“A desk is a dangerous place from which to watch the world.”
The Honourable Schoolboy (1977)
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John le Carré 42
British novelist and spy 1931Related quotes
“There's nothing more dangerous than someone who wants to make the world a better place.”
Existencilism (2002)

1 Cor. 7:29-31 http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=1+Corinthians+7%3A29-31&version=KJV
Source: New Testament and Mythology and Other Basic Writings (1941), p. 18

“Return”, p. 55.
The Teachings of Don. B: Satires, Parodies, Fables, Illustrated Stories, and Plays of Donald Barthelme (1992)

“The slave system is one of constant danger, distrust, suspicion, and watchfulness.”
On the Irrepressible Conflict (1858)
Context: As a general truth, communities prosper and flourish, or droop and decline, in just the degree that they practise or neglect to practise the primary duties of justice and humanity. The free-labor system conforms to the divine law of equality, which is written in the hearts and consciences of man, and therefore is always and everywhere beneficent.
The slave system is one of constant danger, distrust, suspicion, and watchfulness. It debases those whose toil alone can produce wealth and resources for defence, to the lowest degree of which human nature is capable, to guard against mutiny and insurrection, and thus wastes energies which otherwise might be employed in national development and aggrandizement. The free-labor system educates all alike, and by opening all the fields of industrial employment and all the departments of authority, to the unchecked and equal rivalry of all classes of men, at once secures universal contentment, and brings into the highest possible activity all the physical, moral, and social energies of the whole state.

Variant: The world is dangerous, not because of those who do evil, but because of those who look on and do nothing.