Dangerous Ideas Quotes

[Donald Trump] suggestions that the United States should leave the Pacific and let Japan, South Korea, or whoever else wants to develop nuclear weapons. These are incredibly dangerous ideas that need to be confronted. ~ Hillary Clinton

Of course if no one had ever been exposed to dangerous ideas from scandalous women, Christianity itself would not have had its unique beginning nor its glorious history, but whatever. ~ Nadia Bolz-Weber

As a rule, the most dangerous ideas are not the ones that divide people but those on which they agree. ~ Stephen Vizinczey

The most dangerous ideas in a society are not the ones being argued, but the ones that are assumed. ~ C.S. Lewis

At the apex of Prince's career, I listened almost exclusively to metal. My sister actually purchased 'Purple Rain' on cassette, which I write about in my anthology ["Chuck Klosterman IV: A Decade of Curious People and Dangerous Ideas"]. And I felt ashamed that I liked Prince so much. A typical rock fan would be embarrassed that they liked Warrant or Ratt at the time, but I had the exact opposite experience. And I had this overwhelming fear that Prince was actually a better guitar player than any of the metal gods. ~ Chuck Klosterman

Let me lay my cards on the table. If I were to give an award for the single best idea anyone ever had, I'd give it to Darwin, ahead of even Newton or Einstein and everyone else. In a single stroke, the idea of evolution by natural selection unifies the realm of life, meaning and purpose with the realm of space and time, cause and effect, mechanism and physical law. It is not just a wonderful idea. It is a dangerous idea. ~ Daniel Dennett

Illusions are dangerous . . . Ideas are infallible, people are not. Don't confuse the two. ~ Kate Moretti

Literature was intended to be dangerous. Art was meant to be dangerous. Ideas were nothing if they were not dangerous. ~ Timothy Findley

Oh, we love to live among people and to inform these people at once of everything, even our most infernal and dangerous ideas; we like sharing with people, and, who knows why, we demand immediately, on the spot, that these people respond to us at once with the fullest sympathy, enter into all our cares and concerns, nod in agreement with us, and never cross our humor. ~ Fyodor Dostoyevsky

Sometimes Partridge imagines that this isn't real, that, instead, it's just some elaborate reenactment of destruction, not the actual destruction itself. He remembers once being in a museum on a class trip. There were miniature displays with live actors in various wings, talking about what things were like before the Return of Civility. Each display was dedicated to a theme: before the impressive prison system was built, before difficult children were properly medicated, when feminism didn't encourage femininity, when the media was hostile to government instead of working toward a greater good, before people with dangerous ideas were properly identified, back when government had to ask permission to protect its good citizens from the evils of the world and from the evils among us, before the gates had gone up around neighborhoods with buzzer systems and friendly men at gatehouses who knew everyone by name.

In the heat of the day, there were battle reenactments on the museum's wide lawn that showed the uprisings waged in certain cities against the Return of Civility and its legislation. With the military behind the government, the uprisings - usually political demonstrations that became violent - were easily tamped down. The government's domestic militia, the Righteous Red Wave, came to save the day. The recorded sounds were deafening, Uzis and attack sirens pouring from speakers. The kids in his class bought bullhorns, very realistic hand grenades, and Righteous R ~ Julianna Baggott

The only antidote to dangerous ideas is strong alternatives vigorously advocated. ~ Lawrence Summers

It was like trying to balance on a pair of knife blades. Who had thought of this mad form of travel in the first place? And why had no one locked them up before they passed their dangerous ideas on to others? ~ Tamora Pierce

You have to have a temperamental attraction to dangerous ideas ... ~ Jim Holt

What could be more absurd than the idea that genuine anti-Christian prejudice is a major force in American politics. ~ Michael Kinsley

Happiness will never be any greater than the idea we have of it. ~ Maurice Maeterlinck

I don't exist
metal pressed to pages
spilling blood, ink
in vein each thought rages

Sunlight shooting
through a forest of pines
black top winding
and yellow dotted lines

I am not here
only a deep aching,
a lightning flash
and a tree trunk breaking

Sheets once alive
covered in a deep red
mark the present
but I am not yet dead

Nothing is here
only the rain and mist
fresh air and soil
I do not need to exist. ~ Abby Musgrove

We're in the age of the idea. The organization that can develop a culture of creativity and idea generation will be the winners. ~ Kevin Roberts

In many American churches, Jesus still comes "as one unknown" - or perhaps as one so well known as to be unrecognizable. He was penniless and itinerant, yet his gospel is now attached to some of the richest and most powerful people on earth, and the good news is really bad news for the poor. Captives are not released; they are warehoused. The blind do not see; rather, the sighted wear blinders. The oppressed are not liberated; they have become the new scapegoats. Sermons are no longer dangerous; they are simply adapted to the appetites and anxieties of the audience. Conservatives rail against sins of the flesh, as if to exorcise their own demons, and liberals baptize political correctness at the expense of honesty. ~ Robin Meyers

Forty years of emphasizing accounting-style control over things has seen American businesses do little or nothing to develop the capabilities of people. Workers have been viewed as a source of energy and cost, not as a source of ideas. ~ H. Thomas Johnson

He was a coward at heart, you see, although I never said the word out loud to him - not then and not ever. Doing that's about the most dangerous thing a person can do, I think, because a coward is more afraid of being discovered than he is of anything else, even dying. ~ Stephen King

I don't sit around waiting for passion to strike me. I keep working steadily, because I believe it is our privilege as humans to keep making things. Most of all, I keep working because I trust that creativity is always trying to find me, even when I have lost sight of it. ~ Elizabeth Gilbert

There ought to be a room in every house to swear in. It's dangerous to have to repress an emotion like that. ~ Mark Twain

I don't understant why people go to the pyramids to "get energy," they are just damaging property and cultural heritage with such ideas! ~ Kimberly Loskov

And then I thought: 'It's for a warning,'" she continues. "You may think a bed is a peaceful thing, sir. For you it may mean rest, and comfort, and a good night's sleep. But it isn't so for everyone. There are many dangerous things that may take place in a bed. It's where we are born, that's our first peril in life. It's where women give birth, which is often their last. And it's where the act takes place between men and women sir, which I will not mention to you, but I suppose you know what it is. Some call it love, others despair, merely an indignity they must suffer through. And finally beds are what we sleep in, and where we dream, and often where we die. ~ Margaret Atwood

The ways in which Oscar Wilde was attacking the Romantics that preceded him, and the Romantic ideas that preceded him, were very similar to what the glam-rockers, particularly Bowie and Bryan Ferry, were attacking in the earnestness of '60s culture. Trying to shock, but with wit, cleverness, and homosexuality. ~ Todd Haynes

The paradigm that is now receding has dominated our culture for several hundred years, during which it has shaped our modern Western society and has significantly influenced the rest of the world. This paradigm consists of a number of entrenched ideas and values, among them the view of the universe as a mechanical system composed of elementary building-blocks, the view of the human body as a machine, the view of life in society as a competitive struggle for existence, the belief in unlimited material progress to be achieved through economic and technological growth, and - last, not least - the belief that a society in which the female is everywhere subsumed under the male is one that follows a basic law of nature. ~ Fritjof Capra

The river reflected whatever it chose of sky and bridge and burning tree, and when the undergraduate had oared his boat through the reflections they closed again, completely, as if they had never been. There one might have sat the clock round lost in thought. Thought
to call it by a prouder name than it deserved
had let its line down into the stream. It swayed, minute after minute, hither and thither among the reflections and the weeds, letting the water lift it and sink it until
you know the little tug
the sudden conglomeration of an idea at the end of one's line: and then the cautious hauling of it in, and the careful laying of it out? Alas, laid on the grass how small, how insignificant this thought of mine looked; the sort of fish that a good fisherman puts back into the water so that it may grow fatter and be one day worth cooking and eating. ~ Virginia Woolf

Being a man of the theater and a hedonist, I find the idea of building coffins very romantic. ~ Nick Offerman

Suppose we humans are, as a species, exhibiting disease
behavior: we're multiplying with no regard for limits, consuming natural
resources as if there will be no future generations, and producing
waste products that are distressing the planet upon which our
very survival depends. There are two factors which we, as a species,
are not taking into consideration. First is the survival tactic of
pathogens, which requires additional hosts to infect. We do not have
the luxury of that option, at least not yet. If we are successful at continuing
our dangerous behavior, then we will also succeed in marching
straight toward our own demise. In the process, we can also drag
many other species down with us, a dreadful syndrome that is already
underway. This is evident by the threat of extinction that hangs, like
the sword of Damocles, over an alarming number of the Earth's
species.
There is a second consideration: infected host organisms fight
back. As humans become an increasing menace, can the Earth try to
defend itself? When a disease organism infects a human, the human
body elevates its own temperature in order to defend itself. This rise
in temperature not only inhibits the growth of the infecting pathogen,
but also greatly enhances the disease fighting capability within the
body. Global warming may be the Earth's way of inducing a global
"fever" as a reaction to human pollution of ~ Joseph C. Jenkins

I will have no man in my boat," said Starbuck, "who is not afraid of a whale." By this, he seemed to mean, not only that the most reliable and useful courage was that which arises from the fair estimation of the encountered peril, but that an utterly fearless man is a far more dangerous comrade than a coward.
(moby dick chap 26 p112) ~ Herman Melville

Be daring to push your ideas forward. ~ Lailah Gifty Akita

We are living in a time when sensitivities are at the surface, often vented with cutting words. Philosophically, you can believe anything so as you do not claim it a better way. Religiously, you can hold to anything, so long as you do not bring Jesus Christ into it. If a spiritual idea is eastern, it is granted critical immunity; if western, it is thoroughly criticized. Thus, a journalist can walk into a church and mock its carryings on, but he or she dare not do the same if the ceremony is from eastern fold. Such is the mood at the end of the twentieth century. A mood can be a dangerous state of mind, because it can crush reason under the weight of feeling. But that is precisely what I believe postmodernism best represents - a mood. ~ Ravi Zacharias

I've created several musical trends, really. That's not because I'm so far out and fabulous. It's because most bands have no ideas of their own. They're so desperate they'll grab at any old straw. ~ John Lydon

Justice is the central star which governs societies, the pole around which the political world revolves, the principle and the regulator of all transactions. Nothing takes place between men save in the name of right; nothing without the invocation of justice. Justice is not the work of the law: on the contrary, the law is only a declaration and application of justice in all circumstances where men are liable to come in contact. If, then, the idea that we form of justice and right were ill-defined, if it were imperfect or even false, it is clear that all our legislative applications would be wrong, our institutions vicious, our politics erroneous: consequently there would be disorder and social chaos.
This hypothesis of the perversion of justice in our minds, and, as a necessary result, in our acts, becomes a demonstrated fact when it is shown that the opinions of men have not borne a constant relation to the notion of justice and its applications; that at different periods they have undergone modifications: in a word, that there has been progress in ideas. Now, that is what history proves by the most overwhelming testimony. ~ Pierre-Joseph Proudhon

A magical blending of mystery, romance, and deep and dangerous secrets. Kelly Parra's Invisible Touch is an action-packed coming-of-age novel, sure to keep readers turning pages and begging for a sequel. ~ Laurie Faria Stolarz

The problem with the unruffled boosters of the Enlightenment as well as its unreconcilable enemies is that they can't get their minds around the idea that a value may need its opposite not to become dangerous. For them, all good things cohere together, in one single consistent package. The things which we inescapably find good often conflict, sometimes tragically. The attempt to hide this from ourselves is not only an intellectual failing, it is also a source of catastrophically destructive action, as we try to dragoon reality into our narrow conceptual net. ~ Charles Taylor

All new ideas begin in a non-conforming mind that questions some tenet of the conventional wisdom. ~ Hyman Rickover

While the style of the critique may vary with the character of the critic, overly polite criticism benefits neither the proponents of new ideas nor the scientific enterprise. ~ Carl Sagan

I do believe that when your child does poorly on a test, your first step should not necessarily be to attack the teacher or the school's curriculum. It should be to look at the idea that, maybe, the child didn't work hard enough. ~ Amy Chua

By mandating an even higher minimum, the living wage prices even more people out of work. The people who push these cockamamie ideas never seem to ask why any employer would hire someone at $8.23 if that person's services are only valued in the marketplace at, say, $5.00. ~ Lawrence Reed

Without [hope and] confidence in a cause, there is no action. Ignorance may be enlightened, superstition wiped out; intolerance may become tolerant, and hate be changed into love; ideas may be quickened, intelligence widened, and men's hearts may be ennobled; but from pessimism which can see nothing but gloomy visions nothing is to be expected. ~ Klas Pontus Arnoldson

To modern metaphysics, the Being of beings appears as will. But inasmuch as man, because of his nature as the thinking animal and by virtue of forming ideas, is related to beings in their Being, is thereby related to Being, and is thus determined by Being - therefore man's being, in keeping with this relatedness of Being (which now means, of the will) to human nature, must emphatically appear as a willing. ~ Martin Heidegger

Trying harder only withholds our good from us. This Universe does not thrive on hard work and more effort. It thrives on going with the flow. When you go with the flow, everything just flows and you feel inspired to move to and create from a higher place. Everything just feels right and ideas flow to you. The path lights up for you. ~ Richard Dotts

Ideas are powerful because they allow us to see the world as it could be, rather than what it is. ~ Jason Silva