Quotes about warning
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“Why didn’t you tell me there was danger? Why didn’t you warn me? Ladies know what to guard against, because they read novels that tell them of these tricks; but I never had the chance of discovering in that way; and you did not help me!”

Thomas Hardy (1840–1928) English novelist and poet

Source: Tess of the D'Urbervilles

Way, Chance, Reading, Help

“WARNING
If you dare to read this story, you become part of the Experiment”

James Patterson (1947) American author

Reading, Parting

“Damn, Claire. Warn a guy before you do a face-plant on the floor next time. I could have looked all heroic and caught you or something -Shane”

Rachel Caine book Glass Houses

Source: Glass Houses

Guy, Time, Funny

“I have to warn you. I promised my mother, a long time ago. She said I had to give folks a chance to walk away.”

Lee Child book Nothing to Lose

Source: Nothing to Lose

Chance, Time

“Very well,” Beatrix said reluctantly. “But I warn you, they may be resistant to the match.”
“I’m resistant to the match,” Christopher informed her. “At least we’ll have that in common.”

Lisa Kleypas (1964) American writer

Source: Love in the Afternoon

“I smiled. "So this horse is your nephew, Sam?"
She glared at me. "Let's not go there."
"How did your dad father a horse?"
Blitzen coughed. "Actually, Loki was Sleipnir's mother."
"What--?"
"Let'snot go there," Sam warned.”

Rick Riordan book The Sword of Summer

Source: The Sword of Summer

Smile, Horse

“Once one becomes a man, he can and must make his own decisions. But I do offer warning. Even a good thing can become destructive if taken to excess.”

Brandon Sanderson (1975) American fantasy writer

Source: The Alloy of Law

Decision

“Any woman who chooses to behave like a full human being should be warned that the armies of the status quo will treat her as something of a dirty joke. That's their natural and first weapon. She will need her sisterhood.”

Gloria Steinem (1934) American feminist and journalist

"Sisterhood" in New York Magazine (20 December 1971), p. 49

Nature

“This is my story; I promise to leave nothing out.
First you will smile, and then you will cry - don't say you haven't been warned.”

Nicholas Sparks book A Walk to Remember

Variant: First you will smile, and then you will cry -- don't say you haven't been warned.
Source: A Walk to Remember

Smile, Cry

“I'm warning you, that jacket is sexy. The Institute could go up in sexy, sexy flames.”

Cassandra Clare The City of Lost Souls

Source: City of Lost Souls

“Occasionally I sense an insane wail deep down in the pit, the echo alone reaching me, striking without warning, a child weeping uninhibitedly, imprisoned forever.”

Ingmar Bergman (1918–2007) Swedish filmmaker

Source: The Magic Lantern

Sense

“It's going to be a lot of work, Gideon," Eva warned him.

"I'm not afraid of work." He was touching me restlessly as if it were as necessary to him as breathing. "I'm only afraid of losing you.”

Sylvia Day book Bared to You

Source: Bared to You

“Cleopatra stood at one of the most dangerous intersections in history; that of women and power. Clever women, Euripides had warned hundreds of years earlier, were dangerous.”

Stacy Schiff (1961) American female Author, Pulitzer Prize winner

Source: Cleopatra: A Life

Women, History

“Sometimes there's no warning. Nothing at all.”

Michelle Paver book Oath Breaker

Source: Oath Breaker

“Vampires don't live at all," she points out, "neither do we."
She has me there. "Fine, I'll go. But when Kurt leads his minions in a march around the cemetary with our heads on sticks, don't say I didn't warn you.”

Cynthia Leitich Smith (1967) American writer and poet

Source: Eternal

“That’s the last time you’re going to kiss me,” I warned when it ended.
He smiled knowingly, and in his eyes, I could see his own memories of that night. “So you say.”

Richelle Mead (1976) American writer

Source: Storm Born

Smile, Kiss, Memory, Time

“The corners of his lips curled. “You and your secrets. Ah,, just when I think I’ve solved one mystery about you, up comes another one. I will figure you out one day. Consider yourself warned.”

Kresley Cole American writer

Source: Poison Princess

Secret, Thinking

“I warn you that when the princes of this world start loving you it means they are going to grind you up into battle sausage.”

Louis-ferdinand Céline book Journey to the End of the Night

[6]
Source: Journey to the End of the Night (1932)

Love, World

“Magnus held up a warning finger. "Don't overstep yourself, biscuit," he said, and moved past them, disappearing into the crowd around the portal.
"Biscuit?" said Simon.
"Believe it or not, he's called me that before," Clary said.”

Cassandra Clare book City of Heavenly Fire

Source: City of Heavenly Fire

Past

“We'll meet you here. Hopefully everyone will be in human form." A wry smile. "Though I'll warn you, he's not a whole lot more pleasant that way. At least as a wolf, he can't talk.”

Kelley Armstrong (1968) Canadian writer

Source: The Rising

Smile, Way, Wolf

“.

"Most times, when I'm having sex, I'd rather be reading."
This was, I admit, a strange thing to say on a second date.
I guess I was just giving you a warning.
"Most times when I'm reading," you said, "I'd rather be having sex".”

David Levithan The Lover's Dictionary

Source: The Lover's Dictionary

Sex, Time, Reading

“Warning: If you are insufferable, do not walk here. We shall eat you down to the marrow.”

Libba Bray A Great and Terrible Beauty

Source: A Great and Terrible Beauty

“Don’t worry. I won’t send you off without warning. Just stand there and be awed by my beauty. It’s the safest mode around me. (Savitar)”

Sherrilyn Kenyon (1965) Novelist

Source: Dark Side of the Moon

Beauty

“He had then warned his daughter not to violate the Eleventh Commandment.
"Which one is that?" I asked her.
"Do not bullshit thy father," she said.”

Erich Segal book Love Story

Source: Love Story

Daughters

“Cabin Fifteen does that to everyone," Annabeth warned. "If you ask me, this place is even more dangerous than the Ares cabin. At least with Ares, you can learn where the land mines are."
"Land mines?”

Rick Riordan book The Lost Hero

Source: The Lost Hero

Learning

“I was very strict on that point. No devouring classmates." Jeremy rolled his eyes. "Other parents warn their kids not to talk to strangers. I had to warn mine not to eat them.”

Kelley Armstrong book Stolen

Source: Stolen

Parent

“Education… is a painful, continual and difficult work to be done in kindness, by watching, by warning,… by praise, but above all -- by example.”

John Ruskin (1819–1900) English writer and art critic

Pain, Education

“I warn you all, hatred is finding fertile soil within me. And in your compassion, in your every good intention, you nurture it.”

Steven Erikson book Memories of Ice

Source: Memories of Ice

“Don't go there Rule" Lawe warned him softly. " I don't think your horoscope declared today to be a good day to die.”

Lora Leigh (1965) American writer

Source: Lawe's Justice

Law, Thinking

“She warned me about Mr. Herondale, though, said he’d likely be rude to me, and familiar. She said I could be rude right back, that nobody would mind.”

“Someone ought to be rude to him. He’s rude enough to everyone else.”

Cassandra Clare book Clockwork Angel

Source: Clockwork Angel

“As for the age of electronics, Selena, I really don't want to get personal with something that comes with a warning label and batteries. (Grace)”

Sherrilyn Kenyon Fantasy Lover

Source: Fantasy Lover

Age, Personality

“Hazel!” he yelled. “That box! Open it!”
She hesitated, then saw the box he meant. Te label read WARNING. DO NOT OPEN.
“Open it!” Leo yelled again.”

Rick Riordan The Mark of Athena

Source: The Mark of Athena

Reading, Box

“Nico di Angelo has warned them: the House of Hades would stir their worst memories, make them see things and hear things from the past Their ghosts would become restless.”

Rick Riordan book The Blood of Olympus

Source: The Blood of Olympus

Memory, Past, Housing

“There was no warning, not even a knock. The door flew open, and he forgot his present aches and pains in anticipation of what lay in store. The figure that stood in the door was not that of an enemy. It was worse. It was his mother.”

Elizabeth Peters The Ape Who Guards the Balance

Source: The Ape Who Guards the Balance

Pain

“. The language of love is like that, possessive. That should be the first warning that it's not going to encourage anyone's betterment.”

Holly Black book Black Heart

Source: Black Heart

Love

“Graves: It’s going to snow.
Dru Anderson: Thanks for the warning.
Graves: Hey, no problem. First one’s free.”

Lilith Saintcrow book Strange Angels

Source: Strange Angels

Problem

“And this is my life, getting dumped with no warning. Or liking people who don't like me back, or who don't like me enough, or not as much as they like someone else.”

E. Lockhart (1967) American writer of novels as E. Lockhart (mainly for teenage girls) and of picture books under real name Emily J…

Source: The Boyfriend List: 15 Guys, 11 Shrink Appointments, 4 Ceramic Frogs and Me, Ruby Oliver

Life, People

“Fear is a part of life. It's a warning mechanism. That's all. It tells you when there's danger around. Its job is to help you survive. Not cripple you into being unable to do it.”

Jim Butcher Dead Beat

Source: Dead Beat

Life, Fear, Help, Parting

“All a poet can do today is warn.”

Wilfred Owen (1893–1918) English poet and soldier (1893-1918)

“We are the people our parents warned us about.”

Jimmy Buffett (1946) American singer–songwriter and businessman

People, Parent, For Parents

“I keep warning and warning, and nobody seems willing to listen. One of these days someone is going to wake up to the fact that I'm serious when I say never to attack my sister without looking over your shoulder for me. (Rhoan)”

Keri Arthur Australian writer

Sister

“I think the discomfort that some people feel in going to the monkey cages at the zoo is a warning sign.”

Carl Sagan (1934–1996) American astrophysicist, cosmologist, author and science educator

Source: The Varieties of Scientific Experience: A Personal View of the Search for God

People, Feeling, Thinking

“Next time you wish to feed me poison, warn me first," Loor demanded. (The Merchant of Death)”

D.J. MacHale (1955) American television director and producer

Death, Time

“I often warn people: "Somewhere along the way, someone is going to tell you, 'There is no "I" in team.' What you should tell them is, 'Maybe not. But there is an "I" in independence, individuality and integrity.”

George Carlin (1937–2008) American stand-up comedian

People, Way

“If I can't serve as a role model, let me serve as a warning.”

Mason Cooley (1927–2002) American academic

“Here we are. Maybe I should warn you before we enter…(Asmodeus)
(Jericho stepped past him and threw open the door.)
Or maybe not. Let’s just barge in and be surprised, shall we? (Asmodeus)”

Sherrilyn Kenyon (1965) Novelist

Source: Dream Warrior

Past

“When I look back on the stuff I used to wear, I wonder why somebody didn't try to stop me. Just a friendly warning, "You may regret this," would have been fine.”

Ellen DeGeneres (1958) American stand-up comedian, television host, and actress

Source: The Funny Thing Is...

“I would warn you that I do not attribute to nature either beauty or deformity, order or confusion. Only in relation to our imagination can things be called beautiful or ugly, well-ordered or confused.”

Baruch Spinoza (1632–1677) Dutch philosopher

Beauty, Imagination, Nature

“we are the women our parents warned us against, and we are proud”

Gloria Steinem (1934) American feminist and journalist

Women, Parent

“I warn you, the trip will not be easy. Once you choose to walk in the light, your path will lead you places you do not want to go.”

David Farland book The Courtship of Princess Leia

Source: The Courtship of Princess Leia

Light

“Be warned - Hammond does tend to be a bit optimistic about these kind of things. If the army were made up of one-legged mutes, he would praise their balance and their listening skills.”

Brandon Sanderson (1975) American fantasy writer

Source: The Final Empire

“The Augusteum warns me not to get attached to any obsolete ideas about who I am, what I represent, whom I belong to, or what function I may once have intended to serve.”

Elizabeth Gilbert book Eat, Pray, Love

Source: Eat, Pray, Love

Idea

“I watch the Eruptions. Mount Dad, long dormant, now considered armed and dangerous. Mount Saint Mom, oozing lava, spitting flame. Warn the villagers to run into the sea.”

Laurie Halse Anderson Speak

Source: Speak

Moms, Sea

“Without further warning, the sky opens up and cries.”

Libba Bray Going Bovine

Source: Going Bovine

“Blue to get ready
Green to go
Yellow to guide you through the snow
Orange to warn you that over you’ll go
Then red will be the final glow
Now seek the black, there’s no going back.”

Angie Sage book Queste

Source: Queste

“I'd blurted out the question only to keep him from noticing that I was working my hands free, but the Warden behind me, some young brown-haired surfer dude, yelled a warning. "She's getting loose!"
Narc.”

Rachel Caine (1962) American writer

Source: Thin Air

Question

“You're the kind of man my mother warned me about.”

Christine Feehan book Dark Prince

Source: Dark Prince

“Most of the bad guys in the real world don't know that they are bad guys. You don't get a flashing warning sign that you're about to damn yourself. It sneaks up on you when you aren't looking.”

Jim Butcher (1971) American author

World, Guy

“One of them had a large wooden sign nailed to its door proclaiming, NO SYMPATHY! I wondered what non-arcane visitors might think of the warning.”

Patrick Rothfuss book The Name of the Wind

Source: The Name of the Wind

Thinking

“If history has a habit of repeating itself, doesn't someone have to stay behind to shout out a warning?”

Jodi Picoult book The Storyteller

Source: The Storyteller

History

“I’m going to be exposed, aren’t I? (Acheron)
I don’t know. You planning on dropping your pants around me? If so, warn me first. I don’t want to go blind. (Savitar)”

Sherrilyn Kenyon (1965) Novelist

Source: Acheron

“He warned me the greediest wishes cause the greatest sorrows.”

Rick Riordan book The Son of Neptune

Source: The Son of Neptune

“As the Nobel laureate Elie Wiesel warned years ago, to forget a holocaust is to kill twice.”

Iris Chang book The Rape of Nanking

Source: The Rape of Nanking

Forgetting

“The more clearly we express it that the whole weight of our future victories will lie on our enemies, the more, in my opinion, will it tend to shorten the war. We have covered a considerable distance towards peace. The Entente no longer has any possibility of beating us economically. Do they think they can beat us militarily, now that our position in the West has become better that it ever was? If the statesmen of the Entente wanted understanding, they ought to have taken advantage of the situation now, when the Reich Chancellor has offered them the hand of understanding. They are playing a wanton game with their misguided peoples. Let the example of Russia be a warning to them. Russia, which offered us the hand of understanding, could have obtained a good peace of understanding if she had not risked this peace through the arrogance of Trotsky. May this struggle bring us victory, but may it also bring the benefits of this victory for Germany's future.”

Gustav Stresemann (1878–1929) German politician, statesman, and Nobel Peace Prize laureate

1910s, Speech in the Reichstag, 18 March 1918

War, People, Lie, Peace

“Kunti, or Pritha, is the daughter of Shoora of the Vrishnis, given away when just a child to her father’s childless friend Kuntibhoja. This rankles deep within her; she voices her resentment pointedly both before and after the Kurukshetra war. Growing up in Kuntibhoja’s apartments, she finds no mother; Kuntibhoja himself hands her over, in adolescence, to the vagaries of the eccentric, w:Irascibleirascible and fiery sage Durvasa. Should she displease the sage, she is warned, it will dishonour her guardian’s clan as well as her own.”

Kunti character from Indian epic Mahabharata

Five Holy Virgins, Five Sacred MythsOf Kunti and Satyawati Sexually Assertive Women of the Mahabharata

War, Daughters

“I've repeatedly warned we must avoid the extremists: those who say we should pull out our troops in Vietnam immediately, those who say we should escalate and go right into North Vietnam… I tell you, we should continue doing what we have been: just messing around.”

Pat Paulsen (1927–1997) United States Marine

Unidentified press conference, 1968 Featured in Pat Paulsen for President (1968), part 2 of 6 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KbP0ufyax5A&feature=relmfu, 01:01 ff (10:01 ff in full program)

“The history of the Republican Party is marked by vacillation between its founding principle of opportunity and its domination by the wealthy elite. The party came together in the 1850s in opposition to the wealthy slaveholders who controlled the federal government. Democrats acting on their behalf insisted that America’s primary principle was the Constitution's protection of property, and they pushed legislation to let planters monopolize the country’s resources at the expense of the working. … Abraham Lincoln and others recoiled from the idea of government as a prop for the rich. In organizing the Republican Party, they highlighted the equality of opportunity promised in the Declaration of Independence and warned that a healthy economy depended on widespread prosperity. Northerners and hardscrabble Westerners flocked to that vision, and elected Lincoln to the White House in 1860.”

Heather Cox Richardson American historian

"Bring Back the Party of Lincoln" http://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/04/opinion/bring-back-the-party-of-lincoln.html?_r=0 (3 September 2014), The New York Times, New York

History, Idea, Housing, Dependency

“Nobody who has lived through the rise of the violent anti-Semitism which led to Hitler can refuse Mrs. Thatcher admiration for her courageous and outspoken warning. When I grew up in Vienna the established Jewish families were a generally respected group and all decent people would frown upon the occasional anti-Jewish outbursts of a few popular politicians. It was the sudden influx of large numbers of Galician and Polish Jews [during World War I] … which in a short period changed the attitude. They were too visibly different to be readily absorbed.”

Friedrich Hayek (1899–1992) Austrian and British economist and Nobel Prize for Economics laureate

Letter to The Times after Thatcher claimed that British people were afraid of being "swamped" by people of a different culture. (11 February 1978), p. 15
1960s–1970s

War, People, World, Family

“The phone rang.
It was a thing that had been sitting here, black and quiet like a holstered gun, unlisted, unknown to anybody, used only for local outgoing calls, and when it was triggered it had the soft, muted sound of a silenced automatic. The first ring was a warning sound. The second time would be death calling.”

Mickey Spillane book Black Alley

Black Alley (1996)

Death, Silence, Time

“The signs on Bell’s door read “J. Bell” and “M. Bell.” I knocked and was invited in by Bell. He looked about the same as he had the last time I saw him, a couple of years ago. He has long, neatly combed red hair and a pointed beard, which give him a somewhat Shavian figura. On one wall of the office is a photograph of Bell with something that looks like a halo behind his head, and his expression in the photograph is mischievous. Theoretical physicists’ offices run the gamut from chaotic clutter to obsessive neatness; the Bells’ is somewhere in between. Bell invited me to sit down after warning me that the “visitor’s chair” tilted backward at unexpected angles. When I had mastered it, and had a chance to look around, the first thing that struck me was the absence of Mary. “Mary,” said Bell, with a note of some disbelief in his voice, “has retired.” This, it turned out, had occurred not long before my visit. “She will not look at any mathematics now. I hope she comes back,” he went on almost plaintively; “I need her. We are doing several problems together.” In recent years, the Bells have been studying new quantum mechanical effects that will become relevant for the generation of particle accelerators that will perhaps succeed the LEP. Bell began his career as a professional physicist by designing accelerators, and Mary has spent her entire career in accelerator design. A couple of years ago Bell, like the rest of the members of CERN theory division, was asked to list his physics speciality. Among the more “conventional” entries in the division such as “super strings,” “weak interactions,” “cosmology,” and the like, Bell’s read “quantum engineering.””

Jeremy Bernstein (1929) American physicist

Quantum Profiles (1991), John Stewart Bell: Quantum Engineer

Hope, Mathematics, Problem, Study

“This is the Court of Chancery, which has its decaying houses and its blighted lands in every shire, which has its worn-out lunatic in every madhouse and its dead in every churchyard, which has its ruined suitor with his slipshod heels and threadbare dress borrowing and begging through the round of every man's acquaintance, which gives to monied might the means abundantly of wearying out the right, which so exhausts finances, patience, courage, hope, so overthrows the brain and breaks the heart, that there is not an honourable man among its practitioners who would not give--who does not often give--the warning, "Suffer any wrong that can be done you rather than come here!"”

Charles Dickens book Bleak House

Source: Bleak House (1852-1853), Ch. 1

Hope, Courage, Suffering, Heart

“Soldiers for equality, uh? Glad you warned me. I’d have thought you were just thieves.”

Gregory Benford (1941) Science fiction author and astrophysicist

Part 4 “Hiruko: Six Years Later”, Chapter 1 (p. 148)
Against Infinity (1983)

“By 2050 Egypt’s population will increase from 90 million to 138 million. The population of Nigeria will increase from 186 million to 390 million. Uganda’s population will rise from 38 million to 93 million, and Ethiopia’s from 102 to 228 million. It is János Martonyi who usually warns us – and how right he is – that projecting current trends into the future requires caution, because in history there are always events which can change their course. But as we cannot prepare for unforeseeable events in the future, common sense tells us that we must project these figures into the future, and we must prepare for them. They clearly show that the real pressure on our continent will come from Africa. Today we are talking about Syria, today we are talking about Libya; but in fact we must prepare for the population pressure coming from the region beyond Libya – and its magnitude will be far greater than anything we have experienced so far. This warns us that we must be steely in our determination. Border protection – particularly when we need to build a fence and detain people – is something which is difficult to justify in aesthetic terms, but believe me, you cannot protect the borders – and thus ourselves – with flowers and cuddly toys. We must face this fact.”

Viktor Orbán (1963) Hungarian politician, chairman of Fidesz

Tusnádfürdő speech http://www.kormany.hu/en/the-prime-minister/the-prime-minister-s-speeches/viktor-orban-s-presentation-at-the-27h-balvanyos-summer-open-university-and-student-camp, 26 July 2016

People, History, Flowers, Sense

“Goldhagen does not say it, but one has the sense that he would affix, to every Christian Bible, the warning label: "This text contains hate speech."”

Mark Riebling (1963) American writer

Jesus, Jews and the Shoah: A Moral Reckoning by Daniel Jonah Goldhagen (2003)

Hate, Sense

“The noble lord who moved the address had, in the course of his speech, warned the House not to let an anxiety for liberty lead to a compromise of the safety of the state. He, for his part, could not separate those things. The safety of the state could only be found in the protection of the liberties of the people. Whatever was destructive of the latter also destroyed the former…The discontent existing in the country had been insisted on as a ground for the adoption of some measures…But there was another axiom no less true—that there never was an extensive discontent without great misgovernment…When no attention was paid to the calls of the people for relief, when their petitions were rejected and their sufferings aggravated, was it wonderful that at last public discontents should assume a formidable aspect?”

Charles Grey, 2nd Earl Grey (1764–1845) Prime Minister of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland

Speech in the House of Lords (23 November 1819). The Speech from the Throne at the opening of the session of 1819-20 called for strong measures against the seditious spirit shown in the manufacturing districts. Grey moved an amendment in the Lords, calling for an enquiry into the Peterloo Massacre of 16 August, in order to maintain ‘that confidence in the public institutions of the country, which constitutes the best safeguard of all law and government.’ His amendment was defeated by 159 votes to 34. Parliamentary Debates, vol. xli, pp. 7-19, quoted in Alan Bullock and Maurice Shock (ed.), The Liberal Tradition from Fox to Keynes (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1967), pp. 5-6.
1810s

People, Suffering, Parting, Housing

“We should never forget Ratu Sukuna's warning about the dangers of chiefs simply becoming decorations. He said if that happened they were finished.”

Josefa Iloilo (1920–2011) President of Fiji

Opening address to the Great Council of Chiefs meeting, 27 July 2005 (excerpts)

Forgetting

“When Ms Düsap heard that I was also about to embark on a literary career, Mrs. Düsap warned me that a crown of thorns rather than a crown of laurels awaited women on this road. In this world of ours it is not tolerated when a woman does well and claims a place for herself. In order to achieve this, it would be necessary for a woman to be far above average and she added: A man can be a merely average writer but a woman, never!”

Zabel Yesayan (1878–1943) Armenian writer

"Pagavan E : Zabel Yesayan'ın Barış Çağrısını Duyabilmek"] ["Enough! : Being Able to Hear Zabel Yesayan's Call for Peace"] by Melissa Bilal, in Kültür ve Siyasette Feminist Yaklaşımlar [Feminist Approaches in Culture and Politics], Issue 7 (March 2009)

Women, World

“That spirit, that feeling for one's comrades in the snow, the moonlight, under the blossoms, is also basic to the tea ceremony. A tea ceremony is a coming together in feeling, a meeting of good comrades in a good season. I may say in passing, that to see my novel Thousand Cranes as an evocation of the formal and spiritual beauty of the tea ceremony is a misreading. It is a negative work, and expression of doubt about and warning against the vulgarity into which the tea ceremony has fallen.”

Yasunari Kawabata (1899–1972) Japanese author, Nobel Prize winner

Japan, the Beautiful and Myself (1969)

Beauty, Feeling, Tea, Season

“Francis Fukuyama seized on the ignominious collapse of the Soviet system as proof that “the end point of mankind’s ideological evolution” was “the universalization of Western liberal democracy as the final form of human government” and Marxism’s “death as a living ideology of world historical significance.” That conclusion was, to say the least, premature, not only because it reckoned without the rise of an Islamist theocracy or the fallout from the 2008 worldwide recession, which provoked a renascence of Marxist advocacy in the writings of Antonio Negri and Michael Hardt, Alain Badiou, the Occupy Movement, and Thomas Picketty. This pattern is, again, an echo of what happened in Reconstruction, and it warns those who yet believe that liberal democracy is the most desirable political future to be wary of Whiggish assumptions about democracy’s inevitability. Human society has oscillated between desires for stability, security, and reciprocity—which is what feudalism, Marxism, and theocracy promise—and desires for mobility, liberty, and profit—which is what the Enlightenment offered on a world-historical scale. There is nothing that can be declared permanent in a bourgeois revolution, and our own Reconstruction, not to mention a good deal of recent history, is the unhappy proof.”

Allen C. Guelzo (1953) American historian

2010s, Defending Reconstruction (2017)

Death, World, Democracy, History

“My one purpose in life is to serve as a warning to others.”

Jamie Zawinski (1968) American programmer

DNA Lounge blog http://www.dnalounge.com/backstage/log/2004/04.html#18

Life

“I'm getting a little fed up with hearing about, oh, civilian casualties. I think we ought to nuke North Korea right now just to give the rest of the world a warning.”

Ann Coulter (1961) author, political commentator

Interview with George Gurley in The New York Observer (10 January 2005).
2005

World, Thinking

“What these tests tell employers about potential employees is hard to imagine, since the "right" answers should be obvious to anyone who has ever encountered the principle of hierarchy and subordination. Do I work well with others? You bet, but never to the point where I would hesitate to inform on them for the slightest infraction. Am I capable of independent decision making? Oh yes, but I know better than to let this capacity interfere with a slavish obedience to orders. At The Maids, a housecleaning service, I am given something called the "Accutrac personality test," which warns at the beginning that "Accutrac has multiple measures which detect attempts to distort or 'psych out' the questionnaire." Naturally, I "never" find it hard "to stop moods of self-pity," nor do I imagine that others are talking about me behind my back or believe that "management and employees will always be in conflict because they have totally different sets of goals."”

Barbara Ehrenreich (1941) American writer and journalist

The real function of these tests, I decide, is to convey information not to the employer but to the potential employee, and the information conveyed is always: You will have no secrets from us.
Source: Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting by in America (2001), Ch. 2: Scrubbing in Maine (p. 59)

Secret, Imagination, Mood, Nature

“"If it works, he'll take the credit," Bokov warned once they were safely outside NKVD headquarters. "Oh, sure," Shteinberg agreed. "But he'd do that anyway." Bokov laughed, not that his superior was joking- or wrong.”

Harry Turtledove (1949) American novelist, short story author, essayist, historian

Source: The Man With the Iron Heart (2008), p. 413

“The Sovereign has, under a constitutional monarchy such as ours, three rights—the right to be consulted, the right to encourage, the right to warn.”

Walter Bagehot book The English Constitution

No. III, "The Monarchy (continued)", p. 75
The English Constitution (1867)

“When I met Wittgenstein, I saw that Schlick's warnings were fully justified. But his behavior was not caused by any arrogance. In general, he was of a sympathetic temperament and very kind; but he was hypersensitive and easily irritated. Whatever he said was always interesting and stimulating and the way in which he expressed it was often fascinating. His point of view and his attitude toward people and problems, even theoretical problems, were much more similar to those of a creative artist than to those of a scientist; one might almost say, similar to those of a religious prophet or a seer. When he started to formulate his view on some specific problem, we often felt the internal struggle that occurred in him at that very moment, a struggle by which he tried to penetrate from darkness to light under an intense and painful strain, which was even visible on his most expressive face. When finally, sometimes after a prolonged arduous effort, his answers came forth, his statement stood before us like a newly created piece of art or a divine revelation. Not that he asserted his views dogmatically … But the impression he made on us was as if insight came to him as through divine inspiration, so that we could not help feeling that any sober rational comment of analysis of it would be a profanation.”

Rudolf Carnap (1891–1970) German philosopher

Rudolf Carnap, as quoted in The Philosophy of Rudolf Carnap (1963) by Paul Arthur Schilpp, p. 25, and in Ludwig Wittgenstein : The Duty of Genius (1991) by Ray Monk, p. 244

Pain, People, Art, Way

“I'm delighted to see each of you here tonight in spite of a storm warning. You reveal that you are determined to go on anyhow. Something is happening in Memphis, something is happening in our world.”

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

1960s, I've Been to the Mountaintop (1968)

World

“We warned that WBC has had lots of experience with Ireland's militant sodomite citizenry, steeped for many decades in ignorant, blind idolatrous Catholicism, belching out their vile fagspeak, slander and blasphemy against God and His word.”

Fred Phelps (1929–2014) American pastor and activist

Sermon about Ireland, July 29, 2007. Letter from UK Border Agency: WBC has been banned from the UK http://www.godhatesfags.com/written/fliers/archive/20090224_uk-border-agency.pdf. GodHatesFags.com. February 19, 2009. 2000s, Ireland (2007)

God

“Then let every one of us, being warned by this sentence of the angel, acknowledge that he as yet cleaves to first principles, or, at least, does not comprehend all those things which are necessary to be known; and that therefore progress is to be made to the very end of life: for this is our wisdom, to be learners to the end.”

John Calvin (1509–1564) French Protestant reformer

Commentaries on the Prophet Zechariah. Part 9 http://www.iclnet.org/pub/resources/text/ipb-e/epl-09/cvzec-09.txt. Zecharia

Life, Wisdom, Angels

“I admit, I was fascinated by Adolf Hitler. He was a pleasant boss and a fatherly friend. I deliberately ignored all the warning voices inside me and enjoyed the time by his side almost until the bitter end. It wasn't what he said, but the way he said things and how he did things.”

Traudl Junge (1920–2002) secretary to Adolf Hitler

Quoted in In Hitler's Bunker: A Boy Soldier's Eyewitness Account of the Fuhrer's Last Days (2005) by Armin D. Lehmann and Tim Carroll, p. 91, and in The Rise of the Fourth Reich: The Secret Societies That Threaten to Take Over America (2009) by Jim Marrs, p. 342.

Way, Time

“To those who doubt and deny the preponderance of good over evil in human nature; who think the few are made to rule, and the many to serve; who put rank above brotherhood, and race above humanity; who attach more importance to ancient forms than to the living realities of the present; who worship power in whatever hands it may be lodged and by whatever means it may have been obtained; our government is a mountain of sin, and, what is worse, it seems confirmed in its transgressions. One of the latest and most potent European prophets, one who felt himself called upon for a special deliverance concerning us and our destiny as a nation, was the late Thomas Carlyle. He described us as rushing to ruin, and when we may expect to reach the terrible end, our gloomy prophet, enveloped in the fogs of London, has not been pleased to tell us. Warning and advice from any quarter are not to be despised, and especially not from one so eminent as Mr. Carlyle; and yet Americans will find it hard to heed even men like him, while the animus is so apparent, bitter and perverse.”

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

1860s, Our Composite Nationality (1869)

Men, Mountain, Nature, Thinking

“Yes, let the Angel blow!
A peal from the parted heaven,
The first of seven!—
The warning, not yet the sign, of woe!
That men arise
And look about them with wakened eyes,
Behold on their garments the dust and slime,
Refrain, forbear,
Accept the weight of a nobler care
And take reproach from the fallen time!”

Bayard Taylor (1825–1878) United States poet, novelist and travel writer

"Gabriel" in The Century : A Popular Quarterly, Volume 18 (1874), p. 617.

Men, Angels, Time, Parting

“Memo to himself: the one way to make people panic was to warn them not to.”

Alastair Reynolds book Absolution Gap

Source: Absolution Gap (2003), Chapter 4 (p. 56)

People, Way

“It is the knowledge and experience of the Incarnation, the wisdom and warnings given by Jesus in the Gospels, and not least the Resurrection that in the final analysis are all that matters.”

Simon Conway Morris (1951) British palaeontologist

The Boyle lecture (2005)

Wisdom, Knowledge

“Man will take anything you like, except warning.”

Samuel Laman Blanchard (1804–1845) British author and journalist

"That a Burnt Child often Dreads the Fire".
Sketches from Life (1846)

“World peace is continually threatened by the paranoia of power, as internal and international conflicts plague humanity. Confronted by the danger of weapons of mass destruction, humanity must take effective measures towards disarmament. Albert Einstein warned us: “I know not with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones.””

Alfred de Zayas (1947) American United Nations official

United Nations General Assembly - Promotion of a democratic and equitable international order http://www.ohchr.org/Documents/Issues/IntOrder/A-68-284_en.pdf. 2013

War, World, Peace

“I would never say that God used Hitler to punish the Jews. If God treated any of us justly and punished us according to our sins, we would all be in Hell in an instant. I'm Jewish and I am as guilty as any Gentile of violating His law. However, you and I get to stay alive for a time because God is rich in mercy, is filled with what the Bible calls "lovingkindness," and He particularly lavished this loving-kindness upon the Jewish nation. If you study the Scriptures, you will see that He promised them that if they loved and obeyed Him He would give them long life, health, prosperity, and protection from their enemies. But He also warned that if they disobeyed Him, His hand of protection would be removed.”

Ray Comfort (1949) New Zealand-born Christian minister and evangelist

The Defender's Guide for Life's Toughest Questions (2011)

Love, Life, God, Health

“I didn't care. It was better to be a live coward than a dead madman. These people walking in and out of huge concrete buildings--someone should warn them. It would come again…Los Angeles was doomed. It was a city with a curse upon it.”

John Fante book Ask the Dust

Ask the Dust (1939)

People, Angels, Dead

“Our religion teaches us that every human being is unique and must play his part in working out his own salvation. So whereas socialists begin with society, and how people can be fitted in, we start with Man, whose social and economic relationship are just part of his wider existence. Because we see man as a spiritual being, we utterly reject the Marxist view, which gives pride of place to economics…The religious tradition values economic activity, how we earn our living, create wealth, but warns against obsession with it, warns against putting it above all else. Money is not an end in itself, but a means to an end.”

Margaret Thatcher (1925–2013) British stateswoman and politician

Speech to Greater London Young Conservatives (Iain Macleod Memorial Lecture - "Dimensions of Conservatism") (4 July 1977) http://www.margaretthatcher.org/document/103411 Leader of the Opposition

Money, People, Religion, Parting

“As Arendt pointed out, we must trust only those who have this self-awareness. This self-awareness comes only through consciousness. It comes with the ability to look at a crime being committed and say “I can’t.” We must fear, Arendt warned, those whose moral system is built around the flimsy structure of blind obedience. We must fear those who cannot think.”

Chris Hedges (1956) American journalist

“Why the United States Is Destroying Its Education System” (2011)

Fear, Thinking

“The days of ‘Let’s haul this kid in front of the judge, scare him and send him home with a warning’ are long since gone,” says attorney Jay Leiderman. “ Prosecutorial discretion is a great thing if it’s exercised, but it doesn’t happen in any meaningful way these days, because prosecutions are so politicized.”

Jay Leiderman (1971) lawyer

As stated in, Prosecutorial Discretion: Let's Haul That Kid In Front of the Judge to Scare Him- Not. http://www.newsreview.com/sacramento/is-former-sacramento-media-employee/content?oid=13239765
Variant: The days of ‘Let’s haul this kid in front of the judge, scare him and send him home with a warning’ are long since gone,” says attorney Jay Leiderman. “ Prosecutorial discretion is a great thing if it’s exercised, but it doesn’t happen in any meaningful way these days, because prosecutions are so politicized.

Way, Exercises, Home

Quotes about warning page 2

Quotes about warning
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