Quotes about danger
page 23

“Senators say they fear the N. R. A. and the gun lobby. But I think that fear must be nothing compared to the fear the first graders in Sandy Hook Elementary School felt as their lives ended in a hail of bullets. The fear that those children who survived the massacre must feel every time they remember their teachers stacking them into closets and bathrooms, whispering that they loved them, so that love would be the last thing the students heard if the gunman found them. On Wednesday, a minority of senators gave into fear and blocked common-sense legislation that would have made it harder for criminals and people with dangerous mental illnesses to get hold of deadly firearms — a bill that could prevent future tragedies like those in Newtown, Conn., Aurora, Colo., Blacksburg, Va., and too many communities to count.”

Gabrielle Giffords (1970) American politician

A Senate in the Gun Lobby’s Grip, The New York Times, 2013-04-18, April 17, 2013 http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/18/opinion/a-senate-in-the-gun-lobbys-grip.html?hp&_r=0,

Love, Children, People, Fear

“I believe we are all in danger of accumulating – it may be from thoughtlessness, or from pressure of occupation – things which would be useful to others, while not needed by ourselves, and the retention of which entails loss of blessing.”

James Hudson Taylor A Retrospect

(J. Hudson Taylor. A Retrospect. Philadelphia: China Inland Mission, n.d., 14).

Loss

“Reach out, it's a leap in the dark,
But there's no danger of falling.
Give out, give it straight from the heart,
You feel the thunder rolling…”

Mike Oldfield (1953) English musician, multi-instrumentalist

Song lyrics, Earth Moving (1989)

Feeling, Heart

“Erdogan’s accusation is no surprise, not for what it says about me but rather for what it reveals about his systematic and dangerous drive toward one-man rule.”

Fethullah Gülen (1941) Turkish preacher, former imam, writer, and political figure

"Fethullah Gulen: I Condemn All Threats to Turkey’s Democracy", 2016

“Hobbes’s understanding of the dangers of anarchy resonates powerfully today. Liberal thinkers still see the unchecked power of the state as the chief danger to human freedom. Hobbes knew better: freedom’s worst enemy is anarchy, which is at its most destructive when it is a battleground of rival faiths. The sectarian death squads roaming Baghdad show that fundamentalism is itself a type of anarchy in which each prophet claims divine authority to rule. In well-governed societies, the power of faith is curbed. The state and the churches temper the claims of revelation and enforce peace. Where this kind is impossible, tyranny is better than being ruled by warring prophets. Hobbes is a more reliable guide to the present than the liberal thinkers who followed. Yet his view of human beings was too simple, and overly rationalistic. Assuming that humans dread violent death more than anything, he left out the most intractable sources of conflict. It is not always because human beings act irrationally that they fail to achieve peace. Sometimes it is because they do not want peace. They may want the victory of the One True Faith – whether a traditional religion or a secular successor such as communism, democracy or universal human rights. Or – like the young people who joined far-Left terrorist groups in the 1970s, another generation of which is now joining Islamist networks – they may find in war a purpose that is lacking in peace. Nothing is more human than the readiness to kill and die in order to secure a meaning in life.”

John Gray book Black Mass: Apocalyptic Religion and the Death of Utopia

Post-Apocalypse: After Secularism (pp. 262-3)
Black Mass: Apocalyptic Religion and the Death of Utopia (2007)

Life, Death, War, People

“Be careful of my guest — his safety is most precious to me. Should aught happen to him, or if he be missed, spare nothing to find him and ensure his safety. He is English and therefore adventurous. There are often dangers from snow and wolves and night. Lose not a moment if you suspect harm to him. I answer your zeal with my fortune.”

Bram Stoker book Dracula's Guest

Telegram to Bistritz from Count Dracula.
Dracula's Guest (1914)

Night

“Freedom is dangerous, Cory, but it’s precious, too. You can’t just throw it away or let it slip away. You can’t sell it for bread and pottage.”

Octavia E. Butler book Parable of the Sower

Source: Parable of the Sower (1993), Chapter 11 (p. 122)

Freedom

“The "Second System Effect":
An architect’s first work is apt to be spare and clean. He knows he doesn’t know what he’s doing, so he does it carefully and with great restraint.
As he designs the first work, frill after frill and embellishment after embellishment occur to him. These get stored away to be used “next time.” Sooner or later the first system is finished, and the architect, with firm confidence and a demonstrated mastery of that class of systems, is ready to build a second system.
This second is the most dangerous system a man ever designs. When he does his third and later ones, his prior experiences will confirm each other as to the general characteristics of such systems, and their differences will identify those parts of his experience that are particular and not generalizable.
The general tendency is to over-design the second system, using all the ideas and frills that were cautiously sidetracked on the first one. The result, as Ovid says, is a "big pile."”

Fred Brooks (1931) American computer scientist

Page 55.
The Mythical Man-Month: Essays on Software Engineering (1975, 1995)

Confidence, Idea, Time, Parting

“Marc Goodman, global security advisor and futurist, spoke at the TEDGlobal 2012 in Edinburgh about his ominous warning: “If you control the code, you control the world. This is the future that awaits us.” First source code, then genetic code. Transhumanists are well aware of that danger and are highly respectful of individual freedom and privacy in the new era of total information awareness.”

Newton Lee American computer scientist

Google It: Total Information Awareness, 2016

World, Freedom, Future

“The spirit of militarism has already permeated all walks of life. Indeed, I am convinced that militarism is a greater danger here than anywhere else, because of the many bribes capitalism holds out to those whom it wishes to destroy.”

Emma Goldman (1868–1940) anarchist known for her political activism, writing, and speeches

What is Patriotism? (1908)

Life

“It was a love of the air and sky and flying, the lure of adventure, the appreciation of beauty. It lay beyond the descriptive words of men — where immortality is touched through danger, where life meets death on equal plane; where man is more than man, and existence both supreme and valueless at the same time.”

Charles Lindbergh (1902–1974) American aviator, author, inventor, explorer, and social activist

Thoughts on his first parachute jump in The Spirit of St Louis (1953)

Love, Life, Death, Men

“There is beauty as well as danger when you deal with the subtle realms. The beauty is that you can have realizations, revelations, and experiences that can carry over into the waking state. The danger is that you can expose yourself to negative influences. There are many positive as well as negative entities that infiltrate one’s consciousness while dreaming or disturb one during astral travel. Often they appear in the form of family members or close friends. There are also beings on the subtle plane that are in the habit of engaging the sleeping person in unwanted sexual activity.”

Bhakti Tirtha Swami (1950–2005) American Hindu writer

Source: Books, Spiritual Warrior, Volume I: Uncovering Spiritual Truths in Psychic Phenomena (Hari-Nama Press, 1996), Chapter 1: Dreams: A State of Reality, p. 21

Family, Beauty, Dreams, Travel

“He that could teach mathematics well, would not be a bad teacher in any of the rest [physics, chemistry, biology, psychology] unless by the accident of total inaptitude for experimental illustration; while the mere experimentalist is likely to fall into the error of missing the essential condition of science as reasoned truth; not to speak of the danger of making the instruction an affair of sensation, glitter, or pyrotechnic show.”

Alexander Bain (1818–1903) Scottish philosopher and educationalist

Source: Education as a Science, 1898, p. 298.

Truth, Error, Mathematics, Teachers

“Having discovered the true principle, I then derived all the laws that govern the motion of light, those concerning its direct propagation, its reflection and its refraction. I reserve for particular members of our Assembly the geometrical demonstration of my theory.
I know the distaste that many mathematicians have for final causes applied to physics, a distaste that I share up to some point. I admit, it is risky to introduce such elements; their use is dangerous, as shown by the errors made by Fermat and Leibniz in following them. Nevertheless, it is perhaps not the principle that is dangerous, but rather the hastiness in taking as a basic principle that which is merely a consequence of a basic principle.”

Pierre Louis Maupertuis (1698–1759) French mathematician, philosopher and man of letters

Accord de différentes loix de la nature qui avoient jusqu’ici paru incompatibles (1744)

Law, Error, Light

“Chantal's only ruse … was her shattering simplicity. While a weak man or an imposter is always more complicated than the problem he is trying to solve, and thinking to encompass his adversary, merely keeps prowling interminably around himself, the heroic nature will throw itself into the heart of the danger to turn it to its own use, just as captured artillery is turned about and aimed at the backs of the fleeing enemy.”

Georges Bernanos (1888–1948) French writer

Source: La joie (Joy) 1929, p.107

Nature, Problem, Thinking, Heart

“Not all monotheisms are exactly the same, at the moment. They're all based on the same illusion, they're all plagiarisms of each other, but there is one in particular that at the moment is proposing a serious menace not just to freedom of speech and freedom of expression, but to quite a lot of other freedoms too. And this is the religion that exhibits the horrible trio of self-hatred, self-righteousness and self-pity. I am talking about militant Islam. Globally it's a gigantic power. It controls an enormous amount of oil wealth, several large countries and states, with an enormous fortune it's pumping the ideologies of wahhabism and salafism around the world, poisoning societies where it goes, ruining the minds of children, stultifying the young in its madrassas, training people in violence, making a cult of death and suicide and murder. That's what it does globally, it's quite strong. In our societies it poses as a cringing minority, whose faith you might offend, who deserves all the protection that a small and vulnerable group might need. Now, it makes quite large claims for itself, doesn't it? It says it's the Final Revelation. It says that God spoke to one illiterate businessman – in the Arabian Peninsula – three times through an archangel, and that the resulted material, which as you can see as you read it is largely plagiarized ineptly from the Old…and The New Testament, is to be accepted as the Final Revelation and as the final and unalterable one, and that those who do not accept this revelation are fit to be treated as cattle infidels, potential chattel, slaves and victims. Well I tell you what, I don't think Muhammad ever heard those voices. I don't believe it. And the likelihood that I am right – as opposed to the likelihood that a businessman who couldn't read, had bits of the Old and The New Testament re-dictated to him by an archangel, I think puts me much more near the position of being objectively correct. But who is the one under threat? The person who promulgates this and says I'd better listen because if I don't I'm in danger, or me who says "no, I think this is so silly you can even publish a cartoon about it"? And up go the placards and the yells and the howls and the screams – this is in London, this is in Toronto, this is in New York, it's right in our midst now – "Behead those who cartoon Islam". Do they get arrested for hate speech? No. Might I get in trouble for saying what I just said about the prophet Muhammad? Yes, I might. Where are your priorities ladies and gentlemen? You're giving away what is most precious in your own society, and you're giving it away without a fight, and you're even praising the people who want to deny you the right to resist it. Shame on you why you do this. Make the best use of the time you've got left. This is really serious. … Look anywhere you like for the warrant for slavery, for the subjection of women as chattel, for the burning and flogging of homosexuals, for ethnic cleansing, for antisemitism, for all of this, you look no further than a famous book that's on every pulpit in this city, and in every synagogue and in every mosque. And then just see whether you can square the fact that the force that is the main source of hatred, is also the main caller for censorship.”

Christopher Hitchens (1949–2011) British American author and journalist

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jyoOfRog1EM&feature=youtu.be&t=16m36s
"Be It Resolved: Freedom of Speech Includes the Freedom to Hate", 15/11/2006.
2000s, 2006

Death, Women, God, Hate

“What I don't like from the president's administration is this sort of, 'I'll put my boot heel on the throat of BP.' I think that sounds really un-American in his criticism of business. I've heard nothing from BP about not paying for the spill. And I think it's part of this sort of blame-game society in the sense that it's always got to be someone's fault instead of the fact that sometimes accidents happen. I mean, we had a mining accident that was very tragic and I've met a lot of these miners and their families. They're very brave people to do a dangerous job. But then we come in and it's always someone's fault. Maybe sometimes accidents happen.”

Rand Paul (1963) American politician, ophthalmologist, and United States Senator from Kentucky

on the Deepwater Horizon oil spill and 2010-05-05 explosion at Massey's Upper Big Branch mine
reference to Interior Secretary Ken Salazar telling CNN on 2010-05-02, "Our job basically is to keep the boot on the neck of British Petroleum."
2010s

People, Family, Game, Business

“If I were reincarnated, I’d want to come back a buzzard. Nothing hates him or envies him or wants him or needs him. He is never bothered or in danger, and he can eat anything.”

William Faulkner (1897–1962) American writer

Paris Review interview (1958)

Hate, Envy

“More than a bomb or gun/ The footwear is a potent weapon,/ For, what years of shouting couldn’t do/ A momentary missile has done/ And, in the bargain, blackened/ A Journalist’s profession;/ Even if justice has won/ Even Bush to Chidambaram/ It is becoming a bit too common;/ Thank God, it is as yet with danger fraught/ Thank God, my wife has yet used it not.”

Khushwant Singh (1915–2014) Indian novelist and journalist

Quoted in "Do you want India to be a Hindu rashtra?"

God, Justice

“It is of this sort of divine service I used the expression that, in comparison with the Christianity of the New Testament, it is playing Christianity. The expression is essentially true and characterizes the thing perfectly. For what does it mean to play, when one reflects how the word must be understood in this connection? It means to imitate, to counterfeit, a danger when there is no danger, and to do it in such a way that the more art is applied to it, the more delusive the pretense is that the danger is present.”

Sören Kierkegaard (1813–1855) Danish philosopher and theologian, founder of Existentialism

Source: 1850s, Attack upon Christendom (1855), p. 121

Art, Way

“Nature herself supplies us with an ascending scale or Alphabet of angles for half a degree up to 60 degrees, Specimens of which are placed in every Elementary School throughout the land. Owing to occasional retrogressions, to still more frequent moral and intellectual stagnation, and to the extraordinary fecundity of the Criminal and Vagabond Classes, there is always a vast superfluity of individuals of the half degree and single degree class, and a fair abundance of Specimens up to 10 degrees. These are absolutely destitute of civic rights; and a great number of them, not having even intelligence enough for the purposes of warfare, are devoted by the States to the service of education. Fettered immovably so as to remove all possibility of danger, they are placed in the class rooms of our Infant Schools, and there they are utilized by the Board of Education for the purpose of imparting to the offspring of the Middle Classes that tact and intelligence of which these wretched creatures themselves are utterly devoid.”

Edwin Abbott Abbott book Flatland

Source: Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions (1884), PART I: THIS WORLD, Chapter 5. Of Our Methods of Recognizing One Another

Education, School, Intelligence, Nature

“The protection he relied on for nearly thirty years was based on just two things. The same two things anybody uses to protect against any danger. The same way a nation protects itself against an enemy missile, the same way an apartment dweller protects himself against a burglar, the same way a boxer guards against a knockout blow. Detection and response. Stage one, stage two. First you spot the threat coming in, and then you react to it.”

Lee Child book Tripwire

Tripwire, Prologue (1999).

Way

“We do not see anything being created today, and yet we do see an entire universe of created material. This clearly indicates a Creator. There are people in the world today who wish to avoid the concept of God. They do not like the idea of a God telling them what to do. Therefore, they have come up with the most dangerous, damnable doctrine every imagined, evolution.”

Kent Hovind (1953) American young Earth creationist

Dissertation for doctor of philosophy in christian education (May 25, 1991)

God, People, World, Imagination

“We live in an entertainment culture soaked in graphic, often sadistic, violence. Older folks find themselves stunned by what a desensitized youth finds routine, often amusing. It’s not just movies. Young men sit for hours pulling video-game triggers, mowing down human beings en masse without pain or consequence. And we profess shock when a small cadre of unstable, deeply deranged, dangerously isolated young men go out and enact the overlearned narrative.”

Charles Krauthammer (1950–2018) American journalist

2010s, 2012, Roots of mass murder: Getting serious about stopping the psychotic (2012)

Men, Pain, Youth, Game

“In Australia democracy is less in favour in intellectual circles today than 30 years ago. The more emphasis that is placed on the rights of minorities, and the need for affirmative action to enhance those rights, the more is the concept of democracy - and the rights of the majority - in danger of being weakened.”

Geoffrey Blainey (1930) Australian historian

"Balance Sheet On Our History," Quadrant (July 1993)

Democracy

“Nothing remains static in war or military weapons, and it is consequently often dangerous to rely on courses suggested by apparent similarities in the past.”

Ernest King (1878–1956) United States Navy admiral, Chief of Naval Operations

Unsourced

War, Past

“Yes, we are living in a world of fear. The life of man today is corroded and made bitter by fear. Fear of the future, fear of the hydrogen bomb, fear of ideologies. Perhaps this fear is a greater danger than the danger itself, because it is fear which drives men to act foolishly, to act thoughtlessly, to act dangerously....”

Sukarno (1901–1970) first President of the Republic of Indonesia

Speech at the Opening of the Bandung Conference

Life, Men, World, Fear

“No society has ever yet been able to handle the temptations of technology to mastery, to waste, to exuberance, to exploration and exploitation. We have to learn to cherish this earth and cherish it as something that's fragile, that's only one, it's all we have. We have to use our scientific knowledge to correct the dangers that have come from science and technology.”

Margaret Mead (1901–1978) American anthropologist

Radio excerpt presented by Voice of America (17 January 2010) http://learningenglish.voanews.com/content/margaret-mead-1901-1978-one-of-the-most-famous-anthropologists-in-the-world-124869344/112571.html 2000s

Knowledge, Learning, Science

“You have now in the field armies sufficient to repel the whole force of your enemies and their base and mercenary auxiliaries. The hearts of your soldiers beat high with the spirit of freedom; they are animated with the justice of their cause, and while they grasp their swords can look up to Heaven for assistance. Your adversaries are composed of wretches who laugh at the rights of humanity, who turn religion into derision, and would, for higher wages, direct their swords against their leaders or their country. Go on, then, in your generous enterprise, with gratitude to Heaven for past, success, and confidence of it in the future. For my own part, I ask no greater blessing than to share with you the common danger and common glory. If I have a wish dearer to my soul than that my ashes may be mingled with those of a Warren and a Montgomery, it is that these American States may never cease to be free and independent.”

Samuel Adams (1722–1803) American statesman, Massachusetts governor, and political philosopher

Speech about Declaration of Independence (1776)

Religion, Justice, Soul, Confidence

“Unfortunately a large number of people in many countries are strongly opposed to green technology, for reasons having little to do with the real dangers. It is important to treat the opponents with respect, to pay attention to their fears, to go gently into the new world of green technology so that neither human dignity nor religious conviction is violated. If we can go gently, we have a good chance of achieving within a hundred years the goals of ecological sustainability and social justice that green technology brings within our reach.”

Freeman Dyson (1923) theoretical physicist and mathematician

Progress In Religion (2000)

People, World, Fear, Justice

“In physical science and in industrial technique… we have emancipated ourselves… from the savage dependence upon catastrophes for progress… In science and in industry we are radicals—radicals relying on a tested method. But in matters of social organization we retain a large part of the conservatism characteristic of the savage mind…
The 'social reformer' we have always with us, it is true. Or rather most of us are 'social reformers' of some kind… Yet the story of the past in matters of social organization is not a story that we should like to have continued for a thousand and one years. Reform by agitation or class struggle is a jerky way of moving forward, uncomfortable and wasteful of energy. Are we not intelligent enough to devise a steadier and a more certain method of progress? Most certainly, we could not keep social organization what it is even if we wanted to. We are not emerging from the hazards of war into a safe world. On the contrary, the world is a very dangerous place for a society framed as ours is, and I for one am glad of it.
Taking us all together as one people in a group of mighty peoples, our first and foremost concern is to develop some way of carrying on the infinitely complicated processes of modern industry and interchange day by day, despite all tedium and fatigue, and yet to keep ourselves interested in our work and contented with the division of the product…
What is lacking to achieve that end… is not so much good will as it is knowledge—above all, knowledge of human behavior. Our best hope for the future lies in the extension to social organization of the methods that we already employ in our most progressive fields of effort. In science and in industry… we do not wait for catastrophes to force new ways upon us… We rely, and with success, upon quantitative analysis to point the way; and we advance because we are constantly improving and applying such analysis. While I think that the development of social science offers more hope for solving our social problems than any other line of endeavor, I do not claim that these sciences in their present state are very serviceable.
They are immature, speculative, filled with controversies. Nor have we any certain assurance that they will ever grow into robust manhood, no matter what care we lavish upon them…. Those of us who are concerned with the social sciences… are engaged in an uncertain enterprise; perhaps we shall win no great treasures for mankind. But certainly it is our task to work out this lead with all the intelligence and the energy we possess until its richness or sterility be demonstrated.”

Wesley Clair Mitchell (1874–1948) American statistician

Source: "Statistics and Government," 1919, pp. 45, 47, 48-51; as cited in: Arthur F. Burns. " New Facts on Business Cycles http://www.nber.org/chapters/c0386," in: Arthur F. Burns (ed). The Frontiers of Economic Knowledge. Princeton University Press. 1954. p. 61 - 106; p. 63

War, People, World, Hope

“No wild beasts are so dangerous to men as Christians are to one another.”

Julian (emperor) (331–363) Roman Emperor, philosopher and writer

As quoted by Ammianus Marcellinus, as translated in Barbarians: An Alternative Roman History (2006) by Terry Jones, p. 205 ISBN 9780563539162
General sources

Men

“The terrorists are busy in and outside the country in such activities which are a danger to the unity and integrity of the country.”

Rajiv Gandhi (1944–1991) sixth Prime Minister of India

In his address to the party works to spoil the machinations of terrorist, when he was elected to the post of the President of the Congress party, Meena Agrawal in “Rajiv Gandhi”, p. 73
Quote

Business, Country

“Nordic art casts a spell on the mind which ranges from laughter to tears and from tears to violent rage. One can see how dangerous it is, we can be tyrannized by a cynical person endowed with the power of art. Much has been said about this demonic aspect. In it lies the ultimate demand that the artist must take responsibility for the states of mind that he produces, or at least he must answer for them by knowing them in his own person. This psychic demand in both the artist and the viewer has made Expressionist art so hated by devotees of aestheticism and formalism.”

Asger Jorn (1914–1973) Danish artist

as quoted on the website of the Jorn Museum 'Articles' by Jorn http://www.museumjorn.dk/en/article_presentation.asp?AjrDcmntId=255, - Jorn talks about the Nordic concept of Expressionism 1959 - 1973, Alpha and Omega', (1963–64)

Hate, Art, Tear, Laughter

“A father is rarely a good teacher; either he thinks he knows things and finds his knowledge to be very slight, or he knows but explains badly, or he is too severe and impatient because teaching bores him, or he is dangerously indulgent because he loves his children too much. It is from professional teachers who have made a success of the art that we must learn its rules. There can be no teaching without discipline. A pupil must first learn to work. Training of the will must precede that of the mind, and this is why home teaching is never very successful. Excuses are too easily accepted: the child has a headache; he has slept badly; there is a party somewhere. A school makes no compromise and that is its virtue. I am inclined to prefer the boarding-school system. It has some serious drawbacks; it sometimes produces immorality and it is always rather severe, but it makes men. The system forces boys to find their own places in a group; in a family they find these places ready-made and it is too easy for them. If absolutely necessary, and if the parents are judicious, day schools are satisfactory up to the age of fifteen or sixteen. For boys between the ages of seventeen and twenty, freedom in a large city is fatal.”

André Maurois (1885–1967) French writer

Un Art de Vivre (The Art of Living) (1939), The Art of Working

Love, Men, Children, Age

“Critics of visual arts and of music describe in words — that is to say, a system of signs other than those made by brushes on canvas or chisels into stone or notes of music — those characteristics of painting or sculpture or music which can be described or analysed. Visual artists and composers can disregard critics on the ground that the medium of verbal criticism bears so indirect a relation to the medium in which they make something. Poets are in a different situation. With the development of so-called scientific methods of criticism they are made ever conscious that criticism of poetry is in the same medium of work as the art which they practise. “Close analysis” is useful to critics and readers. But for the poet there is the danger of disintegration of poetry into paraphrase, examination of technique, influences, all analysed in the language of criticism.”

Stephen Spender (1909–1995) English poet and man of letters

"Tradition-Bound Literature and Traditionless Painting"
The Struggle of the Modern (1963)

Art, Music, Painting

“Love is the ark appointed for the righteous,
Which annuls the danger and provides a way of escape.
Sell your cleverness and buy bewilderment.
Cleverness is mere opinion, bewilderment intuition.”

Rumi (1207–1273) Iranian poet

The Masnavi, Book IV, Story II, as translated in Masnavi I Ma'navi : The Spiritual Couplets of Maulána Jalálu-'d-Dín Muhammad Rúmí (1898) by Edward Henry Whinfield
As quoted in The Perennial Philosophy (1945) by Aldous Huxley
Variant: Sell your cleverness and buy bewilderment.
Cleverness is mere opinion, bewilderment is intuition.

Love, Way

“When authoritarianism is no longer necessary to protect the welfare of the people, I will be the first to move for its dismantling. But the easy, casual wave of the hand dismissing the dangers that confront the worsening world situation and us is not for me. It is for those who insist that I dismantle martial law against my best judgment but, legally and morally, cannot be held liable for any Kampuchean-like tragedy that would be fall our people if I followed their advice. But I would be liable. I would be called all kinds of names. I would be called stupid, naïve and obstinate. History and our people would hold me accountable not only perhaps for lack of wisdom, but for lack of courage if I followed such advice.”

Ferdinand Marcos (1917–1989) former President of the Philippines from 1965 to 1986

Remarks at the inauguration of the Philippines Columbian Association's New Clubhouse Complex, Plaza Dilao, Manila (14 December 1979)
1965

Wisdom, People, Stupidity, World

“In the present epoch, when the international class struggle has grown extremely acute, the danger of Right and ‘Left’ deviations and of nationalism in the communist movement has grown more tangible than ever before. The struggle against Right- and ‘Left’-wing opportunism and nationalism cannot therefore be conducted as a campaign calculated for only some definite span of time. The denunciation of opportunism of all kinds was and remains an immutable law for all Marxist-Leninist Parties.”

Leonid Brezhnev (1906–1982) General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union

Cited in The WOrld Communist Movement http://leninist.biz/en/1973/WCM485/10.4-Kinship.Between.Right.and.Left-Wing.Opportunism

Law, Time

“The radical dynamism into which National Socialism has developed is a dangerous, destructive fever, which spreads at an uncanny rate.”

Hermann Rauschning (1887–1982) German politician

Source: The Revolution of Nihilism: Warning to the West (1939), p. 253

“Those who won our independence by revolution were not cowards. They did not fear political change. They did not exalt order at the cost of liberty. To courageous, self-reliant men, with confidence in the power of free and fearless reasoning applied through the processes of popular government, no danger flowing from speech can be deemed clear and present, unless the incidence of the evil apprehended is so imminent that it may befall before there is opportunity for full discussion. If there be time to expose through discussion the falsehood and fallacies, to avert the evil by the processes of education, the remedy to be applied is more speech, not enforced silence.”

Louis Brandeis (1856–1941) American Supreme Court Justice

Concurring, Whitney v. California, 274 U.S. 357 (1927).
Judicial opinions

Men, Education, Fear, Confidence

“For many of us, doing physical activity is a highly emotionally charged, even dangerous, undertaking. Sports and exercise are sites of intense ” forms of exercise.”

Kai Cheng Thom (1991) writer

What I learned, loved and lost as a trans Zumba addict (2018)

Exercises, Sport

“Hysteria will not help us to solve the problem that confronts us. We overstate the danger when we say that twelve millions seek, because of post-war conditions abroad, to come immediately to America. Ending June 30, 1914, the year's immigration figures were 1,218,480. Then came the war and a vast slump, from which we are just recovering. Calculations placed immigration statistics for the current year as 1,079,428—figures still below the prewar status. But even though we need have no grave fears, now is the time for a careful reexamination and revision of our immigration policies. We should have no more aliens to cope with, in the immediate months to come, than our institutions are able to handle. To assume burdens we can not easily meet would lie unfair both to us and to the alien. In protecting ourselves we are protecting him as well. We can not lower our standards, or allow them to be lowered, so as to include him. We must prepare him for our standards. And that means wise education. In the home, in the school, in industry, in citizenship, we have not heretofore applied thoroughly the human test, and that is our next step in the Americanization of the alien. Much work has yet to be done in the immediate months to come. Some protective measure, therefore, seems necessary.”

Calvin Coolidge (1872–1933) American politician, 30th president of the United States (in office from 1923 to 1929)

1920s, Whose Country Is This? (1921)

War, Lie, Education, Fear

“The piety that sees a sign of divine favor in escape from a sudden danger which destroys other lives, is a spurious and egotistic travesty of the faith that knows that ‘God spared not His own Son, but freely gave Him up for us all.’ The true Christian will ask for no immunity from the common lot, for no freedom from the hardships of experience, for no miraculous deliverance from impending calamity, but he will ask for the power to overcome the world in a spirit that is courageous as well as meek, militant against all forms of evil while profoundly thankful for what seems good in his life.”

Leslie Weatherhead (1893–1976) English theologian

Source: The Christian Agnostic (1965), p.207, (Dr. E. Griffith Jones: Providence, Divine and Human. 1925. Hodder and Stoughton. p107

Life, God, World, Faith

“So in order to accommodate the Pioneers who would begin arriving in a few weeks, the Arkitects sent up Scouts. The qualifications for being a Scout seemed to be a shocking level of physical endurance, a complete disregard for mortal danger, and some knowledge of how to exist in a space suit.
All of them were Russian.”

Neal Stephenson book Seveneves

"Scouts"
Seveneves (2015), Part One

Knowledge, Scouting

“The most dangerous form of procrastination is unacknowledged type-B procrastination [putting off important things to do unimportant things], because it doesn't feel like procrastination. You're "getting things done."”

Paul Graham (1964) English programmer, venture capitalist, and essayist

Just the wrong things.
"Good And Bad Procrastination"], December 2005

Feeling

“Who's an Aryan? And what are these lower peoples anyway? Well, Hitler taught that the blond-haired, blue-eyed Norwegians were close to pure Aryan. Did you follow all of that? The blond-haired, blue-eyed Norwegian. And he thought the Germans were mostly Aryan? The Mediterranean's are slightly Aryan. Slavics are half Aryan, half ape. Orientals are slightly ape. The black Africans are mostly ape and the Jews are close to pure ape. Hitler killed the Jews because of his evolution thinking. We fought a really big war, probably a 100 million people died in World War II altogether because of that stupid theory. It's not just dumb, folks, it's dangerous.”

Kent Hovind (1953) American young Earth creationist

Creation seminars (2003-2005), The dangers of evolution

War, People, Stupidity, World

“Robbed of a foundation of political philosophy on which (how ever illegitimately) it had based itself, economics is in great danger of becoming a plaything of demagogy.”

Eric Roll, Baron Roll of Ipsden (1907–2005) British economist

Conclusion, p. 414
A History of Economic Thought (1939)

“Repetition is useful, but continuous use of mechanical repetition also has harmful effects. It is dangerous because it easily induces habits of sheer mechanized action, blindness, tendencies to perform slavishly instead of thinking, instead of facing a problem freely.”

Max Wertheimer (1880–1943) Co-founder of Gestalt psychology

Source: Productive thinking, 1945, p. 112

Problem, Thinking

“To listen to someone is to put oneself in his place while he is speaking. To put oneself in the place of someone whose soul is corroded by affliction, or in near danger of it, is to annihilate oneself. It is more difficult than suicide would be for a happy child. Therefore the afflicted are not listened to. They are like someone whose tongue has been cut out and who occasionally forgets the fact. When they move their lips no ear perceives any sound. And they themselves soon sink into impotence in the use of language, because of the certainty of not being heard.
That is why there is no hope for the vagrant as he stands before the magistrate. Even if, through his stammerings, he should utter a cry to pierce the soul, neither the magistrate nor the public will hear it. His cry is mute. And the afflicted are nearly always equally deaf to one another; and each of them, constrained by the general indifference, strives by means of self-delusion or forgetfulness to become deaf to his own self.”

Simone Weil (1909–1943) French philosopher, Christian mystic, and social activist

Source: Simone Weil : An Anthology (1986), Human Personality (1943), p. 71

Happiness, Hope, Soul, Suicide

“families above all) and subsidiarity, rather than the barriers of the past. We must eliminate the barriers, tear them down - but not erect others, even more dangerous. You may be sceptical of a British cleric talking about the common good and a shared vision for the next century - and with reason. To view the United Kingdom's decision to leave the European Union as a raising of the drawbridge from all of our relationships with the European continent is something that none of us can afford. A vision for Europe must go beyond the boundaries of the European Union.”

Justin Welby (1956) British Anglican bishop; the 105th Archbishop of Canterbury

Address to the Catholic Institute of Paris (November 19, 2016)

Family, Decision, Tear, Past

“The opponents of the Constitution declared that the larger states would disturb the United States by their powerful contentions; the supporters replied that those contentions were sure to disturb the continent if the larger states were not united, much less sure to do it if they were united and so could be expected to arrive at peaceable agreements.
The opponents of the Constitution were convinced that the people of the individual states could be protected only by their states armed with full, or at least substantial sovereignty. The supporters of the Constitution knew that conflicting sovereignties had been the causes of most wars, in which the people have regularly suffered.
The opponents of the Constitution in 1787 could talk only of the difficulties of forming a new government The supporters of the Constitution aware of the dangers facing the Confederation, demanded that a new government be attempted, no matter what the difficulties.”

Carl Van Doren (1885–1950) American biographer

Preface
The Great Rehearsal (1948)

War, People, Support, Suffering

“When Heracles was quite a young man and was nearly of the age at which you yourselves are now, while he was deliberating which of the two roads he should take, the one leading through toils to virtue, or the easiest, two women approached him, and these were Virtue and Vice. Now at once, although they were silent, the difference between them was evident from their appearance. For the one had been decked out for beauty through the art of toiletry, and was overflowing with voluptuousness, and she was leading a whole swarm of pleasures in her train; now these things she displayed, and promising still more than these she tried to draw Heracles to her. But the other was withered and squalid, and had an intense look, and spoke quite differently; for she promised nothing dissolute or pleasant, but countless sweating toils and labours and dangers through every land and sea. But the prize to be won by these was to become a god, as the narrative of Prodicus expressed it; and it was this second woman that Heracles in the end followed.”

Basil of Caesarea (329–379) Christian Saint

Source: On Greek Literature, p. 399

Women, God, Pleasure, Age

“There’s a serious danger that the college education bubble may burst. As more and more people get college degrees, which inevitably have to become easier to get in order to increase the amount of graduates beyond its realistic levels, the market will eventually figure out that the degree doesn’t mean what it used to. It will become less useful as a heuristic for intelligence and achievement. And college graduates will find themselves with an asset—a degree—whose value is dropping while their debt remains high.”

John Carney

" What Obama Should Have Told The Kids Today http://www.businessinsider.com/john-carney-what-obama-should-have-told-the-kids-today-2009-9," The Business Insider magazine, 8 September 2009.

People, Education, Intelligence

“A spectacular anomaly came up with the hydrides of the nonmetals—an ugly bunch, about as inimical to life as one could get. Arsenic and antimony hydrides were very poisonous and smelly; silicon and phosphorous hydrides were spontaneously inflammable. I had made in my lab the hydrides of sulfur (H2S), selenium (H2Se), and tellurium (H2Te), all Group VI elements, all dangerous and vile-smelling gases. The hydride of oxygen, the first Group VI element, one might predict by analogy, would be a foul-smelling, poisonous, inflammable gas, too, condensing to a nasty liquid around −100°C. And instead it was water, H2O—stable, potable, odorless, benign, and with a host of special, indeed unique properties (its expansion when frozen, its great heat capacity, its capacity as an ionizing solvent, etc.) which made it indispensable to our watery planet, indispensable to life itself. What made it such an anomaly? […]”

Oliver Sacks book Uncle Tungsten

This question, I found, had only been resolved recently, in the 1930s, with Linus Pauling's delineation of the hydrogen bond.
Source: Uncle Tungsten (2001), pp. 204–205

Life, Question, Water

“There is little danger that any student, however idle or stupid, will fail to get some result; but there is great danger that he will be led astray, obsessed and overwhelmed by his results, even though it be by those which it is necessary that he should attain. Too often, moreover, he mistaketh the first resting-place for the goal, and taketh off his armour as if he were a victor ere the fight is well begun.
It is desirable that the student should never attach to any result the importance which it at first seems to possess.”

Aleister Crowley (1875–1947) poet, mountaineer, occultist

Book VI : Liber O (1909)

Stupidity, Fight

“Should I be surprised that dangers which have always surrounded me should at last attack me? A great part of mankind, when about to sail, do not think of a storm. I shall never be ashamed of a reporter of bad news in a good cause.”

Seneca the Younger (-4–65 BC) Roman Stoic philosopher, statesman, and dramatist

Variant translation: I shall never be ashamed of citing a bad author if the line is good.
On Tranquility of the Mind

Thinking, Parting

“If you are going to call yourself a Christian—and I don't—then you have to ask yourself a fundamental question, and that is: Whom would Jesus torture? Whom would Jesus drag around on a dog's leash? How can Christians tolerate it? It is unconscionable. It has put our young men and women who are over there, fighting a war that they should not have been asked to fight— it has put them in greater danger.”

Ron Reagan (1958) talk radio host and political analyst

On the Abu Ghraib prisoner abuse, New York Times (27 June 2004).

Women, Men, War, Dogs

“Fifty years ago, when Europeans and Americans still distinguished high culture from popular culture, and when classical learning was still highly esteemed in colleges and universities, C. P. Snow delivered his famous Rede Lecture at Cambridge University, "The Two Cultures and the Scientific Revolution." Snow did more than warn of the growing split between the old culture of the humanities and the rising culture of science. He took Britain's literary aristocracy to task for its dangerous dismissal of scientific and technological progress, which Snow believed offered the solutions to the world's deepest problems. In a vitriolic response to Snow, the literary critic F. R. Leavis defended the primacy of the humanities for a civilizing education, insisting that science must not be allowed to operate outside of the moral norms that a first-rate humanistic education alone could provide.”

Leon R. Kass (1939) American academic

Looking for an Honest Man (2009)

World, Education, Problem, Learning

“The brave man is not he who feels no fear,
For that were stupid and irrational;
But he, whose noble soul its fear subdues,
And bravely dares the danger nature shrinks from.”

Joanna Baillie (1762–1851) Scottish poet and dramatist

Act III, scene 1, line 151.
Count Basil (1798)

Stupidity, Fear, Feeling, Soul

“I, however, place economy among the first and most important republican virtues, and public debt as the greatest of the dangers to be feared.”

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

Letter to William Plumer (21 July 1816)
1810s

Fear

“Donald Trump I really truly believe is a very dangerous man. If you listen to the things he said this weekend… '. He has joked about killing reporters — and 'not' killing reporters like Putin does… We don't change with the mood of the country. That is the problem with our country right now. The Constitution is to anchor us in principles that help temper the mood of the country… The mood of the country is very angry, but you never make a good decision when you are angry… The worst thing we can do is to now start looking at, who is going to get revenge? One of the things that Donald Trump does, when you have a guy who is angry and then has an enemies list and starts to just take people down over and over and over again — if you disagree with him, he destroys you. If that is the mood of the country, we are in more trouble than I thought.”

Glenn Beck (1964) U.S. talk radio and television host

interview on New Day http://www.cnn.com/2016/01/25/politics/glenn-beck-donald-trump-dangerous/index.html (January 2016), CNN. 2010s, 2016

People, Guy, Mood, Revenge

“To me, this is very boring music—most of it. It has nothing happening. Nothing is sticking. They’re playing music perfectly with wonderful intonation and technique, but it’s dangerous for jazz itself. I do wish these people all the best.”

Joe Zawinul (1932–2007) austrian composer and pianist

On Wynton Marsalis and the revival of traditional jazz
Prasad interview (1997)

People, Music

“It is, thank heaven, difficult if not impossible for the modern European to fully appreciate the force which fanaticism exercises among an ignorant, warlike and Oriental population. Several generations have elapsed since the nations of the West have drawn the sword in religious controversy, and the evil memories of the gloomy past have soon faded in the strong, clear light of Rationalism and human sympathy. Indeed it is evident that Christianity, however degraded and distorted by cruelty and intolerance, must always exert a modifying influence on men's passions, and protect them from the more violent forms of fanatical fever, as we are protected from smallpox by vaccination. But the Mahommedan religion increases, instead of lessening, the fury of intolerance. It was originally propagated by the sword, and ever since, its votaries have been subject, above the people of all other creeds, to this form of madness. In a moment the fruits of patient toil, the prospects of material prosperity, the fear of death itself, are flung aside. The more emotional Pathans are powerless to resist. All rational considerations are forgotten. Seizing their weapons, they become Ghazis—as dangerous and as sensible as mad dogs: fit only to be treated as such. While the more generous spirits among the tribesmen become convulsed in an ecstasy of religious bloodthirstiness, poorer and more material souls derive additional impulses from the influence of others, the hopes of plunder and the joy of fighting. Thus whole nations are roused to arms. Thus the Turks repel their enemies, the Arabs of the Soudan break the British squares, and the rising on the Indian frontier spreads far and wide. In each case civilisation is confronted with militant Mahommedanism. The forces of progress clash with those of reaction. The religion of blood and war is face to face with that of peace. Luckily the religion of peace is usually the better armed.”

Winston S. Churchill book The Story of the Malakand Field Force

The Story of the Malakand Field Force: An Episode of Frontier War (1898), Chapter III.
Early career years (1898–1929)

Death, Men, War, People

“I have carried this abscess too far, Tunisia is going through a difficult period. Freedom is dangerous.”

Habib Bourguiba (1903–2000) Tunisian politician

Freedom

“In a world where everyone is a publisher, no one is an editor and that is the danger we face today.”

Scott Pelley (1957) American television journalist, news anchor

11 May 2013 Speech at Quinnipiac University upon receiving the Fred Friendly journalism award. YouTube, CBS News anchor Scott Pelley: 'We're Getting the Big Stories Wrong Over and Over Again' http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1AyCD_lcl1Q,

World

“Never before in the history of our State have Oregonians had so much to be congratulated upon. No State in the Union is receiving more attention. Her agricultural products, her mild climate, her great natural resources, invite the immigrant, the capitalist and the pleasure seeker, while the sound basis upon which rest her finances, and the fact that within two years her taxable property has increased more than ten millions of dollars, clearly indicate that the State, in the face of a general business depression throughout the land, is in no danger of deterioration of decay.”

Zenas Ferry Moody (1832–1917) American politician

Zenas Ferry Moody (1885). Governor Zenas F. Moody - Biennial Message, 1885 http://records.sos.state.or.us/ORSOSWebDrawer/Recordpdf/6777838. Oregon State Archives, Oregon Secretary of State. Source: Public Documents, Biennial Message of Gov. Z.F. Moody to the Legislative Assembly, 1885, Salem, Oregon, W.H. Byars, State Printer, 1885.

Pleasure, History, Business, Nature

“Tho none ought to conclude that their day or season of grace is quite expired, yet they ought to deeply apprehend the danger, lest it should expire before their necessary work be done and their peace made. For tho it can be of no use for them to know the former, and therefore they have no means appointed them by which to know it, 'tis of great use to apprehend the latter; and they have sufficient ground for the apprehension.”

John Howe (1630–1705) English Puritan theologian

The Redeemer's Tears Wept Over Lost Souls (1684)

Peace, Season

“I thought I detected in you a sense of fair play. Most dangerous in the Underland, boy.”

Suzanne Collins The Underland Chronicles

Ripred, p. 240
The Underland Chronicles, Gregor the Overlander (2003)

Boy, Sense

“Unfortunately, the critics of economics have had a tendency to discuss the whole structure as a tissue of misconceptions. It is a critique that fails. The strength of economics is its considerable, if far from complete, understanding of the flows and comparative advantages that underlie trade, jobs, capital and incomes, and the logic of optimising behaviour, all backed by glittering accomplishment in mathematics. That makes it a powerful analytical instrument, so that just a few misconceptions – such as a failure to understand the informal economy or resource depletion – have leverage: like a baby monkey at the controls of a Ferrari, they can turn it into an instrument with extraordinarily destructive potential. If it were a tissue of errors, it would not be dangerous: it is its 90 percent brilliance which makes it so.”

David Fleming (1940–2010) British activist

Lean Logic, (2016), p. 123, entry on Economics http://www.flemingpolicycentre.org.uk/lean-logic-surviving-the-future/

Error, Mathematics, Failure, Understanding

“Undue emphasis on conservation is as great a danger to fire power as is an excess expenditure of ammunition.”

S.L.A. Marshall (1900–1977) United States Army general and Military historian

Fire as the Cure. p. 81.
Men Against Fire: The Problem of Battle Command (1947)

“It is always dangerous to draw too precise parallels between one historical period and another; and among the most misleading of such parallels are those which have been drawn between our own age in Europe and North America and the epoch in which the Roman empire declined into the Dark Ages. Nonetheless certain parallels there are. A crucial turning point in that earlier history occurred when men and women of good will turned aside from the task of shoring up the Roman imperium and ceased to identify the continuation of civility and moral community with the maintenance of that imperium. What they set themselves to achieve instead - often not recognizing fully what they were doing - was the construction of new forms of community within which the moral life could be sustained so that both morality and civility might survive the coming ages of barbarism and darkness. If my account of our moral condition is correct, we ought also to conclude that for some time now we too have reached that turning point.”

Alasdair MacIntyre book After Virtue

Source: After Virtue (1981), p. 263

Life, Women, Men, Age

“First, the eight rules of tolerance: 1. Stay out of the way. 2. Don't pick a fight. 3. If challenged, walk away. 4. Avoid eye contact. 5. If your enemy is diurnal, learn to be nocturnal. 6. Vice versa. 7. Possess nothing the other wants. 8. Draw the line at hurting kids: I will fight to the death.
After tolerance is achieved comes play. Here are the nine rules of play: 1. Know when to quit. 2. Learn how to handicap. 3. Learn what frightens the other (cat claws). 4. Don't let it get to you. It's just a game; you mustn't take it seriously (cats have trouble with this one—escalation is always a risk in cat games). 5. Don't eat your playmate. 6. Pay attention to the signals on the other side—for instance, “enough” and “quit.” 7. Don't suddenly change the rules. 8. Don't be a sore loser. 9. Remember: It's only a game.
And if play succeeds, we can move on to the eight rules of friendship: 1. Learn the rules of your opposite number. 2. Recognize that danger is no longer relevant. 3. Take your time. 4. One step at a time. 5. Apologize often by learning the other's words, gestures, sounds, or postures for “I'm sorry.””

Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson (1941) American writer and activist

6. Acknowledge mistakes. 7. Make the offer of friendship more than once. 8. Express curiosity about what the other is like.
Source: Raising the Peaceable Kingdom (2005), Ch. 5

Death, Friendship, Way, Game

“I always think I should get on it if I want to have kids. Because once you hit thirty it can be difficult to conceive — it can be dangerous. The best time to conceive is when you're a black teenager.”

Sarah Silverman (1970) American comedian and actress

Rolling Stone (3 November 2005)

Thinking, Time

“That is what you wake up to every morning. It is what my wife and I think of when we go visit hospitals on the weekend. And so providing our people with all the support they can, you can possibly give them. And that does not always come naturally to this place, which is thinking in budgets and thinking in the future. You always have to remember that they are in danger.”

Ash Carter (1954) United States Secretary of Defense

archive.defensenews.com interview http://archive.defensenews.com/article/20131119/DEFREG02/311190032/Interview-Ashton-Carter-US-Deputy-Defense-Secretary

People, Support, Nature, Thinking

“The word 'definition' has come to have a dangerously reassuring sound, owing no doubt to its frequent occurrence in logical and mathematical writings.”

Willard van Orman Quine (1908–2000) American philosopher and logician

"Two dogmas of Empiricism", p. 26
From a Logical Point of View: Nine Logico-Philosophical Essays (1953)

Mathematics

“I'm tired of being considered some kind of criminal or dangerous throwback for no other reason than that I value, exercise, and defend my rights under the first ten Amendments to the United States Constitution.”

L. Neil Smith (1946) American writer

"I'm Tired (With Apologies to Pearl Bailey and Madeleine Kahn) Presented to the second annual Liberty Round Table Conclave near Estes Park, Colorado, 2 July 1998 http://www.ncc-1776.org/tle1998/libe40-19980709-01.html.

Exercises

“Recently the British people suffered a huge loss. It was a tragedy next to his barracks on the streets of London. A violent assassination, a very brutal killing of a British serviceman. Clearly the opposition is not composed all of this but many of them are exactly the same as the ones who perpetrated the killing in London. If we equip these people, if we arm them what is going to control and verify? who is going to have these weapons?, including in Europe as well. So we call all our partners, before making this dangerous step, think about it very carefully.”

Vladimir Putin (1952) President of Russia, former Prime Minister

In Enniskillen, 18 June 2013, g8-summit-politics-live-blog http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/blog/2013/jun/18/g8-summit-politics-live-blog, guardian.co.uk 2011 - 2015

People, Thinking, Suffering, Loss

“A lot of people are afraid to accept mediocrity because they believe that if they accept it, they’ll never achieve anything, never improve, and that their life won’t matter.
This sort of thinking is dangerous. Once you accept the premise that a life is worthwhile only if it is truly notable and great, then you basically accept the fact that most of the human population (including yourself) sucks and is worthless. And this mindset can quickly turn dangerous, to both yourself and others.”

Mark Manson (1984) American writer and blogger

Source: The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck (2016), Chapter 3, “You Are Not Special” (p. 61)

Life, People, Thinking

“Outside support has always been a danger for the smooth working of the governments. If the President assertively persuades the parties concerned extending outside support to join the government, then such type of most unfortunate situations could have been avoided. If Rajiv Gandhi’s party had joined this government, this crisis would not have occurred.”

R. Venkataraman (1910–2009) seventh Vice-President of India and the 8th President of India

When Congress Party withdrew outside support to Chandra Shekar who had to resign having lost majority in the House
Source: Commissions and Omissions by Indian Presidents and Their Conflicts with the Prime Ministers Under the Constitution: 1977-2001, p. 170.

Support

“In this moment of opportunity, a common danger is erasing old rivalries. America is working with Russia and China and India, in ways we have never before, to achieve peace and prosperity. In every region, free markets and free trade and free societies are proving their power to lift lives. Together with friends and allies from Europe to Asia, and Africa to Latin America, we will demonstrate that the forces of terror cannot stop the momentum of freedom.”

George W. Bush (1946) 43rd President of the United States

2000s, 2002, State of the Union address (January 2002)

Peace, Way, Freedom

“Was there no possibility of saving mankind from self-destruction? The extinct animal species had been forced unwittingly towards elimination, but in man, life for the first time, had mustered sufficient consciousness to recognise dangerous trends in his development. What were these dangers? Progress of science, man's increasing technical mastery? No, the real danger threatening man lay in those gigantic social and political organisations, being an end in themselves instead of means, using the instruments of education and propaganda to suppress individual judgement by creating instinctive mass reaction. These organisations hinder man's spiritual development, reduce the capacity for moral judgement to a low level, and hand over society to the intense lust for power of a few individuals.”

Henno Martin (1910–1998) German geologist

Source: Sheltering Desert; Union Deutsche Verlangsgesellschaft Ulm (1958), p. 180

Life, Education, Science, Time

“I used steroids. It was a risky thing to do, but I have no regrets. It was what I had to do to compete. The danger with steroids is overusage. I only did it before a difficult competition – for two months, but not for a period of time that could harm me. And then afterward, it was over. I would stop. I have no health problems, no kidney damage or anything like that from using them.”

Arnold Schwarzenegger (1947) actor, businessman and politician of Austrian-American heritage

1996
Attributed

Health, Problem, Time

“The finest achievement of the new woman has been personal liberty. This is the foundation of civilization; and as long as any one class is watched suspiciously, even fondly guarded, and protected, so long will that class not only be weak, and treacherous, individually, but parasitic, and a collective danger to the community. Who has not heard wives commended for wheedling their husbands out of money, or joked [about] because they are hopelessly extravagant? As long as caprice and scheming are considered feminine virtues, as long as man is the only wage-earner, doling out sums of money, or scattering lavishly, so long will women be degraded, even if they are perfectly contented, and men are willing to labor to keep them in idleness!

Although individual women from pre-historic times have accomplished much, as a class they have been set aside to minister to men's comfort. But when once the higher has been tried, civilization repudiates the lower. Men have come to see that no advance can be made with one half-humanity set apart merely for the functions of sex; that children are quite liable to inherit from the mother, and should have opportunities to inherit the accumulated ability and culture and character that is produced only by intellectual and civil activity. The world has tried to move with men for dynamos, and "clinging" women impeding every step of progress, in arts, science, industry, professions, they have been a thousand years behind men because forced into seclusion. They have been over-sexed. They have naturally not been impressed with their duties to society, in its myriad needs, or with their own value as individuals.

The new woman, in the sense of the best woman, the flower of all the womanhood of past ages, has come to stay — if civilization is to endure. The sufferings of the past have but strengthened her, maternity has deepened her, education is broadening her — and she now knows that she must perfect herself if she would perfect the race, and leave her imprint upon immortality, through her offspring or her works.”

Winnifred Harper Cooley (1874–1967) American author and lecturer

The New Womanhood (New York, 1904) 31f.

Women, Men, Money, Children

“[Attlee] reminded the delegates that it was vital to reduce costs by greater efficiency, which meant that both employers and employed had to seek in every way to attain it. He did not believe in lowering wages as a means of reducing costs, but equally it was necessary to realize that increases of wages that were not matched by increases of production would gravely impair their chances of getting rapidly over their difficulties. Increased demands for money payments, when there was no increase of goods to meet them led straight away to inflation. There was a danger that when a justifiable advance in wages for an under-paid section of the workers had been granted it resulted in demands from those who had enjoyed higher wages to maintain the same differential. This was bad economics and bad social morality. He had been disturbed at the evidence that some people were abusing the social services in such matters as sickness benefit. They could not have them sabotaged by misuse.”

Clement Attlee (1883–1967) Former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

Speech to the Trades Union Congress at Bridlington (7 September 1949), quoted 'Chronology, 18 August 1949 - 7 September 1949', Chronology of International Events and Documents, Vol. 5, No. 17 (18 August-7 September 1949), p. 583
1940s

Money, People, Way, Chance

“Since the invention of the printing press by Johannes Gutenberg in the 15th century, mass media has ushered in a new era of collective consciousness – a set of shared beliefs, ideas, and moral attitudes that operate as a unifying force within society. Notwithstanding the danger of assimilation akin to the Borg in Star Trek, the Internet is accelerating collective consciousness and revolutionizing economy, politics, and education, among others.”

Newton Lee American computer scientist

Google It: Total Information Awareness, 2016

Education, Star, Idea

“The worship of images is intimately connected with that of the saints. They were rejected by the primitive Christians; but St Irenæus, who lived in the second century, relates that there was a sect of heretics, the Carpocratians, who worshipped, in the manner of Pagans, different images representing Jesus Christ, St Paul, and others. The Gnostics had also images; but the church rejected their use in a positive manner, and a Christian writer of the third century, Minutius Felix, says that “the Pagans reproached the Christians for having neither temples nor simulachres;” and I could quote many other evidences that the primitive Christians entertained a great horror against every kind of images, considering them as the work of demons. It appears, however, that the use of pictures was creeping into the church already in the third century, because the council of Elvira in Spain, held in 305, especially forbids to have any picture in the Christian churches. These pictures were generally representations of some events, either of the New 5 In his Treatise given below. 11 or of the Old Testament, and their object was to instruct the common and illiterate people in sacred history, whilst others were emblems, representing some ideas connected with the doctrines [008] of Christianity. It was certainly a powerful means of producing an impression upon the senses and the imagination of the vulgar, who believe without reasoning, and admit without reflection; it was also the most easy way of converting rude and ignorant nations, because, looking constantly on the representations of some fact, people usually end by believing it. This iconographic teaching was, therefore, recommended by the rulers of the church, as being useful to the ignorant, who had only the understanding of eyes, and could not read writings.6 Such a practice was, however, fraught with the greatest danger, as experience has but too much proved. It was replacing intellect by sight.7 Instead of elevating man towards God, it was bringing down the Deity to the level of his finite intellect, and it could not but powerfully contribute to the rapid spread of a pagan anthropomorphism in the church.”

John Calvin (1509–1564) French Protestant reformer

Source: A Treatise of Relics (1543), p. 10-11

God, People, Way, Quotes

“We here have… an architectural discovery which may prove of inestimable value to future art. …Like fire, it is a good servant but a bad master. The danger is that it may lead to a cramped and mechanical design. One may easily become a slave to the module, and do things because of it which his taste or reason would not otherwise commend. …How can the danger be avoided and the benefits secured?”

Ernest Flagg (1857–1947) American architect

Small Houses: Their Economic Design and Construction (1922)

Art, Future

“The dictator Powers of Europe are striding on from strength to strength and from stroke to stroke, and the parliamentary democracies are retreating abashed and confused. … Austria has been laid in thrall, and we do not know whether Czechoslovakia will not suffer a similar attack. … It is because we have lost these opportunities of standing firm, of having strong united forces and a good heart, and a resolute desire to defend the right and afterwards to do generously as the result of strength; it is because we have lost these successive opportunities which have presented themselves, that, when our resources are less and the dangers greater, we have been brought to this pass. I predict that the day will come when at some point or other on some issue or other you will have to make a stand, and I pray God that when that day comes we may not find that through an unwise policy we are left to make that stand alone.”

Winston S. Churchill (1874–1965) Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

Speech https://api.parliament.uk/historic-hansard/commons/1938/feb/22/foreign-affairs#S5CV0332P0_19380222_HOC_332 in the House of Commons (22 February 1938) after the resignation of the Foreign Secretary Anthony Eden The 1930s

God, Democracy, Strong, Suffering

“I'm not trying to win a popularity contest. If you're in a public media setting and you're not expressing something of yourself, turn it over to someone who will. Just get out. Just go away and put somebody on who has a point of view, because the most dangerous thing about TV is its equalizing factor, its lowest common denominator factor. And that's what I fight against all the time.”

Keith Olbermann (1959) American sports and political commentator

" Inside Story: Knowing It All http://pqasb.pqarchiver.com/latimes/64665598.html?did=64665598&FMT=ABS&FMTS=FT" by David Davis, L.A. Times (2000-11-26)

Time, Fight