/readOnLine/1169/ (July 21, 1865)
Context: The little that we do
Is but half-nobly true;
With our laborious hiving
What men call treasure, and the gods call dross,
Life seems a jest of Fate's contriving,
Only secure in every one's conniving,
A long account of nothings paid with loss.

“Instead of seeing that men got enough to eat the Government spent the whole Session in securing that they should have nothing to drink.”

F. E. Smith, 1st Earl of Birkenhead (1872–1930) British politician

Speech in Limehouse (4 October 1909) on the Liberal Government's Licensing Bill, quoted in The Times (5 October 1909), p. 4

“Whatever you specialize in, another specialty will either gobble you, or find a way to replace you. If you get what looks like a secure niche, somebody'll come along and wall you up in it and write your epitaph on it. And the more specialized a society gets, the more dangerous it is for the pure specialist. You think an electronic engineer in any safer than an actor? Or a ditch-digger?”

Walter M. Miller, Jr. book The Darfsteller

"The Darfsteller" (1955)

“It is generally acknowledged that the future of the European security architecture as an important element of global security should be based on principles of comprehensiveness, indivisibility and partnership, and, in the long run, on collective rather than unilateral action.”

Leonid Kuchma (1938) Second president of Ukraine

Speech at the 52nd session of the United Nations General Assembly (excerpts) (1997)

“Security is mostly a superstition. It does not exist in nature, nor do the children of men as a whole experience it. Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. Life is either a daring adventure, or nothing.”

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