Selected danger quotes

1. Technological progress is like an axe in the hands of a pathological criminal.

2. Slicing a warm slab of bacon is a lot like giving a ferret a shave. No matter how careful you are, somebody's going to get hurt.

3. We know what happens to people who stay in the middle of the road. They get run down.

4. To really ask is to open the door to the whirlwind. The answer may annihilate the question and the questioner.

5. Speak nothing but the truth, and you'll soon be considered dangerous.

6. It's going to be a season with lots of accidents, and I'll risk saying that we'll be lucky if something really serious doesn't happen.

7. The danger sensation is exciting. The challenge is to find new dangers.

8. In France, a chemist named Pilatre de Rozier tested the flammability of hydrogen by gulping a mouthful and blowing across an open flame, proving at a stroke that hydrogen is indeed explosively combustible and that eyebrows are not necessarily a permanent feature of one's face.

9. We're a long, long way from home, Bobbie; Home's a long, long way from us. I feel a dirty wind blowing; Devils and dust.

10. Blind faith in your leaders, or in anything, will get you killed.

11. The Universe forces those who live in it to understand it. Those creatures who find everyday experience a muddled jumble of events with no predictability, no regularity, are in grave peril. The Universe belongs to those who, at least to some degree, have figured it out.

12. I'm probably one of the most dangerous men in the world if I want to be. But I never wanted to be anything but me.

13. The blood will follow where the knife is driven, The flesh will quiver where the pincers tear.

14. It is when power is wedded to chronic fear that it becomes formidable.

15. The ordinary man with extraordinary power is the chief danger for mankind - not the fiend or the sadist.

16. One may ride upon a tiger's back but it is fatal to dismount.

17. Mortal danger is an effective antidote for fixed ideas.

18. Base and crafty cowards are like the arrow that flieth in the dark.

19. There is nothing that sharpens a man's senses so acutely as to know that bitter and determined enemies are in pursuit of him night and day.

20. The smylere with the knyf under the cloke.

21. It is more dangerous to be a great prophet or poet than to promote twenty companies for swindling simple folk out of their savings.

22. I think war is a dangerous place.

23. Fire has always been and, seemingly, will always remain, the most terrible of the elements.

24. No one that encounters prosperity does not also encounter danger.

25. Familiarity with danger makes a brave man braver, but less daring. Thus with seamen: he who goes the oftenest round Cape Horn goes the most circumspectly.

26. I remember, particularly, a trip to Bosnia where the welcoming ceremony had to be moved inside because of sniper fire.

27. If I'd written all the truth I knew for the past ten years, about 600 people - including me - would be rotting in prison cells from Rio to Seattle today. Absolute truth is a very rare and dangerous commodity in the context of professional journalism.

28. You cannot run faster than a bullet.

29. Children say that people are hung sometimes for speaking the truth.

30. I'll probably be popped off by some loony.

31. I am walking over hot coals suspended over a deep pit at the bottom of which are a large number of vipers baring their fangs.

32. The heresies we should fear are those which can be confused with orthodoxy.

33. The Westerly Wind asserting his sway from the south-west quarter is often like a monarch gone mad, driving forth with wild imprecations the most faithful of his courtiers to shipwreck, disaster, and death.

34. They say that the Devil is a charming man. And just like you I bet he can dance.

35. Down that path lies madness. On the other hand, the road to hell is paved with melting snowballs.

36. There's some entertainment value in watching people juggle nitroglycerin.

37. Learning carries within itself certain dangers because out of necessity one has to learn from one's enemies.

38. Cured yesterday of my disease, I died last night of my physician.

39. Trusting no man as his friend, he could not recognize his enemy when the latter actually appeared.

40. Support by United States rulers is rather in the nature of the support that the rope gives to a hanged man.

41. A human exposed without protection to the conditions required to support Affronter life would be dying in at least three excitingly different and painful ways anyway without having to worry about being crushed by a cage of leg-thick tentacles.

42. Modern racism (of which antisemitism is part) although caused by specific social conditions, becomes, when it gains strength, a force that in my opinion can only be described as demonic.

43. Thug: Look, bud, I said 'Your money or your life.'

44. Jack: It's really dangerous, here in the jungle.

45. The most dangerous food is wedding cake.

46. Es ist nichts schrecklicher als eine tatige Unwissenheit.

47. Beware the wrath of a patient adversary.

48. Age is a sicknesse, and Youth is an ambush.

49. Man may escape from rope and gun; Nay, some have outlived the doctor's pill: Who takes a woman must be undone, That basilisk is sure to kill. The fly that sips treacle is lost in the sweets, So he that tastes woman, woman, woman, He that tastes woman, ruin meets.

50. Speak, speak, let terror strike slaves mute, Much danger makes great hearts most resolute.

51. Wise men say nothing in dangerous times.

52. What a waste. What a waste of a talented, beautiful guy. Obviously, whatever 'it' is, he had it. He was luminous - a brilliant guy with great taste. But on the other side of that, he was a kid, and that can be a dangerous thing to be, especially in that world, being in that position. I was very lucky I pulled out of it, but River - he didn't get out. There was so much ahead for him. Like the beauty and the luxury of making a family. (2003)

53. That Marti is a madman - but a dangerous madman.

54. Dorothy looked, and gave a little cry of fright. There, indeed, just under the corner of the great beam the house rested on, two feet were sticking out, shod in silver shoes with pointed toes.

55. He was within a few hours of giving his enemies the slip forever.

56. Seven thirty-nine, more than three hundred miles to the north and east, Jack Reacher climbed out of his motel room window. One minute earlier, he had been in the bathroom, brushing his teeth. One minute before that, he had opened the door of his room to check the morning temperature. He had left it open, and the closet just inside the entrance passageway was faced with mirrored glass, and there was a shaving mirror in the bathroom on a cantilevered arm, and by a freak of optical chance he caught sight of four men getting out of a car and walking toward the motel office. Pure luck, but a guy as vigilant as Jack Reacher gets lucky more times than the average.

57. I've seen the future, brother: it is murder.

58. Is that a gun in your pocket, or are you just happy to see me?

59. 'There's no escape from the Acid Drop!'

60. Many a dangerous temptation comes to us in fine gay colours that are but skin-deep.

61. Our parents were kind of scared to let us outside of the house, because where we lived was pretty dangerous.

62. The people to fear are not those who disagree with you, but those who disagree with you and are too cowardly to let you know.

63. The fascination of shooting as a sport depends almost wholly on whether you are at the right or wrong end of the gun.

64. His aspect was that of one who has been looking for the leak in a gas pipe with a lighted candle.

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

66. Like an Easter Island statue with an arse full of razor blades.

67. Euthanasia is a long, smooth-sounding word, and it conceals its danger as long, smooth words do, but the danger is there, nevertheless.

68. Giving me a new idea is like handing a cretin a loaded gun, but I do thank you anyhow, bang, bang.

69. They wanted to have a good time, but they were like children playing in the street; they could see one after another of them being killed--run over, maimed, destroyed--but they continued to play anyhow.

70. Better to be ignorant of a matter than half know it.

71. There are few things in the world as dangerous as sleepwalkers.

72. I needed a drink. I needed a lot of life insurance. I needed a vacation. I needed a home in the country. What I had was a hat, a coat and a gun. I put them on and went out of the room.

73. I hung up. It was a step in the right direction, but it didn't go far enough. I ought to have locked the door and hid under the desk.

74. Many of us saw religion as harmless nonsense. Beliefs might lack all supporting evidence but, we thought, if people needed a crutch for consolation, where's the harm? September 11th changed all that. Revealed faith is not harmless nonsense, it can be lethally dangerous nonsense. Dangerous because it gives people unshakeable confidence in their own righteousness. Dangerous because it gives them false courage to kill themselves, which automatically removes normal barriers to killing others. Dangerous because it teaches enmity to others labelled only by a difference of inherited tradition. And dangerous because we have all bought into a weird respect, which uniquely protects religion from normal criticism. Let's now stop being so damned respectful!

75. We lived like that 'Happy Family' you sometimes see in traveling zoos: a lion caged with a lamb. It is a startling exhibit but the lamb has to be replaced frequently.

76. A fake fortuneteller can be tolerated. But an authentic soothsayer should be shot on sight. Cassandra did not get half the kicking around she deserved.

77. By the data to date, there is only one animal in the Galaxy dangerous to man - man himself. So he must supply his own indispensable competition. He has no enemy to help him.

78. When in danger or in doubt, run in circles, scream and shout.

79. Man's Reason is in such deep insolvency to sense, that tho' she guide his highest flight heav'nward, and teach him dignity morals manners and human comfort, she can delicatly and dangerously bedizen the rioting joys that fringe the sad pathways of Hell.

80. 'What is the Black Spot, Captain?' 'That's a summons, mate.'

81. She has no strong white arms to fold you, But the ten-times-fingering weed to hold you - Out on the rocks where the tide has rolled you.

82. For the female of the species is more deadly than the male.

83. But remember, please, the Law by which we live, We are not built to comprehend a lie, We can neither love nor pity nor forgive, If you make a slip in handling us you die! We are greater than the Peoples or the Kings - Be humble, as you crawl beneath our rods! - Our touch can alter all created things, We are everything on earth - except The Gods!

84. The devil's voice is sweet to hear.

85. The world has teeth and it can bite you with them any time it wants.

86. Somehow the word started coming back - some people still had breath to spare, apparently. The word was this hill was a quarter of a mile long. The word was it was two miles long. The word was that no Walker had ever gotten a ticket on this hill. The word was that three boys had gotten tickets here just last year. And after that, the word stopped coming back.

87. This is nine! Nine! This is nine! Nine! This is ten! Ten! We have killed your friends! Every friend is now dead! This is six! Six! [:] Eighteen! This is now eighteen! Take cover when the siren sounds! This is four! Four! [:] Five! This is five! Ignore the siren! Even if you leave this room, you can never leave this room!

88. The most dangerous man in America.

89. American capitalism is predatory, and American politics are corrupt: The same thing is true in England and the same in France; but in all these three countries the dominating fact is that whatever the people get ready to change the government, they can change it. The same thing is not true of Germany, and until it was made true in Germany, there could be no free political democracy anywhere else in the world - to say nothing of any free social democracy. My revolutionary friends who will not recognize this fact seem to me like a bunch of musicians sitting down to play a symphony concert in a forest where there is a man-eating tiger loose. For my part, much as I enjoy symphony concerts, I want to put my fiddle away in its case and get a rifle and go out and settle with the tiger.

90. A state that denies its citizens their basic rights becomes a danger to its neighbors as well: internal arbitrary rule will be reflected in arbitrary external relations. The suppression of public opinion, the abolition of public competition for power and its public exercise opens the way for the state power to arm itself in any way it sees fit.... A state that does not hesitate to lie to its own people will not hesitate to lie to other states.

91. Our fathers were Englishmen which came over this great ocean, and were ready to perish in this wilderness.

92. Her mouth is a honey-blossom, No doubt, as the poet sings; But within her lips, the petals, Lurks a cruel bee that stings.

93. Following daily such a dread- ful trade to earn a living, With every second on that cliff So cruel and unforgiving,

94. ...the Lot's knowledge of the country's torment was academic. Time went on a different schedule there. Nothing too nasty could happen in such a nice little town. Not there.

95. Surrounded by assassins!