“University is about confronting new ideas, unfamiliar, un-"safe". If you want to be "safe" you are not worthy of a university education.”

Variant: Unless you are at home in the metaphor, you are not safe anywhere.

Source: Ariel: The Restored Edition

The volunteer Organist, reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).

GWU interview (1997)
Context: You know, you have to really decide where you want to live: if you want to live in the jungle or in the zoo. Because if you want the beauty, if you want freedom, the jungle is... that's your world. But you're in danger there, you have to live with snakes, sharks, tigers, skunks, you know, mosquitoes, leeches. You want to be safe, you have to live in the zoo. You are protected. You know, if you are a lamb, the tiger will not attack you. You know, you'll get a little bit something to eat every day; that's fine. You have to work hard, but you live behind the bars, and what's wonderful — you live there behind the bars and you dream about the beauty of the jungle. Now what happened was that the bars opened, and everybody runs after the dream. And suddenly, well, yeah, it's beautiful — yes, I am free to go wherever I want, do whatever I want, but where do I want to go? Oh, my God, and here is a tiger and here's a snake. Oh, oh, and people have a tendency to, you know, back. And you will be surprised how many people prefer to live in the zoo; they are not ready to pay for the freedom; they think that freedom should be, you know, for free, even for granted, which never is, never is.

Why our future depends on libraries, reading and daydreaming (2013)

Source: Crush

Source: City of Heavenly Fire

Drugs and Governments
Focus Fourteen

Inaugural address as President of Yale University (11 April 1964)