Quotes about safe
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Carl Sagan photo

“Keeping you safe keeps me in shape.”

Ilona Andrews American husband-and-wife novelist duo

Source: Magic Strikes

Brandon Sanderson photo
Gary Shteyngart photo
Thomas Jefferson photo

“It is an axiom in my mind, that our liberty can never be safe but in the hands of the people themselves, and that too of the people with a certain degree of instruction. This it is the business of the State to effect, and on a general plan.”

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

Letter to http://www.familytales.org/dbDisplay.php?id=ltr_thj1489 George Washington (4 January 1786)
1780s
Source: Letters of Thomas Jefferson

Chuck Palahniuk photo
Elizabeth Gilbert photo
Federico García Lorca photo
Frank Herbert photo
Johanna Spyri photo
Billy Joel photo
Suzanne Collins photo
William Blake photo

“Man was made for joy and woe,
And when this we rightly know
Through the world we safely go.
Joy and woe are woven fine,
A clothing for the soul divine.”

William Blake (1757–1827) English Romantic poet and artist

Source: 1800s, Auguries of Innocence (1803), Line 56. Compare Psalm 30:5 (KJV): "weeping may endure for a night, but joy cometh in the morning."

Rick Riordan photo
Suzanne Collins photo
John Grisham photo
Toni Morrison photo
Sherrilyn Kenyon photo
Ernest Shackleton photo

“Men Wanted: For hazardous journey. Small wages, bitter cold, long months of complete darkness, constant danger, safe return doubtful. Honour and recognition in case of success.”

Ernest Shackleton (1874–1922) Anglo-Irish polar explorer

The first published appearance of this "ad" is on the first page of a 1949 book by Julian Lewis Watkins, The 100 Greatest Advertisements: Who Wrote Them and What They Did. (Moore Publishing Company), except with the Americanized word "honor", rather than "honour".

F. Scott Fitzgerald photo
John Flanagan photo
Jane Austen photo
David Sedaris photo
Paulo Coelho photo
D.J. MacHale photo
Lev Grossman photo
Margaret Atwood photo
Arianna Huffington photo
Laurie Anderson photo
Edith Wharton photo
Cassandra Clare photo
Diana Gabaldon photo
Victor Hugo photo

“He loved books; books are cold but safe friends.”

Variant: He was fond of books, for they are cool and sure friends
Source: Les Misérables

Richard Baxter photo
Tyler Perry photo
Kelley Armstrong photo
Richard Dawkins photo

“It is absolutely safe to say that if you meet somebody who claims not to believe in evolution, that person is ignorant, stupid or insane (or wicked, but I'd rather not consider that).”

Richard Dawkins (1941) English ethologist, evolutionary biologist and author

Source: Reviewing Blueprints: Solving the Mystery of Evolution (1989) by Maitland A. Edey and Donald C. Johanson

Source: Last sentence expanded upon in "Ignorance is No Crime" (2001) (see below)
Context: So to the book's provocation, the statement that nearly half the people in the United States don't believe in evolution. Not just any people but powerful people, people who should know better, people with too much influence over educational policy. We are not talking about Darwin's particular theory of natural selection. It is still (just) possible for a biologist to doubt its importance, and a few claim to. No, we are here talking about the fact of evolution itself, a fact that is proved utterly beyond reasonable doubt. To claim equal time for creation science in biology classes is about as sensible as to claim equal time for the flat-earth theory in astronomy classes. Or, as someone has pointed out, you might as well claim equal time in sex education classes for the stork theory. It is absolutely safe to say that if you meet somebody who claims not to believe in evolution, that person is ignorant, stupid or insane (or wicked, but I'd rather not consider that).

If that gives you offence, I'm sorry. You are probably not stupid, insane or wicked; and ignorance is no crime in a country with strong local traditions of interference in the freedom of biology educators to teach the central theorem of their subject.

Richard Siken photo
Jodi Picoult photo
Henry Rollins photo

“I like the idea of someone else’s love safely sealed in a song or a book.”

Henry Rollins (1961) American singer-songwriter

Source: Solipsist

Robert Frost photo

“Unless you are educated in metaphor, you are not safe to be let loose in the world.”

Robert Frost (1874–1963) American poet

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

David Levithan photo
Thich Nhat Hanh photo

“Earth will be safe when we feel in us enough safety.”

Thich Nhat Hanh (1926) Religious leader and peace activist

Source: Call Me by My True Names: The Collected Poems

Sherrilyn Kenyon photo
Stephen King photo

“Science fiction at its best should be crazy and dangerous, not sane and safe.”

Source: How To Write Science Fiction

Elaine May photo

“The only safe thing is to take a chance.”

Elaine May (1932) American screenwriter, film director, actress, and comedian
Rick Riordan photo
Charlaine Harris photo
Mitch Albom photo
Karl Pilkington photo

“On chameleons - Stay green. Stay in the woods. Stay safe.”

Karl Pilkington (1972) English television personality, social commentator, actor, author and former radio producer

Podcast Series 2 Episode 4
On Nature

“If your workplace was somehow transplanted into the jungle and everyone was forced to survive at a very primitive level, it's safe to say that eventually your boss would rape you.”

Scott Dikkers (1965) American comic writer

Source: You Are Worthless: Depressing Nuggets of Wisdom Sure to Ruin Your Day

Douglas Adams photo
David Guterson photo
Gillian Flynn photo
Tucker Max photo
Leo Buscaglia photo
Wilhelm Reich photo

“Man's right to know, to learn, to inquire, to make bona fide errors, to investigate human emotions must, by all means, be safe, if the word FREEDOM should ever be more than an empty political slogan.”

Wilhelm Reich (1897–1957) Austrian-American psychoanalyst

Response to FDA complaint (1954)
Context: Inquiry in the realm of Basic Natural Law is outside the judicial domain of this or ANY OTHER KIND OF SOCIAL ADMINISTRATION ANYWHERE ON THIS GLOBE, IN ANY LAND, NATION, OR REGION.
Man's right to know, to learn, to inquire, to make bona fide errors, to investigate human emotions must, by all means, be safe, if the word FREEDOM should ever be more than an empty political slogan.

Katie Couric photo

“A boat is always safe in the harbor, but that's not what boats are built for.”

Katie Couric (1957) American journalist

Source: The Best Advice I Ever Got: Lessons from Extraordinary Lives

Flannery O’Connor photo
Karen Marie Moning photo
Nora Roberts photo
Julian Barnes photo
Simone de Beauvoir photo

“I tore myself away from the safe comfort of certainties through my love for truth — and truth rewarded me.”

Simone de Beauvoir (1908–1986) French writer, intellectual, existentialist philosopher, political activist, feminist, and social theorist

All Said and Done (1972), p. 16 ISBN 1569249814
General sources

Sherrilyn Kenyon photo
Joan D. Vinge photo
Anne Lamott photo

“You can safely assume you’ve created God in your own image when it turns out that God hates all the same people you do.”

Anne Lamott (1954) Novelist, essayist, memoirist, activist

Traveling Mercies; on page 22 of Bird by Bird she attributes this to "my priest friend Tom"

Diana Gabaldon photo
James Madison photo

“A standing military force, with an overgrown Executive will not long be safe companions to liberty. The means of defence against foreign danger have been always the instruments of tyranny at home.”

James Madison (1751–1836) 4th president of the United States (1809 to 1817)

Speech, Constitutional Convention (29 June 1787), from Max Farrand's Records of the Federal Convention of 1787, Vol. I http://memory.loc.gov/cgi-bin/ampage?collId=llfr&fileName=001/llfr001.db&recNum=494&itemLink=D?hlaw:5:./temp/~ammem_kmli::%230010495&linkText=1 (1911), p. 465
1780s
Context: In time of actual war, great discretionary powers are constantly given to the Executive Magistrate. Constant apprehension of War, has the same tendency to render the head too large for the body. A standing military force, with an overgrown Executive will not long be safe companions to liberty. The means of defence against foreign danger have been always the instruments of tyranny at home. Among the Romans it was a standing maxim to excite a war, whenever a revolt was apprehended. Throughout all Europe, the armies kept up under the pretext of defending, have enslaved the people.

Frederick Douglass photo

“Where justice is denied, where poverty is enforced, where ignorance prevails, and where any one class is made to feel that society is an organized conspiracy to oppress, rob and degrade them, neither persons nor property will be safe.”

Frederick Douglass (1818–1895) American social reformer, orator, writer and statesman

1880s, Speech on the Anniversary of Emancipation (1886)
Context: I admit the charge, but deny that nature, race, or color has anything to do with the fact. Any other race, with the same antecedents and the same conditions, would show a similar thieving propensity. The American people have this lesson to learn, that where justice is denied, where poverty is enforced, where ignorance prevails, and where any one class is made to feel that society is an organized conspiracy to oppress, rob, and degrade them, neither persons nor property would be safe... While I hold now, as I held years ago, that the South is the natural home of the colored race, and that there must the destiny of that race be mainly worked out, I still believe that means can be and ought to be adopted, to assist in the emigration of such of their number as may wish to change their residence to parts of the country, where their civil and political rights are better protected than at present they can be at the South... The Republican party is not perfect; it is cautious even to the point of timidity; but it is the best friend we have.

Yann Martel photo
Jim Butcher photo

“Perhaps she was just looking for love in the wrong places. In all the safe places. What if love was not safe at all?”

Mary Balogh (1944) Welsh-Canadian novelist

Source: Then Comes Seduction

Michelle Tea photo
Megan Whalen Turner photo
Dorothy Canfield Fisher photo
Alain de Botton photo
Patricia C. Wrede photo
Nick Cave photo
Glenn Beck photo