Quotes about danger
page 2

“But where the danger is, also grows the saving power.”

Friedrich Hölderlin (1770–1843) German poet

“I want to think again of dangerous and noble things.
I want to be light and frolicsome.
I want to be improbable beautiful and afraid of nothing,
as though I had wings.”

Mary Oliver (1935–2019) American writer

Source: Owls and Other Fantasies: Poems and Essays

Beauty, Thinking, Light

“… she always had the feeling that it was very, very dangerous to live even one day.”

Virginia Woolf book Mrs Dalloway

Source: Mrs. Dalloway

Feeling

“Belief can be manipulated. Only knowledge is dangerous.”

Frank Herbert (1920–1986) American writer

Knowledge

“The more articulate one is, the more dangerous words become.”

May Sarton (1912–1995) American poet, novelist, and memoirist

“I know that I am a small, weak man, but I have amassed a large library; I dream of dangerous places.”

Terry Pratchett book Snuff

Source: Snuff

Dreams

“The most dangerous kind of person… is one who is afraid of his own shadow.”

Philip K. Dick book A Scanner Darkly

Source: A Scanner Darkly

Personality

“We all strive for safety, prosperity, comfort, long life, and dullness. The deer strives with his supple legs, the cowman with trap and poison, the statesman with pen, the most of us with machines, votes, and dollars, but it all comes to the same thing: peace in our time. A measure of success in this is all well enough, and perhaps is a requisite to objective thinking, but too much safety seems to yield only danger in the long run. Perhaps this is behind Thoreau’s dictum: In wildness is the salvation of the world. Perhaps this is the hidden meaning in the howl of the wolf, long known among mountains, but seldom perceived among men.”

Aldo Leopold book A Sand County Almanac

“Arizona and New Mexico: Thinking Like a Mountain”, p. 133. This is a paraphrase of Thoreau: see explanation by the Walden Woods project http://www.walden.org/Library/Quotations/The_Henry_D._Thoreau_Mis-Quotation_Page). Source: A Sand County Almanac, 1949, "Arizona and New Mexico: On Top," & "Arizona and New Mexico: Thinking Like a Mountain"

Life, Men, World, Peace

“Fear of danger is ten thousand times more terrifying than danger itself.”

Daniel Defoe La vie et les aventures de Robinson Crusoe

Variant: Fear of danger is ten thousand times more terrifying than danger itself.
Source: Robinson Crusoe (1719), Ch. 11, Finds Print of Man's Foot on the Sand.

Fear, Time

“Conversations are always dangerous, if you have something to hide.”

Agatha Christie book A Caribbean Mystery

Source: A Caribbean Mystery

“How dangerous a master human emotion is!”

Watchman Nee (1903–1972) Chinese church leader

“Convictions are more dangerous enemies of truth than lies.”

Friedrich Nietzsche book Human, All Too Human

Section IX, "Man Alone with Himself" / aphorism 483
Human, All Too Human (1878), Helen Zimmern translation
Context: Enemies of truth. Convictions are more dangerous enemies of truth than lies.

Truth

“Let me tell you something my friend. Hope is a dangerous thing. Hope can drive a man insane.”

Stephen King book Different Seasons

Source: Different Seasons

Hope

“That is my story, simply told. Please do not ask again. I have told you in order to issue a warning. I have been damaged. Damaged people are dangerous. They know they can survive.”

Josephine Hart book Damage

Source: Damage

People

“… the little man's total obliviousness to all forms of danger somehow made danger so discouraged that it gave up and went away.”

Terry Pratchett book The Light Fantastic

Source: The Light Fantastic

“I don’t want a perfectly safe weapon. I want a dangerous weapon that hurts people.”
He took the stick from her, rapped it against her head. She howled and he nodded.
“See? It hurts people.”

Derek Landy (1974) Irish children's writer

Source: Last Stand of Dead Men

People, Hurt

“All great ideas are dangerous.”

Oscar Wilde (1854–1900) Irish writer and poet

Idea

“Thanking people is dangerous business. A name always slips your mind.”

John Wayne (1907–1979) American film actor

People, Business

“Never think of pain or danger or enemies a moment longer than is necessary to fight them.”

Ayn Rand book Atlas Shrugged

Source: Atlas Shrugged

Pain, Thinking, Fight

“They say a little knowledge is a dangerous thing, but it's not one half so bad as a lot of ignorance.”

Terry Pratchett book Equal Rites

Source: Equal Rites

Knowledge

“Tomas did not realize at the time that metaphors are dangerous. Metaphors are not to be trifled with. A single metaphor can give birth to love.”

Milan Kundera book The Unbearable Lightness of Being

Source: The Unbearable Lightness of Being

Love, Birth, Time

“For believe me! — the secret for harvesting from existence the greatest fruitfulness and the greatest enjoyment is: to live dangerously!”

Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900) German philosopher, poet, composer, cultural critic, and classical philologist

Sec. 283; Variant translation: For believe me: the secret for harvesting from existence the greatest fruitfulness and greatest enjoyment is — to live dangerously.
The Gay Science (1882)
Context: For believe me! — the secret for harvesting from existence the greatest fruitfulness and the greatest enjoyment is: to live dangerously! Build your cities on the slopes of Vesuvius! Send your ships into uncharted seas! Live at war with your peers and yourselves! Be robbers and conquerors as long as you cannot be rulers and possessors, you seekers of knowledge! Soon the age will be past when you could be content to live hidden in forests like shy deer! At long last the search for knowledge will reach out for its due: — it will want to rule and possess, and you with it!

Secret

“All generalizations are dangerous, even this one.”

Alexandre Dumas (1802–1870) French writer and dramatist, father of the homonym writer and dramatist

Deep

“He who learns but does not think is lost. He who thinks but does not learn is in great danger.”

Eleanor Roosevelt (1884–1962) American politician, diplomat, and activist, and First Lady of the United States

Source: The Autobiography of Eleanor Roosevelt

Thinking, Learning

“The ten most dangerous words in the English language are "Hi, I'm from the government, and I'm here to help."”

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

Remarks to Future Farmers of America http://www.reagan.utexas.edu/archives/speeches/1988/072888c.htm (28 July 1988) 1980s, Second term of office (1985–1989)

Help

“Because the history of evolution is that life escapes all barriers. Life breaks free. Life expands to new territories. Painfully, perhaps even dangerously. But life finds a way.”

Michael Crichton book Jurassic Park

Source: Jurassic Park

Life, Way, History

“She had the perpetual sense, as she watched the taxi cabs, of being out, out, far out to sea and alone; she always had the feeling that it was very, very, dangerous to live even one day.”

Virginia Woolf book Mrs Dalloway

Source: Mrs. Dalloway

Feeling, Sense, Sea

“The danger of an adventure is worth a thousand days of ease and comfort”

Paulo Coelho (1947) Brazilian lyricist and novelist

Source: Veronika Decides to Die

“Nothing is really so very frightening when everything is so very dangerous”

Gertrude Stein (1874–1946) American art collector and experimental writer of novels, poetry and plays

“love is dangerous for your tiny heart even in your dreams so please dream softly”

Mathias Malzieu book La Mécanique du cœur

Source: La Mécanique du cœur

Love, Dreams, Heart

“A government is the most dangerous threat to man's rights: it holds a legal monopoly on the use of physical force against legally disarmed victims.”

Ayn Rand (1905–1982) Russian-American novelist and philosopher

“Whenever we give up, leave behind, and forget too much, there is always the danger that the things we have neglected will return with added force”

C.G. Jung (1875–1961) Swiss psychiatrist and psychotherapist who founded analytical psychology

Forgetting

“Pain or love or danger makes you real again….”

Jack Kerouac book The Dharma Bums

Source: The Dharma Bums

Love, Pain

“The fishermen know that the sea is dangerous and the storm terrible, but they have never found these dangers sufficient reason for remaining ashore.”

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

Sea

“… I draw on the work of Piaget (1968) in identifying conflict as the harbinger of growth and also on the work of Erikson (1964) who, in charting development through crisis, demonstrates how a heightened vulnerability signals the emergence of a potential strength, creating a dangerous opportunity for growth, "a turning point for better or worse" (p. 139).”

Carol Gilligan (1936) American feminist, ethicist, and psychologist

Source: In a Different Voice: Psychological Theory and Women's Development

Drawing

“To succeed in the game of power, you have to master your emotions. But even if you succeed in gaining such self-control, you can never control the temperamental dispositions of those around you. And this presents a great danger.”

Robert Greene book The 48 Laws of Power

Source: The 48 Laws of Power

Game

“Stop swimming around in your own mind. That is a dangerous neighborhood that you should not go into alone.”

Marc Levy (1961) French writer

“[W]hat makes patriotic and religious fanatics such dangerous opponents is not the deaths of the fanatics themselves, but their willingness to accept the deaths of a fraction of their number in order to annihilate or crush their infidel enemy.”

Jared Diamond book Guns, Germs, and Steel

Source: Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies

Death

“I thoroughly disapprove of duels. I consider them unwise and I know they are dangerous. Also, sinful. If a man should challenge me now I would go to that man and take him kindly and forgivingly by the hand and lead him to a quiet retired spot and kill him.”

Mark Twain (1835–1910) American author and humorist

In revised edition, Vol. I, "Friday, January 19, 1906, About Dueling.", p. 298, The Autobiography of Mark Twain, 1959, Charles Neider, Harper & Row
Mark Twain's Autobiography (1924)

“Running toward danger is foolhardy…. But so is closing your eyes to it. Many perils become less dangerous once you understand their potential hazards.”

Brandon Mull (1974) American fiction writer

Source: Rise of the Evening Star

Understanding

“To recognize untruth as a condition of life--that certainly means resisting accustomed value feelings in a dangerous way; and a philosophy that risks this would by that token alone place itself beyond good and evil.”

Friedrich Nietzsche book Beyond Good and Evil

Source: Beyond Good and Evil

Life, Way, Feeling, Evil

“horses: dangerous on both ends and crafty in the middle”

Arthur Conan Doyle (1859–1930) Scottish physician and author

Horse

“If you didn't do anything that wasn't good for you it would be a very dull life. What are you gonna do? Everything that is pleasant in life is dangerous. Have you noticed that? I'd like to find the bastard that thought that one up.”

Lemmy Kilmister (1945–2015) British singer-songwriter

Life

“Comfort can be a dangerous thing. You stick around home all the time where it’s safe and nothing ever changes, and before you know it, you get set in your ways and you quit learning, you quit changing, you don’t grow anymore.”

Frank E. Peretti book Monster

Source: Monster

Way, Home, Learning, Change

“And the danger is that in this move toward new horizons and far directions, that I may lose what I have now, and not find anything except loneliness.”

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

Source: The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath

Loneliness

“An idea that is not dangerous is unworthy of being called an idea at all.”

Oscar Wilde (1854–1900) Irish writer and poet

The Epigrams of Oscar Wilde, edited by Alvin Redman (1954)

Idea, Deep

“October: This is one of the peculiarly dangerous months to speculate in stocks. The others are July, January, September, April, November, May, March, June, December, August and February.”

Mark Twain book Pudd'nhead Wilson

Variant: December is the toughest month of the year. Others are July, January, September, April, November, May, March, June, October, August, and February.
Source: Pudd'nhead Wilson

“It is more dangerous that even a guilty person should be punished without the forms of law than that he should escape.”

Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826) 3rd President of the United States of America

Law, Personality

“Granny sighed. "You have learned something," she said, and thought it safe to insert a touch of sternness into her voice. "They say a little knowledge is a dangerous thing, but it is not one half so bad as a lot of ignorance.”

Terry Pratchett book Equal Rites

Source: Equal Rites

Knowledge, Learning

“Ideals are dangerous things. Realities are better. They wound, but they're better.”

Oscar Wilde Lady Windermere's Fan

Source: Lady Windermere's Fan

Reality

“She lov'd me for the dangers I had pass'd,
And I lov'd her that she did pity them”

William Shakespeare Othello

Source: Othello

“Live dangerously.”

Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900) German philosopher, poet, composer, cultural critic, and classical philologist

“Our interest's on the dangerous edge of things.
The honest thief, the tender murderer,
The superstitious atheist.”

Robert Browning Men and Women

"Bishop Blougram’s Apology", line 395; cited by Graham Greene as the epigraph he would choose for his novels.
Men and Women (1855)

“Hades was the personification of dark and dangerous--a living, breathing Batman.”

P. C. Cast (1960) American writer

Source: Goddess of Spring

“One has to take a somewhat bold and dangerous line with this existence: especially as, whatever happens, we are bound to lose it.”

Friedrich Nietzsche Untimely Meditations

Source: Untimely Meditations

“I only fear danger where I want to fear it.”

Franz Kafka book The Metamorphosis

Source: The Metamorphosis

Fear

“No mistake about it. Ice is cold; roses are red; I'm in love. And this love is about to carry me off somewhere. The current's too overpowering; I don't have any choice. It may very well be a special place, some place I've never seen before. Danger may be lurking there, something that may end up wounding me deeply, fatally. I might end up losing everything. But there's no turning back. I can only go with the flow. Even if it means I'll be burned up, gone forever.”

Haruki Murakami book Sputnik Sweetheart

Source: Sputnik Sweetheart

Love

“does a sick society get so used to its illness that it can't remember being well? what if the memory is too dangerous for the people who like things the way they are?”

Neal Shusterman (1962) American novelist

People, Way, Memory

“The wise man in the storm prays God not for safety from danger but for deliverance from fear.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882) American philosopher, essayist, and poet

God, Fear

“… the truth holds the greatest magic, the greatest beauty, and sometimes the greatest danger….”

Esther M. Friesner (1951) American writer

Source: Sphinx's Princess

Truth, Beauty

“Anyone who is disturbed by the idea of newts in a nightclub is potentially dangerous.”

Frank Zappa (1940–1993) American musician, songwriter, composer, and record and film producer

Idea

“At sixteen, Sabina took moon baths, first of all, because everyone else took sun baths, and second, she admitted, because she had been told it was dangerous.”

Anaïs Nin book A Spy in the House of Love

Source: A Spy in the House of Love

Sun

“The girl dreams she is dangerously ill. Suddenly birds come out of her skin and cover her completely… Swarms of gnats obscure the sun, the moon, and all the stars except one. That one start falls upon the dreamer.”

C.G. Jung book Man and His Symbols

Source: Man and His Symbols

Dreams, Girl, Star, Bird

“The most dangerous strategy is to jump a chasm in two leaps.”

Benjamin Disraeli (1804–1881) British Conservative politician, writer, aristocrat and Prime Minister

“Life breaks free. Life expands to new territories. Painfully, perhaps even dangerously. But life finds a way.”

Michael Crichton book Jurassic Park

Source: Jurassic Park

Life, Way

“There is less danger, gentlemen, in living according to a set of high moral principles than most politicians believe.”

Michael Moorcock book The Land Leviathan

Book 1, Chapter 6 “A Haven of Civilization” (p. 214)
The Land Leviathan (1974)

“After the tests [Nuclear tests by India], I had said there was no imminent danger to India's security environment which necessitated us to undertake the tests. But the tests have taken place. Therefore, naturally, as a member of the nation, I have to see the situation in the post-nuclear age. It is now no use discussing whether the tests should have been undertaken or not. But India's nuclear policy from 1988, in fact from 1974, is totally justified.”

I. K. Gujral (1919–2012) Indian politician

The Rediff Interview/I K Gujral

Age, Nature

“The Jews work more effectively against us than the enemy's armies. They are a hundred times more dangerous to our liberties and the great cause we are engaged in. It is much to be lamented that each state, long ago, has not hunted them down as pests to society and the greatest enemies we have to the happiness of America.”

George Washington (1732–1799) first President of the United States

Sometimes rendered : "They (the Jews) work more effectively against us, than the enemy's armies. They are a hundred times more dangerous to our liberties and the great cause we are engaged in... It is much to be lamented that each state, long ago, has not hunted them down as pest to society and the greatest enemies we have to the happiness of America." Both of these are doctored statements that have been widely disseminated as genuine on many anti-semitic websites; They are distortions derived from a statement that was attributed to Washington in Maxims of George Washington about currency speculators during the Revolutionary war, not about Jews: "This tribe of black gentry work more effectually against us, than the enemy's arms. They are a hundred times more dangerous to our liberties, and the great cause we are engaged in. It is much to be lamented that each State, long ere this, has not hunted them down as pests to society, and the greatest enemies we have to the happiness of America." More information is available at Snopes. com: "To Bigotry, No Sanction" http://www.snopes.com/quotes/thejews.htm This quotation is a classic anti-semitic hoax, evidently begun during or just before World War Two by American Nazi sympathizers, and since then has been repeated, for example, in foreign propaganda directed at Americans. In fact it is knitted from two separate letters by Washington, in reverse chronology, neither of them mentioning Jews. The first part of this forgery are taken from Washington's letter to Edmund Pendleton, Nov. 1, 1779 {and the original can be found in the Library of Congress's online service at http://memory.loc.gov/mss/mgw/mgw3h/001/378378.jpg }. I have tried to reproduce Washington's spelling and punctuation exactly. In that letter Washington complains about black marketeers and others undermining the purchasing power of colonial currency: : … but I am under no apprehension of a capital injury from ay other source than that of the continual depreciation of our Money. This indeed is truly alarming, and of so serious a nature that every other effort is in vain unless something can be done to restore its credit. .... Where this has been the policy (in Connecticut for instance) the prices of every article have fallen and the money consequently is in demand; but in the other States you can scarce get a single thing for it, and yet it is with-held from the public by speculators, while every thing that can be useful to the public is engrossed by this tribe of black gentry, who work more effectually against us that the enemys Arms; and are a hundd. times more dangerous to our liberties and the great cause we are engaged in. The second part of this fabricated quote is from Washington's letter to Joseph Reed, Dec. 12, 1778 {and can be found at the Library of Congress using the same URL but ending in /193192.jpg}, which again condemns war profiteers (the parenthetical list in the quotation is Washington's own words which he put there in parentheses): : It gives me very sincere pleasure to find that there is likely to be a coalition … so well disposed to second your endeavours in bringing those murderers of our cause (the monopolizers, forestallers, and engrossers) to condign punishment. It is much to be lamented that each State long ere this has not hunted them down as the pests of society, and the greatest Enemys we have to the happiness of America. I would to God that one of the most attrocious of each State was hung in Gibbets upons a gallows five times as high as the one prepared by Haman. No punishment in my opinion is too great for the Man who can build his greatness upon his Country's ruin. Misattributed, Spurious attributions

Happiness, Time

“Diversity of opinions on theoretical points is never dangerous to the party. There are for us no bounds to criticism, and however great our respect may be for the founders and pioneers of our party, we recognize no infallibility and no other authority than science, whose sphere is ever widening and continually proves what it previously held as truths to be errors; destroys the old decayed foundations and creates new ones; does not stand still for an instant; but in perpetual advance moves remorselessly over every dogmatic belief.”

Wilhelm Liebknecht (1826–1900) German socialist politician

No Compromise – No Political Trading (1899)

Truth, Error, Science

“All delays are dangerous in war.”

John Dryden Tyrannick Love

Tyrannick Love (1669), Act I, scene i.

War

“Instinctively we divide mankind into friends and foes - friends, towards whom we have the morality of co-operation; foes, towards whom we have that of competition. But this division is constantly changing; at one moment a man hates his business competitor, at another, when both are threatened by Socialism or by an external enemy, he suddenly begins to view him as a brother. Always when we pass beyond the limits of the family it is the external enemy which supplies the cohesive force. In times of safety we can afford to hate our neighbour, but in times of danger we must love him.”

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

Authority and the Individual (1949)
1940s

Love, Hate, Family, Business

“The great Question may be—What should be done with those who are enslaved already? To turn the old and infirm free, would be injustice and cruelty; they who enjoyed the labours of their better days should keep, and treat them humanely. As to the rest, let prudent men, with the assistance of legislatures, determine what is practicable for masters, and best for them. Perhaps some could give them lands upon reasonable rent, some, employing them in their labour still, might give them some reasonable allowances for it; so as all may have some property, and fruits of their labours at their own disposal, and be encouraged to industry; the family may live together, and enjoy the natural satisfaction of exercising relative affections and duties, with civil protection, and other advantages, like fellow men. Perhaps they might sometime form useful barrier settlements on the frontiers. Thus they may become interested in the public welfare, and assist in promoting it; instead of being dangerous, as now they are, should any enemy promise them a better condition.”

Thomas Paine (1737–1809) English and American political activist

1770s, African Slavery in America (March 1775)

Men, Family, Exercises, Question

“Within the last quarter of a century, in America, several sects of curers have appeared under various names and have done notable things in the way of healing ailments without the use of medicines. There are the Mind Cure, the Faith Cure, the Prayer Cure, the Mental Science Cure, and the Christian-Science Cure; and apparently they all do their miracles with the same old, powerful instrument—the patient's imagination. Differing names, but no difference in the process. But they do not give that instrument the credit; each sect claims that its way differs from the ways of the others.

They all achieve some cures, there is no question about it; and the Faith Cure and the Prayer Cure probably do no harm when they do no good, since they do not forbid the patient to help out the cure with medicines if he wants to; but the others bar medicines, and claim ability to cure every conceivable human ailment through the application of their mental forces alone. There would seem to be an element of danger here. It has the look of claiming too much, I think. Public confidence would probably be increased if less were claimed.”

Mark Twain Christian Science

Book I, Ch. 4
Christian Science (1907)

Faith, Way, Confidence, Imagination

“Insurrection is the exclusive right of the people and of the citizen. Every foreigner, every man clothed with public authority, is outlawed if he proposes it and must be put to death as a usurper of sovereignty and as interested in fomenting troubles for the purpose of doing evil or of adorning himself. Insurrections taking place under a despotism are always salutary. Those which break out in a free state are sometimes dangerous for liberty itself, because the revolt usurps its sublime pretexts and its sacred name. Revolts in free states leave long and painful wounds which bleed a whole century.”

Louis Antoine de Saint-Just (1767–1794) military and political leader

(1794) [Source: Saint-Just, Fragments sur les institutions républicaines]

Death, Pain, People, Evil

“Meaning and morality of one's life come from within oneself. Healthy, strong individuals seek self-expansion by experimenting and by living dangerously. Life consists of an infinite number of possibilities, and the healthy person explores as many of them as possible. Religions that teach pity, self-contempt, humility, self-restraint and guilt are incorrect. The good life is ever-changing, challenging, devoid of regret, intense, creative, and risky.”

Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900) German philosopher, poet, composer, cultural critic, and classical philologist

Attributed to Nietzsche on quotes sites and on social media, the original quotation is from An Introduction to the History of Psychology by B. R. Hergenhahn (2008, page 226) and is the author's summary of Nietzsche's ideas: "The meaning and morality of one's life come from within oneself. Healthy, strong individuals seek self-expansion by experimenting, by living dangerously. Life consists of an almost infinite number of possibilities, and the healthy person (the superman) explores as many of them as possible. Religions or philosophies that teach pity, humility, submissiveness, self-contempt, self-restraint, guilt, or a sense of community are simply incorrect. [...] For Nietzsche, the good life is ever-changing, challenging, devoid of regret, intense, creative, and risky."
Misattributed

Life, Religion, Strong, Change

“Ladies and gentlemen, I am to talk to you about energy in the future. I will start by telling you why I believe that the energy resources of the past must be supplemented. First of all, these energy resources will run short as we use more and more of the fossil fuels. But I would […] like to mention another reason why we probably have to look for additional fuel supplies. And this, strangely, is the question of contaminating the atmosphere. […. ] Whenever you burn conventional fuel, you create carbon dioxide. […. ] The carbon dioxide is invisible, it is transparent, you can’t smell it, it is not dangerous to health, so why should one worry about it?
Carbon dioxide has a strange property. It transmits visible light but it absorbs the infrared radiation which is emitted from the earth. Its presence in the atmosphere causes a greenhouse effect […. ] It has been calculated that a temperature rise corresponding to a 10 per cent increase in carbon dioxide will be sufficient to melt the icecap and submerge New York. All the coastal cities would be covered, and since a considerable percentage of the human race lives in coastal regions, I think that this chemical contamination is more serious than most people tend to believe.”

Edward Teller (1908–2003) Hungarian-American nuclear physicist

As quoted in Benjamin Franta, "On its 100th birthday in 1959, Edward Teller warned the oil industry about global warming" https://www.theguardian.com/environment/climate-consensus-97-per-cent/2018/jan/01/on-its-hundredth-birthday-in-1959-edward-teller-warned-the-oil-industry-about-global-warming, The Guardian, 1 January 2018.

People, Health, Question, Thinking

“Alexander Hamilton said, "A nation which can prefer disgrace to danger is prepared for a master, and deserves one." Let's set the record straight. There is no argument over the choice between peace and war, but there is only one guaranteed way you can have peace — and you can have it in the next second — surrender.”

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

1960s, A Time for Choosing (1964)

War, Peace, Way

“A Husband without Faults is a dangerous Observer.”

George Savile, 1st Marquess of Halifax (1633–1695) English politician

The Lady's New Year's Gift: or Advice to a Daughter (1688)

“Once centenarian teacher who had the body of an adolescent told me he had studied martial arts. "Me, too," I answered. We were in Notre Dame, and he said, "Attack me." I put myself in a combat position, and he moved his left hand in such an incredibly beautiful way that while I looked at it, fascinated, he gave me a big slap. "Beauty is the most dangerous weapon," he warned. It took me a long time to understand. He used a secret Chinese practice, which consists of drawing a snake in the air with your hand to distract the enemy. And that is how beauty is: the most awful weapon.”

Alejandro Jodorowsky (1929) Filmmaker and comics writer

Psychomagic: The Transformative Power of Shamanic Psychotherapy (2010)

Secret, Beauty, Art, Way

“…to the priestly class — decadence is no more than a means to an end. Men of this sort have a vital interest in making mankind sick, and in confusing the values of "good" and "bad," "true" and "false" in a manner that is not only dangerous to life, but also slanders it.”

Friedrich Nietzsche book The Antichrist

Sec. 24
The Antichrist (1888)

Life, Men, Falseness

“The class instinct of the bourgeoisie is far better developed than that of the proletariat. The governing class naturally knows its interests better than the governed, who have so much less opportunity to become informed and are also sometimes intentionally, and sometimes not, systematically deceived and misled from a recognition of their interests. Do not say that it is the rough form in which socialism is often set forth that frightens and embitters the bourgeoisie. That is absolutely false. It is not the form; it is the content which they detest; and the more harmless the form so much the more dangerous do the contents appear to the gentlemen of the bourgeoisie. The fineness of the form makes no difference to them. That is clear from the manner in which they fight out their quarrels among themselves.”

Wilhelm Liebknecht (1826–1900) German socialist politician

No Compromise – No Political Trading (1899)

Nature, Appearance, Fight, Falseness

“The most important gain is that each [member of society] will be able to predict the other’s actions. Concomitantly, the interaction of both becomes predictable… Many actions are possible on a low level of attention. Each action of one is no longer a source of astonishment and potential danger to the other.”

Peter L. Berger book The Social Construction of Reality

Source: The Social Construction of Reality, 1966, p. 57

“We have a given problem to solve. If we undertake the solution, there is, of course, always danger that we may not solve it aright; but to refuse to undertake the solution simply renders it certain that we cannot possibly solve it aright.”

Theodore Roosevelt The Strenuous Life

1900s, The Strenuous Life: Essays and Addresses (1900), The Strenuous Life

Problem

“It is of the utmost danger to society to make it (religion) a party in political disputes.”

Thomas Paine (1737–1809) English and American political activist

1770s, Common Sense (1776)

Religion

“Nuclear power plants are, next to nuclear warheads themselves, the most dangerous devices that man has ever created.”

Patrick Moore (1923–2012) English writer, broadcaster and astronomer

As quoted in Ramez Naam (2013), "The Infinite Resource: The Power of Ideas on a Finite Planet", ISBN 978-1611682557 p. 235

“There are tough men but let me tell you I know from experience that really dangerous men have no pity. I'm not an unreasonable man but if you are a man and you take a liberty with me or cross me, then believe what I say: When it comes to retribution I have no pity or conscience. If that makes me the devil, then the devil I am, but I haven't got horns sticking out of my head or cloven hooves and a tail but if you're unlucky enough to have me come after you, beware cos hell's coming with me.”

Roy Shaw

Men, Hell

“Invisibility. That would be so cool just to go anywhere without people seeing you. You could sneak into rock concerts and films and stuff. And I'd like to have Hagrid's three-head dog, because then nobody would try to fight me. I think I'd love to be a wizard in Harry's world, even though you have to face a lot of danger.”

Daniel Radcliffe (1989) English actor

On what magical power would Daniel like to have

Love, People, World, Dogs

“When by these steps he has got resolution enough not to be deterr'd from what he ought to do, by the apprehension of danger; when fear does not, in sudden or hazardous occurrences, decompose his mind, set his body a-trembling, and make him unfit for action, or run away from it, he has then the courage of a rational creature: and such an hardiness we should endeavour by custom and use to bring children to, as proper occasions come in our way.”

John Locke book Some Thoughts Concerning Education

Sec. 115
Some Thoughts Concerning Education (1693)

Children, Fear, Way, Courage

“If one leaves a wooden or cardboard box containing a small glass ampulla with several centigrams of a radium salt in one’s pocket for a few hours, one will feel absolutely nothing. But 15 days afterwards a redness will appear on the epidermis, and then a sore which will be very difficult to heal. A more prolonged action could lead to paralysis and death. Radium must be transported in a thick box of lead.
It can even be thought that radium could become very dangerous in criminal hands, and here the question can be raised whether mankind benefits from knowing the secrets of Nature, whether it is ready to profit from it or whether this knowledge will not be harmful for it. The example of the discoveries of Nobel is characteristic, as powerful explosives have enabled man to do wonderful work. They are also a terrible means of destruction in the hands of great criminals who are leading the peoples towards war. I am one of those who believe with Nobel that mankind will derive more good than harm from the new discoveries.”

Pierre Curie (1859–1906) French physicist

Nobel lecture (1905)

Death, War, People, Secret

“I know that the Communists are atheistic and godless, but I don't think that that's what's primarily the matter with them. What's primarily the matter with them is that they worship a false god. That's much more dangerous than when people don't believe anything; they may be confused, they may not have a sense of the meaning of life, but they're not dangerous. The fanatic is dangerous. The Communists do have a god, the Dialectic of History, which guarantees everything that they're going to do and guarantees them victory; that's why they're fanatic.”

Reinhold Niebuhr (1892–1971) American protestant theologian

The Mike Wallace Interview (1958)

Life, God, People, History

“My work in the future must be devoted entirely to pure mathematics in its abstract meaning. I shall apply all my strength to bring more light into the tremendous obscurity which one unquestionably finds in analysis. It lacks so completely all plan and system that it is peculiar that so many have studied it. The worst of it is, it has never been treated stringently. There are very few theorems in advanced analysis which have been demonstrated in a logically tenable manner. Everywhere one finds this miserable way of concluding from the special to the general, and it is extremely peculiar that such a procedure has led to do few of the so-called paradoxes. It is really interesting to seek the cause.
In analysis, one is largely occupied by functions which can be expressed as powers. As soon as other powers enter—this, however, is not often the case—then it does not work any more and a number of connected, incorrect theorems arise from false conclusions. I have examined several of them, and been so fortunate as to make this clear. …I have had to be extremely cautious, for the presumed theorems without strict proof… had taken such a stronghold in me, that I was continually in danger of using them without detailed verification.”

Niels Henrik Abel (1802–1829) Norwegian mathematician

Letter to Christoffer Hansteen (1826) as quoted by Øystein Ore, Niels Henrik Abel: Mathematician Extraordinary (1957) & in part by Morris Kline, Mathematical Thought from Ancient to Modern Times (1972) citing Œuvres, 2, 263-65

Way, Mathematics, Study, Light

“According to the pronouncements of our state rulers and their intellectual bodyguards (of whom there are more than ever before), we are better protected and more secure than ever. We are supposedly protected from global warming and cooling, from the extinction of animals and plants, from the abuses of husbands and wives, parents and employers, from poverty, disease, disaster, ignorance, prejudice, racism, sexism, homophobia, and countless other public enemies and dangers. In fact, however, matters are strikingly different. In order to provide us with all this protection, the state managers expropriate more than 40 percent of the incomes of private producers year in and year out. Government debt and liabilities have increased without interruption, thus increasing the need for future expropriations. Owing to the substitution of government paper money for gold, financial insecurity has increased sharply, and we are continually robbed through currency depreciation. Every detail of private life, property, trade, and contract is regulated by ever higher mountains of laws legislation), thereby creating permanent legal uncertainty and moral hazard. In particular, we have been gradually stripped of the right to exclusion implied in the very concept of private property. … In short, the more the state has increased its expenditures on social security and public safety, the more our private property rights have been eroded, the more our property has been expropriated, confiscated, destroyed, or depreciated, and the more we have been deprived of the very foundation of all protection: economic independence, financial strength, and personal wealth.”

Hans-Hermann Hoppe (1949) Austrian school economist and libertarian anarcho-capitalist philosopher

"The Private Production of Defense" http://www.mises.org/journals/scholar/Hoppe.pdf (15 June 1999)

Life, Money, Disease, Law

“There are two ways of coping with fear: one is to diminish the external danger, and the other is to cultivate Stoic endurance. The latter can be reinforced, except where immediate action is necessary, by turning our thoughts away from the cause of fear. The conquest of fear is of very great importance. Fear is in itself degrading; it easily becomes an obsession; it produces hate of that which is feared, and it leads headlong to excesses of cruelty. Nothing has so beneficent an effect on human beings as security. If an international system could be established which would remove the fear of war, the improvement in everyday mentality of everyday people would be enormous and very rapid. Fear, at present, overshadows the world. The atom bomb and the bacterial bomb, wielded by the wicked communist or the wicked capitalist as the case may be, make Washington and the Kremlin tremble, and drive men further along the road toward the abyss. If matters are to improve, the first and essential step is to find a way of diminishing fear.”

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

1950s, What Desires Are Politically Important? (1950)

Men, Hate, War, People

“It really is very dangerous to believe people. I never have for years.”

Agatha Christie book Sleeping Murder

Sleeping Murder (1976)

People

“Hobson perceived with some alarm that bears were very numerous in the neighbourhood and that scarcely a day passed without one or more of them being sighted. Sometimes these unwelcome visitors belonged to the family of brown bears, so common throughout the whole "Cursed Land"; but now and then a solitary specimen of the formidable Polar bear warned the hunters what dangers they might have to encounter as soon as the first frost should drive great numbers of these fearful animals to the neighborhood of Cape Bathurst. Every book of Arctic explorations is full of accounts of the frequent perils in which travelers and whalers are exposed from the ferocity of these animals.”

Jules Verne book The Fur Country

Hobson constata, non sans une certaine appréhension, que les ours étaient nombreux sur cette partie du territoire. Il était rare, en effet, qu'un jour se passât sans qu'un couple de ces formidables carnassiers ne fût signalé. Bien des coups de fusil furent adressés à ces terribles visiteurs. Tantôt, c'était une bande de ces ours bruns qui sont fort communs sur toute la région de la Terre-Maudite, tantôt, une de ces familles d'ours polaires d'une taille gigantesque, que les premiers froids amèneraient sans doute en plus grand nombre aux environs du cap Bathurst. Et, en effet, dans les récits d'hivernage, on peut observer que les explorateurs ou les baleiniers sont plusieurs fois par jour exposés à la rencontre de ces carnassiers.
Source: The Fur Country, or Seventy Degrees North Latitude (1872), Ch. 14: Some Excursions

Books, Fear, Family, Travel

“The toxic mix of religion and tribalism has become so dangerous as to justify taking seriously the alternative view, that humanism based on science is the effective antidote, the light and the way at last placed before us.”

Edward O. Wilson (1929) American biologist

Can biology do better than faith?, NewScientist.com, 2 November 2005, 2010-10-26 http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn8254-can-biology-do-better-than-faith.html,

Religion, Way, Light, Science

“What can I write about Vytautas Juozapaitis? Months ago, a singer with this same name gave one of the most Mozartean accounts of Don Giovanni I've ever experienced: a lean, yet warm sound, exciting and a little on the dangerous side - utterly (and wonderfully) self-absorbed. The man singing Giorgio Germont could not possibly have been this same artist. This was Verdi singing of the highest order - as if to the manor born. A molten, rich expressivity and attention to Verdian line that in its size, detail and musicality recalled the greats: Gorin, Merrill… you get the idea. The name may not trip off American tongues with ease… yet, but in an era often thought bereft of Verdian voices Juozapaitis is the real deal. Every moment of his Germont was filled passion and, like all of the cast members, every word of the Italian was naturally produced and understandable. Mama mia this man's got it!”

Vytautas Juozapaitis (1963) Lithuanian opera singer

Paolo Padillo, "A Traviata of Note: Teatro Lirico d'Europa". Opera - L (March, 2004) http://listserv.cuny.edu/Scripts/wa.exe?A2=ind0403d&L=opera-l&F=&S=&P=15287

Music, Idea, Understanding, Nature