Quotes about danger

A collection of quotes on the topic of danger, use, people, doing.

Jane Goodall quote: “The greatest danger to our future is apathy.”

Mark Twain quote: “The average man don't like trouble and danger.”

Quotes about danger

“…over time he would realize that the higher he was, the less danger he was in and the more he controlled the ever-ready mass.”

José Baroja book No fue un catorce de febrero y otros cuentos

Time

“There are no dangerous thoughts; thinking it-self is dangerous.”

Hannah Arendt (1906–1975) Jewish-American political theorist

Thinking

“Remember that this world which you covet so ardently and attempt to acquire so earnestly, and which sometimes annoys you and sometimes pleases you so much, is neither your home nor a permanent destination. You have not been created for it, nor invited to it as your resting-place. It shall neither remain with you for ever, nor will you remain in it eternally. If it has enticed you away with its charrns, it has also warned and cautioned you of real dangers lurking in its folds. Take account of the warnings it has given you and do not be seduced or deceived by its allurements. Let these warnings frighten you from being too greedy to possess it. Try to advance towards the place where you are invited for eternal bliss and turn your face away from the vicious world.”

Ali book Nahj al-Balagha

Nahj al-Balagha

World, Home

“The true man wants two things: danger and play. For that reason he wants woman, as the most dangerous plaything.”

Friedrich Nietzsche book Thus Spoke Zarathustra

Variant: The real man wants two different things: danger and play. Therefore he wants woman, as the most dangerous plaything.
Source: Thus Spoke Zarathustra

“Mortal danger is an effective antidote for fixed ideas.”

Erwin Rommel (1891–1944) German field marshal of World War II

Variant: Mortal danger is an effective antidote for fixed ideas.
Source: The Rommel Papers (1953), Ch. XI : The Initiative Passes, p. 244.

Idea

“Competition is dangerous, socially offensive, considered right and normal, because you are brought up to that value system. What kind of competition did Jesus have? What kind of competition is there in your body? Suppose your brain said, "I'm the most important organ!" And the liver said, "I am. And I want a Free Enterprise system!"”

Jacque Fresco (1916–2017) American futurist and self-described social engineer

You'd rot away in a month if every organ of your body went out for itself. 1974 Larry King Interview https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RVOPkGAtt48

“If you think adventure is dangerous, try routine; it is lethal.”

Paulo Coelho (1947) Brazilian lyricist and novelist

Thinking

“Never was anything great achieved without danger.”

Niccolo Machiavelli (1469–1527) Italian politician, Writer and Author

“We are in danger of destroying ourselves by our greed and stupidity. We cannot remain looking inwards at ourselves on a small and increasingly polluted and overcrowded planet.”

Stephen Hawking (1942–2018) British theoretical physicist, cosmologist, and author

Stupidity

“It's dangerous & humiliating. The whalers killed whales while green peace watched. Now, you don't walk by a child that is being abused, you don't walk by a kitten that is being kicked to death and do nothing. So I find it abhorrent to sit there and watch a whale being slaughtered and do nothing but "bear witness" as they call it. I think it was best illustrated a few years ago, the contradictions that we have, when a ranger in Zimbabwe shot and killed a poacher that was about to kill a black rhinoceros and uh human rights groups around the world said "how dare you? Take a human life to protect an animal". I think the rangers' answer to that really illustrated a hypocrisy. He said "Ya know, if I lived in, If I was a police officer in Herrari and a man ran out of Bark Place Bank with a bag of money and I shot him in the head in front of everybody and killed him, you'd pin a medal on me and call me a national hero. Why is that bag of paper more valued than the future heritage of this nation?" This is our values. WE fight, WE kill, WE risk our lives for things we believe in… Imagine going into Mecca, walk up to the black stone and spit on it. See how far you get. You’re not going to get very far. You’re going to be torn to pieces. Walk into Jerusalem, walk up to that wailing wall with a pick axe, start whacking away. See how far you’re going to get, somebody is going to put a bullet in your back. And everybody will say you deserved it. Walk into the Vatican with a hammer, start smashing a few statues. See how far you’re going to get. Not very far. But each and every day, ya know, people go into the most beautiful, most profoundly sacred cathedrals of this planet, the rainforests of the Amazonia, the redwood forests of California, the rainforests of Indonesia, and totally desecrate & destroy these cathedrals with bulldozers, chainsaws and how do we respond to that? Oh, we write a few letters and protest; we dress up in animal costumes with picket signs and jump up and down; but if the rainforests of Amazonia and redwoods of California, were as, or had as much value to us as a chunk of old meteorite in Mecca, a decrepit old wall in Jerusalem or a piece of old marble in the Vatican, we would literally rip those pieces limb from limb for the act of blasphemy that we’re committing but we won’t do that because nature is an abstraction, wilderness is an abstraction. It has no value in our anthropocentric world where the only thing we value is that which is created by humans.”

Paul Watson (1950) Canadian environmental activist

Life, Death, Money, People

“You say that you are my judge. I do not know if you are! But I tell you that you must take good care not to judge me wrongly, because you will put yourself in great danger.”

Joan of Arc (1412–1431) French folk heroine and Roman Catholic saint

Jeanne's warning to Bishop Cauchon (15 March 1431)
Trial records (1431)
Context: You say that you are my judge. I do not know if you are! But I tell you that you must take good care not to judge me wrongly, because you will put yourself in great danger. I warn you, so that if God punishes you for it, I would have done my duty by telling you!

“Damaged people are dangerous. They know they can survive.”

Josephine Hart book Damage

Source: Damage

People

“The greatest danger to our future is apathy.”

Jane Goodall (1934) British primatologist, ethologist, and anthropologist

"The Power of One", Time Magazine (26 August 2002)

Powerful, Future

“The greater danger for most of us lies not in setting our aim too high and falling short; but in setting our aim too low, and achieving our mark.”

Michelangelo Buonarroti (1475–1564) Italian sculptor, painter, architect and poet

Attributed without citation in Ken Robinson, The Element (2009), p. 260. Widely attributed to Michelangelo since the late 1990s, this adage has not been found before 1980 when it appeared without attribution in E. C. McKenzie, Mac's giant book of quips & quotes.
Disputed
Variant: The greatest danger for most of us is not that our aim is too high and we miss it, but that it is too low and we reach it.

“There is a place, like no place on earth. A land full of wonder, mystery, and danger. Some say, to survive it, you need to be as mad as a hatter. Which, luckily, I am.”

Lewis Carroll (1832–1898) English writer, logician, Anglican deacon and photographer

Madness

“Someone who eats pancakes and jam can't be so awfully dangerous. You can talk to him.”

Tove Jansson book Finn Family Moomintroll

Source: Finn Family Moomintroll

“With the lights out, it's less dangerous
Here we are now, entertain us
I feel stupid, and contagious
Here we are now, entertain us.”

Kurt Cobain (1967–1994) American musician and artist

Song lyrics, Nevermind (1991)

Stupidity, Feeling, Light

“Nothing in the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity.”

Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929–1968) American clergyman, activist, and leader in the American Civil Rights Movement

Source: 1960s, Strength to Love (1963), Ch. 4 : Love in action, Sct. 3

Stupidity, World, Sincerity

“They say there is a judgement day. I don't think judgement day comes when we are dead. The judgement day is today, the judgement day is now. And it is going to allow you to live a life of hell now; Or to choose your own kingdom, To live Heaven on earth now. Live dangerously until you die.”

Rich Piana (1970–2017) American bodybuilder and internet personality

Life, Hell, Thinking, Dead

“It’s fun to be hopelessly in love. It’s dangerous, but it’s fun.”

Keanu Reeves (1964) Canadian actor, director, producer and musician

Love, Making love

“Having faith is great, but beliefs are so dangerous. Some people end up selling their souls to the religions.”

Mwanandeke Kindembo (1996) Congolese author

Soul, Faith, Religion, People

“Art is never chaste. It ought to be forbidden to ignorant innocents, never allowed into contact with those not sufficiently prepared. Yes, art is dangerous. Where it is chaste, it is not art.”

Pablo Picasso (1881–1973) Spanish painter, sculptor, printmaker, ceramicist, and stage designer

L'art n'est pas chaste [...], on devrait l’interdire aux ignorants innocents, ne jamais mettre en contact avec lui ceux qui y sont insuffisamment préparés. Oui, l'art est dangereux. Ou s'il est chaste, ce n'est pas de l'art.
Quote by Antonina Vallentin (1963 [1957]), Picasso, p. 168.
1960s

Art

“Books are a hard-bound drug with no danger of an overdose. I am the happy victim of books.”

Karl Lagerfeld (1933–2019) German fashion designer

Books, Happiness

“There's nothing more dangerous than someone who wants to make the world a better place.”

Banksy pseudonymous England-based graffiti artist, political activist, and painter

Existencilism (2002)

World

“There is something about spending Christmas alone, naked, sitting by the Christmas tree gripping a shotgun, that lets you know your life is spinning dangerously outta control.”

Nikki Sixx (1958) American musician

Source: The Heroin Diaries: A Year In The Life Of A Shattered Rock Star

Life, Tree, Christmas

“I prefer liberty with danger than peace with slavery.”

Jean Jacques Rousseau (1712–1778) Genevan philosopher

Peace

“Rattlesnakes would be a lot more dangerous if they didn't have the rattle.”

Louis Sachar book Holes

Source: Holes

“When I read about the dangers of drinking, I gave up reading”

Henny Youngman (1906–1998) American comedian

Variant: When I read about the evils of drinking, I gave up reading.

Drink, Reading

“The chief danger in life is that you may take too many precautions.”

Alfred Adler (1870–1937) Medical Doctor, Psychologist, Psychiatrist, Psychotherapist, Personality Theorist

Wise, Life, Cute, Life

“Fashion is ephemeral, dangerous and unfair.”

Karl Lagerfeld (1933–2019) German fashion designer

Fashion

“Of course there are dangers in the present situation, and not only that of dogmatism, not only that of weakening the ties with the masses midway in the great task. There is also the danger of weaknesses. If a man thinks that dedicating his entire life to the revolution means, that in return he should not have such worries as that his son lacks certain things, or that his children's shoes are worn out, or that his family lacks some necessity, then he is entering into rationalisations which open his mind to infection by the seeds of future corruption.
In our case we have maintained that our children should have or should go without those things that the children of the average man have or go without, and that our families should understand this and strive to uphold this standard. The revolution is made through man, but man must forge his revolutionary spirit day by day.”

Ernesto Che Guevara (1928–1967) Argentine Marxist revolutionary

Man and Socialism in Cuba (1965)

Life, Children, Family, Shoe

“Especially dangerous on the musical front in the present class war.”

Sergei Rachmaninoff (1873–1943) Russian composer, pianist, and conductor

An official Soviet verdict on Rachmaninoff's music, delivered in 1931; cited from Percy A. Scholes The Oxford Companion to Music, 5th edn. (London: Oxford University Press, 1944) p. 775.
Criticism

War, Music

“The game which I was now playing in Auschwitz was dangerous. This sentence does not really convey the reality; in fact, I had gone far beyond what people in the real world consider dangerous.”

Witold Pilecki (1901–1948) World War II concentration camp leader and resistor

Source: Lawrence W. Reed, Witold Pilecki: Bravery Beyond Measure, 23 October 2015 https://fee.org/articles/he-volunteered-to-go-to-auschwitz/

People, World, Game, Reality

“O my son, thy lips still smell of milk, and thy heart should go out to pleasure. But the days are grave, and Iran looketh unto thee in its danger.”

Ferdowsi book Shahnameh

Translation of Helen Zimmern http://classics.mit.edu/Ferdowsi/kings.5.rustem.html Shahnameh

Pleasure, Heart

“A member of the human race who is completely incapable of understanding the higher productivity of labor performed under a division of labor based on private property is not properly speaking a person… but falls instead into the same moral category as an animal – of either the harmless sort (to be domesticated and employed as a producer or consumer good, or to be enjoyed as a “free good”) or the wild and dangerous one (to be fought as a pest). On the other hand, there are members of the human species who are capable of understanding the [value of the division of labor] but…who knowingly act wrongly… [B]esides having to be tamed or even physically defeated [they] must also be punished… to make them understand the nature of their wrongdoings and hopefully teach them a lesson for the future.”

Hans-Hermann Hoppe book Democracy: The God That Failed

Source: Democracy: The God That Failed (2001), P.173

Understanding, Nature, Future, Animals

“May the men who hold the destiny of peoples in their hands, studiously avoid anything that might cause the present situation to deteriorate and become even more dangerous. May they take to heart the words of the Apostle Paul: "If it be possible, as much as lieth in you, live peaceably with all men." These words are valid not only for individuals, but for nations as well. May these nations, in their efforts to maintain peace, do their utmost to give the spirit time to grow and to act.”

Albert Schweitzer (1875–1965) French-German physician, theologian, musician and philosopher

The Problem of Peace (1954)

Men, People, Peace, Effort

“We're at war with the most dangerous enemy that has ever faced mankind in his long climb from the swamp to the stars, and it's been said if we lose that war, and in so doing lose this way of freedom of ours, history will record with the greatest astonishment that those who had the most to lose did the least to prevent its happening.”

Ronald Reagan (1911–2004) American politician, 40th president of the United States (in office from 1981 to 1989)

1960s, A Time for Choosing (1964)
Context: As for the peace that we would preserve, I wonder who among us would like to approach the wife or mother whose husband or son has died in South Vietnam and ask them if they think this is a peace that should be maintained indefinitely. Do they mean peace, or do they mean we just want to be left in peace? There can be no real peace while one American is dying some place in the world for the rest of us. We're at war with the most dangerous enemy that has ever faced mankind in his long climb from the swamp to the stars, and it's been said if we lose that war, and in so doing lose this way of freedom of ours, history will record with the greatest astonishment that those who had the most to lose did the least to prevent its happening. Well I think it's time we ask ourselves if we still know the freedoms that were intended for us by the Founding Fathers.

War, Way, History, Star

“The bravest are surely those who have the clearest vision of what is before them, glory and danger alike, and yet notwithstanding, go out to meet it.”

Thucydides History of the Peloponnesian War

Variant translations:But the palm of courage will surely be adjudged most justly to those, who best know the difference between hardship and pleasure and yet are never tempted to shrink from danger. http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/cgi-bin/ptext?lookup=Thuc.+2.40.3And they are most rightly reputed valiant, who though they perfectly apprehend both what is dangerous and what is easy, are never the more thereby diverted from adventuring. (translation by Thomas Hobbes http://oll.libertyfund.org/?option=com_staticxt&staticfile=show.php%3Ftitle=771&chapter=90127&layout=html&Itemid=27) Book II, 2.40-[3] History of the Peloponnesian War, Book II

Courageous

“The victimisation of individuals or corporations or groups of people is a very dangerous and difficult development. The fact that careers can be ruined and reputations can be savaged without any particular responsibility on the part of those who are doing it… we live in strange times.”

Rowan Atkinson (1955) English actor, comedian, and screenwriter

As quoted in an interview with entertainment.ie https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Entertainment.ie (2018)

Time, People, Parting

“It is dangerous to build systemic reforms on a close association with one particular government. Systemic reforms need broad public participation and support. That is what makes them irreversible.”

George Soros (1930) Hungarian-American business magnate, investor, and philanthropist

Support

“Perhaps when we find ourselves wanting everything, it is because we are dangerously near to wanting nothing.”

Sylvia Plath (1932–1963) American poet, novelist and short story writer

Draft of letter to Richard Sassoon (December 1955), quoted in Joyce Carol Oates, "Raising Lady Lazarus," The New York Times (2000-11-05) http://www.nytimes.com/books/00/11/05/reviews/001105.05oatest.html The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath (2000) Variant: Perhaps when we find ourselves wanting everything, it is because we are dangerously close to wanting nothing.

“I consider the official Catholic attitude on divorce, birth control, and censorship exceedingly dangerous to mankind.”

Bertrand Russell (1872–1970) logician, one of the first analytic philosophers and political activist

Source: Dear Bertrand Russell: A Selection of His Correspondence with the General Public 1950-68

Birth

“Beware of false knowledge; it is more dangerous than ignorance.”

George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950) Irish playwright

Knowledge, Falseness

“The mind serves best when it's anchored in the Word of God. There is no danger then of becoming an intellectual without integrity…”

Flannery O’Connor (1925–1964) American novelist, short story writer

Source: The Habit of Being: Letters of Flannery O'Connor

God

“A point of view can be a dangerous luxury when substituted for insight and
understanding.”

Marshall McLuhan book The Gutenberg Galaxy

Source: The Gutenberg Galaxy: The Making of Typographic Man

Understanding

“The world is a dangerous place to live, not because of the people who are evil, but because of the people who don't do anything about it.”

Albert Einstein (1879–1955) German-born physicist and founder of the theory of relativity

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

People, World, Evil

“The chief danger of the 20th century will be religion without the Holy Spirit, Christianity without Christ, forgiveness without repentance, salvation without regeneration, politics without God, and heaven without hell.”

William Booth (1829–1912) British Methodist preacher

Variant: I consider that the chief dangers which confront the coming century will be.... religion without the Holy Ghost, Christianity without Christ, forgiveness without repentance, salvation without regeneration, politics without God and heaven without hell.

God, Religion, Forgiveness, Hell

“A lie would have no sense unless the truth were felt as dangerous.”

Alfred Adler (1870–1937) Medical Doctor, Psychologist, Psychiatrist, Psychotherapist, Personality Theorist

Truth, Lie, Sense

“And they are beginning to realize that the world they live in is a place where the right thing is often hard, sometimes dangerous, and frequently unpopular.”

Lois Lowry book Number the Stars

Source: Number the Stars

World

“Freedom is in danger of degenerating into mere arbitrariness unless it is lived in terms of responsibleness. That is why I recommend that the Statue of Liberty on the East Coast be supplemented by a Statue of Responsibility on the West Coast.”

Viktor E. Frankl (1905–1997) Austrian neurologist and psychiatrist, and Holocaust survivor

Freedom

“Don't think of them now. Never think of pain or danger or enemies a moment longer than is necessary to fight them. You're here. It's our time and our life, not theirs. Don't struggle not to be happy. You are."

- John Gault”

Ayn Rand book Atlas Shrugged

Source: Atlas Shrugged

Life, Pain, Thinking, Time

“Faith can be very very dangerous, and deliberately to implant it into the vulnerable mind of an innocent child is a grievous wrong.”

Richard Dawkins book The God Delusion

Source: The God Delusion

For Parents, Faith

“A little sincerity is a dangerous thing, and a great deal of it is absolutely fatal.”

Oscar Wilde (1854–1900) Irish writer and poet

Source: The Critic as Artist (1891), Part II

Sincerity

“How true it is that without the guidance of the Holy Spirit intellect not only is undependable but also extremely dangerous, because it often confuses the issue of right and wrong.”

Watchman Nee (1903–1972) Chinese church leader

“A dog reflects the family life. Whoever saw a frisky dog in a gloomy family, or a sad dog in a happy one? Snarling people have snarling dogs, dangerous people have dangerous ones.”

Arthur Conan Doyle book The Case-Book of Sherlock Holmes

Source: The Case-Book of Sherlock Holmes

Life, People, Sadness, Family

“Things were somehow so good that they were in danger of becoming very bad because what is fully mature is very close to rotting”

Clarice Lispector (1920–1977) Brazilian writer

Source: A Hora Da Estrela

“It is stupidity rather than courage to refuse to recognize danger when it is close upon you.”

Arthur Conan Doyle book The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes

Source: The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes

Stupidity, Courage

“Whatsoever therefore is consequent to a time of war, where every man is enemy to every man, the same consequent to the time wherein men live without other security than what their own strength and their own invention shall furnish them withal. In such condition there is no place for industry… no knowledge of the face of the earth; no account of time; no arts; no letters; no society; and which is worst of all, continual fear, and danger of violent death; and the life of man, solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.”

Thomas Hobbes (1588–1679) English philosopher, born 1588

Life, Death, Men, War

“Let me not pray to be sheltered from dangers,
but to be fearless in facing them.

Let me not beg for the stilling of my pain, but
for the heart to conquer it.”

Rabindranath Tagore (1861–1941) Bengali polymath

Source: Collected Poems and Plays of Rabindranath Tagore

Pain, Heart

“True courage is in facing danger when you are afraid…”

L. Frank Baum book The Wonderful Wizard of Oz

Source: The Wonderful Wizard of Oz (1900)
Context: There is no living thing that is not afraid when it faces danger. The true courage is in facing danger when you are afraid, and that kind of courage you have in plenty.

Courageous, Courage

“It is too dangerous for me to put these things into words. I am afraid they might then become gigantic and I be no longer able to master them.”

Erich Maria Remarque book All Quiet on the Western Front

Source: All Quiet on the Western Front

“The american dream wasn't meant for me, cause lady liberty's a hypocrite she lied to me, promised me freedom, education, and equality never gave me nothing but slavery but now look at how dangerous you made me callin me a mad man because im strong and bold.”

Tupac Shakur (1971–1996) rapper and actor

Education, Dreams, Freedom, Strong

“Literature that is not the breath of contemporary society, that dares not transmit the pains and fears of that society, that does not warn in time against threatening moral and social dangers — such literature does not deserve the name of literature; it is only a façade. Such literature loses the confidence of its own people, and its published works are used as wastepaper instead of being read.”

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn (1918–2008) Russian writer

Open letter to the Fourth Soviet Writers’ Congress (16 May 1967) “The Struggle Intensifies,” Solzhenitsyn: A Documentary Record, ed. Leopold Labedz (1970).

Pain, People, Fear, Confidence

“Follow the path of the unsafe, independent thinker. Expose your ideas to the danger of controversy. Speak your mind and fear less the label of "crackpot" than the stigma of conformity.”

Tom Watson (1874–1956) American businessman

Attributed to Watson in: Georg Blair, Sandy Meadows (1996) A Real-Life Guide to Organizational Change. p. 117.

Fear, Idea

“Germany, on the other hand, has based its domestic policies on new and modern social principles. That is why it is a danger to English plutocracy. It is also why English capitalists want to destroy Hitlerism. They see Hitlerism as all the generous social reforms that have occurred in Germany since 1933. The English plutocrats rightly fear that good things are contagious, that they could endanger English capitalism.”

Joseph Goebbels (1897–1945) Nazi politician and Propaganda Minister

“Englands Schuld,” Illustrierter Beobachter, Sondernummer, p. 14. The article is not dated, but is from the early months of the war, likely late fall of 1939. Joseph Goebbels’ speech in English is titled “England's Guilt.”
1930s

Fear

“I have often been downcast, but never in despair; I regard our hiding as a dangerous adventure, romantic and interesting at the same time. In my diary I treat all the privations as amusing. I have made up my mind now to lead a different life from other girls and, later on, different from ordinary housewives. My start has been so very full of interest, and that is the sole reason why I have to laugh at the humorous side of the most dangerous moments.”

Anne Frank (1929–1945) victim of the Holocaust and author of a diary

3 May 1944
(1942 - 1944)

Life, Girl, Time, Despair

“The danger of computers becoming like humans is not as great as the danger of humans becoming like computers.”

Konrad Zuse (1910–1995) German computer scientist and engineer

Die Gefahr, dass der Computer so wird wie der Mensch, ist nicht so groß wie die Gefahr, dass der Mensch so wird wie der Computer.
Attributed in: Hersfelder Zeitung. Nr. 212, 12. September 2005.

“Environmentalism is a dangerous ideology endangering human freedom.”

Václav Klaus (1941) 2nd President of the Czech Republic

(2007) HARDtalk with Vaclav Klaus, BBC News, November 2007 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TEQmJBINYj4,

Freedom

“Misattributed: [Israel] must see the sword as the main, if not the only, instrument with which to keep its morale high and to retain its moral tension. Toward this end it may, no — it must — invent dangers, and to do this it must adopt the method of provocation-and-revenge…”

Moshe Dayan (1915–1981) Israeli military leader and politician

This has been reported to be a direct quotation of Dayan in the diaries of Moshe Sharett, but is actually derived from an interpretive commentary by Livia Rokach in "Israel's Sacred Terrorism" (1980) upon statements of Dayan reported in Sharett's diaries, from accounts provided to him by Ya'acob Herzog and Gideon Raphael — in other words, it is a third-hand interpretation of Dayan's meaning, based on a second hand report of his arguments. Sharett's summation of Dayan's statements of 26 May 1955 read: We do not need a security pact with the U.S.: such a pact will only constitute an obstacle for us. We face no danger at all of an Arab advantage of force for the next 8-10 years. Even if they receive massive military aid from the West, we shall maintain our military superiority thanks to our infinitely greater capacity to assimilate new armaments. The security pact will only handcuff us and deny us the freedom of action which we need in the coming years. Reprisal actions which we couldn't carry out if we were tied to a security pact are our vital lymph ... they make it possible for us to maintain a high level of tension among our population and in the army. Without these actions we would have ceased to be a combative people and without the discipline of a combative people we are lost. We have to cry out that the Negev is in danger, so that young men will go there.... Rokach's interpretive assessment of this diary entry by Sharett produces: The conclusions from Dayan's words are clear: This State has no international obligations, no economic problems, the question of peace is nonexistent... It must calculate its steps narrow-mindedly and live on its sword. It must see the sword as the main, if not the only, instrument with which to keep its morale high and to retain its moral tension. Toward this end it may, no — it must — invent dangers, and to do this it must adopt the method of provocation-and-revenge.. . . And above all — let us hope for a new war with the Arab countries, so that we may finally get rid of our troubles and acquire our space.
Ref: en.wikiquote.org - Moshe Dayan / Misattributed
The Iron Wall (1999)

Revenge

“I'm telling you folks, nerds are one of the most dangerous groups in this country, because they end up running things. But they still hate everybody, because they weren't the jocks in high school. So they play little dirty games on everybody. They use their brains to hurt people. And I'm aware of them. OK? I see you, you little rats!”

Alex Jones (1974) American radio host, author, conspiracy theorist and filmmaker

The Alex Jones Show https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qTDLdDEJwZg, April 20, 2013. 2013

Hate, People, School, Game

“The belief in a political Utopia is especially dangerous. This is possibly connected with the fact that the search for a better world, like the investigation of our environment, is (if I am correct) one of the oldest and most important of all the instincts.”

Karl Popper (1902–1994) Austrian-British philosopher of science

In Search of a Better World (1984)

World, Search

“I frankly confess that, for myself, even if it could be, I should not want "free-will" to be given me, nor anything to be left in my own hands to enable me to endeavour after salvation; not merely because in face of so many dangers, and adversities and assaults of devils, I could not stand my ground; but because even were there no dangers. I should still be forced to labour with no guarantee of success.¦ But now that God has taken my salvation out of the control of my own will, and put it under the control of His, and promised to save me, not according to my working or running, but according to His own grace and mercy, I have the comfortable certainty that He is faithful and will not lie to me, and that He is also great and powerful, so that no devils or opposition can break Him or pluck me from Him. Furthermore, I have the comfortable certainty that I please God, not by reason of the merit of my works, but by reason of His merciful favour promised to me; so that, if I work too little, or badly, He does not impute it to me, but with fatherly compassion pardons me and makes me better. This is the glorying of all the saints in their God.”

Martin Luther book On the Bondage of the Will

Source: On the Bondage of the Will (1525), p. 313-314

God, Lie, Faith, Success

“The Outsider’s case against society is very clear. All men and women have these dangerous, unnamable impulses, yet they keep up a pretense, to themselves, to others; their respectability, their philosophy, their religion, are all attempts to gloss over, to make civilized and rational something that is savage, unorganized, irrational. He is an Outsider because he stands for truth.”

Colin Wilson book The Outsider

Source: The Outsider (1956), Chapter one, The Country of the Blind

Women, Men, Truth, Religion

“I did not reveal any US operations against legitimate military targets. I pointed out where the NSA has hacked civilian infrastructure such as universities, hospitals, and private businesses because it is dangerous.”

Edward Snowden (1983) American whistleblower and former National Security Agency contractor

Interview with Glenn Greenwald, 6 June 2013, Part 1

Business, Universe

“Be more careful in guarding against censure than against danger; for the wicked may well dread the end of life, but good men should dread ignominy during life. Strive by all means to live in security, but if ever it falls to your lot to face the dangers of battle, seek to preserve your life, but with honour and not with disgrace; for death is the sentence which fate has passed on all mankind, but to die nobly is the special honour with nature has reserved for the good.”

Isocrates (-436–-338 BC) ancient greek rhetorician

Verse 43.
To Demonicus

Life, Death, Men, Fate

“The sad fact is that international politics has always been a ruthless and dangerous business, and it is likely to remain that way.”

John Mearsheimer book The Tragedy of Great Power Politics

Source: The Tragedy of Great Power Politics (2001), Chapter 1, Introduction, p. 2

Sadness, Way, Business

“Bourgeois scientists make sure that their theories are not dangerous to God or Capital.”

Georgi Plekhanov (1856–1918) Russian revolutionary

The Faber Book of Aphorisms, W. H. Auden and Louis Kronenberger (ed.), p. 261.
Attributed

God

“[Hitler] has grasped the falsity of the hedonistic attitude to life. Nearly all western thought since the last war, certainly all "progressive" thought, has assumed tacitly that human beings desire nothing beyond ease, security, and avoidance of pain. In such a view of life there is no room, for instance, for patriotism and the military virtues. The Socialist who finds his children playing with soldiers is usually upset, but he is never able to think of a substitute for the tin soldiers; tin pacifists somehow won’t do. Hitler, because in his own joyless mind he feels it with exceptional strength, knows that human beings don’t only want comfort, safety, short working-hours, hygiene, birth-control and, in general, common sense; they also, at least intermittently, want struggle and self-sacrifice, not to mention drums, flags and loyalty-parades. However they may be as economic theories, Fascism and Nazism are psychologically far sounder than any hedonistic conception of life. The same is probably true of Stalin’s militarised version of Socialism. All three of the great dictators have enhanced their power by imposing intolerable burdens on their peoples. Whereas Socialism, and even capitalism in a grudging way, have said to people "I offer you a good time," Hitler has said to them "I offer you struggle, danger and death," and as a result a whole nation flings itself at his feet.”

George Orwell (1903–1950) English author and journalist

From a review of Adolf Hitler's Mein Kampf, New English Weekly (21 March 1940)

Life, Death, Pain, War

“It is in the body politic, as in the natural, those disorders are most dangerous that flow from the head.”
Utque in corporibus sic in imperio gravissimus est morbus, qui a capite diffunditur.

Pliny the Younger (61–113) Roman writer

Letter 22, 7.
Letters, Book IV

Nature

“Without any censorship, in the West fashionable trends of thought and ideas are carefully separated from those which are not fashionable; nothing is forbidden, but what is not fashionable will hardly ever find its way into periodicals or books or be heard in colleges. Legally your researchers are free, but they are conditioned by the fashion of the day. There is no open violence such as in the East; however, a selection dictated by fashion and the need to match mass standards frequently prevent independent-minded people from giving their contribution to public life. There is a dangerous tendency to form a herd, shutting off successful development.”

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn (1918–2008) Russian writer

Harvard University address (1978)

Life, People, Books, Way

“That God existed before there were human beings on Earth, that He holds the entire world, believers and non-believers, in His omnipotent hand for eternity, and that He will remain enthroned on a level inaccessible to human comprehension long after the Earth and everything that is on it has gone to ruins; those who profess this faith and who, inspired by it, in veneration and complete confidence, feel secure from the dangers of life under protection of the Almighty, only those may number themselves among the truly religious.”

Max Planck (1858–1947) German theoretical physicist

As quoted in God’s Laughter (1992) by Gerhard Staguhn, p. 152

Life, God, World, Faith

“Life is chaotic, dangerous, and surprising. Buildings should reflect that.”

Frank Gehry (1929) Canadian-American (b.1929)

Source: Jason K. Miller, ‎Susan Lauzau (2002) Frank Gehry. p. 6.

Life

“The peculiar danger of executive power is that it executes.”

Michael Parenti (1933) American academic

Source: Democracy for the Few (2010 [1974]), sixth edition, Chapter 14, p. 259

“Some years ago Professor Bixler reminded us of the danger of overstressing the well-adjusted life. Everybody passionately seeks to be well-adjusted. We must, of course, be well-adjusted to avoid neurotic schizophrenic personalities, but there are some things in our world to which men of goodwill must be maladjusted. I confess that I never intend to become adjusted to the evils of segregation and the crippling effects of discrimination, to the moral degeneracy of religious bigotry and the corroding effects of narrow sectarianism, to economic conditions that deprive men of work and food, and the to the insanities of militarism and the self-defeating effects of physical violence.”

Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929–1968) American clergyman, activist, and leader in the American Civil Rights Movement

Source: 1960s, Strength to Love (1963), Ch. 2 : Transformed nonconformist

Life, Men, World, Food

“Jnana marga is like Ramphal. Bhakthi marga is like Sitaphal (custart apple), easy to deal with and very sweet. The pulp of Ramphal is inside and difficult to get at. Ramphal should ripen on the tree and plucked ripe, If it falls down it is spoilt. So if a Jnani falls, he is ruined. Even for a Jnani there is the danger of a fall, i. e., by a little negligence or carelessness.”

Sai Baba of Shirdi (1836–1918) Hindu and muslim saint

Sources

Tree

“The terrible situation of the country makes my mind restless and I cannot keep silent. Meaningless ritual keep the Hindus divided in hundred sects. Sop we are suffering from series of defeats. We are tired and worn-out by the fortunes by the internal external enemies. The Muslims are united in religion and rituals. The Bengali Muslims the South Indian Muslims and even the Muslims outside India-all are united. They always stand untied in face of danger. The broken and divided Hindus will not be able to combat them. Days are coming when the Hindus will be again humiliated by the Muslims. "You are a mother of children, one day you will die, passing the future of Hindus society on the weak shoulders of your children, but think about their future."”

Rabindranath Tagore (1861–1941) Bengali polymath

From the letter to Hemantabala Sarkar, written on 16the October, 1933, quoted in Bengali weekly `Swastika', 21-6-1999 http://hindusamhati.blogspot.com/2013/05/thoughts-of-rabindranath-tagore-on.html

Children, Religion, Thinking, Suffering

“If you are not capable of cruelty, then you are absolutely a victim of anyone who is. For those who are exceedingly agreeable, there is a part of them crying out for the incorporation of the monster within them, which is what gives them strength of character and self-respect, because it is impossible to respect yourself until you grow teeth. And if you grow teeth, you realize that you're somewhat dangerous, or seriously dangerous. Then you might be more willing to demand that you treat yourself with respect and that other people do the same thing. That doesn't mean that being cruel is better than not being cruel. What it means is that being able to be cruel, and then not being cruel, is better than not being able to be cruel, because in the first case you're nothing but weak and naive, and in the second case you're dangerous but you have it under control. If you're competent at fighting, it actually decreases the probability that you're going to have to fight, because when someone pushes you you'll be able to respond with confidence, and with any luck a reasonable show of confidence, which is a show of dominance, will be enough to make the bully back off.”

Jordan Peterson (1962) Canadian clinical psychologist, cultural critic, and professor of psychology

Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wLc_MC7NQek&t=0s "2017 Personality 04/05: Heroic and Shamanic Initiations"

People, Confidence, Fight, Parting

“What do I care about danger? I've sent soldiers and airmen to death against the enemy — why should I be afraid?”

Hermann Göring (1893–1946) German politician and military leader

To Leon Goldensohn (15 March 1946)
The Nuremberg Interviews (2004)

Death

“There is perhaps nothing so bad and so dangerous in life as fear.”

Jawaharlal Nehru (1889–1964) Indian lawyer, statesman, and writer, first Prime Minister of India

Speech at Columbia University (1949); published in Speeches 1949 - 1953 p. 402; as quoted in Sources of Indian Tradition (1988) by Stephen Hay, p. 350
Context: In times of crisis it is not unnatural for those who are involved in it deeply to regard calm objectivity in others as irrational, short-sighted, negative, unreal or even unmanly. But I should like to make it clear that the policy India has sought to pursue is not a negative and neutral policy. It is a positive and vital policy that flows from our struggle for freedom and from the teachings of Mahatma Gandhi. Peace is not only an absolute necessity for us in India in order to progress and develop but also of paramount importance to the world. How can that peace be preserved? Not by surrendering to aggression, not by compromising with evil or injustice but also not by the talking and preparing for war! Aggression has to be met, for it endangers peace. At the same time, the lesson of the past two wars has to be remembered and it seems to me astonishing that, in spite of that lesson, we go the same way. The very processes of marshaling the world into two hostile camps precipitates the conflict that it had sought to avoid. It produces a sense of terrible fear and that fear darkens men's minds and leads them to wrong courses. There is perhaps nothing so bad and so dangerous in life as fear. As a great President of the United States said, there is nothing really to fear except fear itself.

Life, Fear

“If we are uncritical we shall always find what we want: we shall look for, and find, confirmations, and we shall look away from, and not see, whatever might be dangerous to our pet theories.”

Karl Popper book The Poverty of Historicism

The Poverty of Historicism (1957) Ch. 29 The Unity of Method
Context: If we are uncritical we shall always find what we want: we shall look for, and find, confirmations, and we shall look away from, and not see, whatever might be dangerous to our pet theories. In this way it is only too easy to obtain what appears to be overwhelming evidence in favor of a theory which, if approached critically, would have been refuted.

“I feel a certain calm. There is safety in the midst of danger. What would life be if we had no courage to attempt anything?”

Vincent Van Gogh (1853–1890) Dutch post-Impressionist painter (1853-1890)

Letter to Theo van Gogh. The Hague, Thursday, 29 December 1881. p. 83; as cited in Dear Theo: the Autobiography of Vincent Van Gogh (1995), edited by Irving Stone and Jean Stone -
1880s, 1881
Context: I feel a certain calm. There is safety in the midst of danger. What would life be if we had no courage to attempt anything? It will be a hard pull for me; the tide rises high, almost to the lips and perhaps higher still, how can I know? But I shall fight my battle, and sell my life dearly, and try to win and get the best of it.

Life, Feeling, Courage