Serious Harm Quotes

I have never known a movement in the theater that did not work direct and serious harm. Indeed, I have sometimes felt that the very people associated with various uplifting activities in the theater are people who are astoundingly lacking in idealism. ~ Minnie Maddern Fiske

When a parliamentary or social majority decrees that it is legal, at least under certain conditions, to kill unborn human life, is it not really making a tyrannical decision with regard to the weakest and most defenseless of human beings? ... While public authority can sometimes choose not to put a stop to something which were it prohibited would cause more serious harm, it can never presume to legitimize as a right of individuals even if they are the majority of the members of society an offense against other persons caused by the disregard of so fundamental a right as the right to life. ~ Pope John Paul II

Serious harm, I am afraid, has been wrought to our generation by fostering the idea that they would live secure in a permanent order of things. ~ Helen Keller

Congress should ban advertising that preys upon children, it should stop subsidizing dead-end jobs, it should pass tougher food safety laws, it should protect American workers from serious harm, it should fight against dangerous concentrations of economic power. ~ Eric Schlosser

A charmed life is so rare that for every one such life there are millions of wretched lives. Some know that their baby will be among the unfortunate. Nobody knows, however, that their baby will be one of the allegedly lucky few. Great suffering could await any person that is brought into existence. Even the most privileged people could give birth to a child that will suffer unbearably, be raped, assaulted, or be murdered brutally. The optimist surely bears the burden of justifying this procreational Russian roulette. Given that there are no real advantages over never existing for those who are brought into existence, it is hard to see how the significant risk of serious harm could be justified. If we count not only the unusually severe harms that anybody could endure, but also the quite routine ones of ordinary human life, then we find that matters are still worse for cheery procreators. It shows that they play Russian roulette with a fully loaded gun - aimed, of course, not at their own heads, but at those of their future offspring. ~ David Benatar

If a man deliberately abstains from wine to such an extent that he does serious harm to his nature, he will not be free from blame. ~ Thomas Aquinas

It is my hope that this book will help to demystify the origins of travel writing and show that when thousands of travelers follow a guidebook word-for-word, recommendation-for-recommendation, it not only harms contemporary international travel but can also do serious harm to places in developing countries. ~ Thomas Kohnstamm

Giving without expectation of return was not thought to be a higher, more selfless act; quite the contrary, it was aggressive, it set the giver up as superior to the recipient, causing the recipient to lose face; it imposed a burden of gratitude without permitting the relief of reciprocation. Because a gift contained in itself something of the essence of the giver, a gift gave him power over the beneficiary. In some societies a gift retained, rather than passed along, could cause serious harm to the recipient - even death. In some ancient languages, the word "gift" had a second meaning: poison. ~ Larissa MacFarquhar

All speech should be presumed to be protected by the Constitution, and a heavy burden should be placed on those who would censor to demonstrate with relative certainty that the speech at issue, if not censored, would lead to irremediable and immediate serious harm. ~ Alan Dershowitz

Of course, in the process, you must never do harm to others in any serious way, or you'll cease to amuse Him. Then payment comes due for promises you didn't keep. ~ Dean Koontz

Such is the state of things in England, and it is well that it should be realised by all of us; but it must not be supposed for a moment that I am afraid of it. I lament it deeply, because I foresee that it may be the ruin of many souls; but I have no fear at all that it really can do aught of serious harm to the Word of God, to Holy Church, to our Almighty King, the Lion of the tribe of Judah, Faithful and True, or to His Vicar on earth. Christianity has been too often in what seemed deadly peril, that we should fear for it any new trial now. So far is certain; on the other hand, what is uncertain, and in these great contests commonly is uncertain, and what is commonly a great surprise, when it is witnessed, is the particular mode by which, in the event, Providence rescues and saves His elect inheritance. Sometimes our enemy is turned into a friend; sometimes he is despoiled of that special virulence of evil which was so threatening; sometimes he falls to pieces of himself; sometimes he does just so much as is beneficial, and then is removed. Commonly the Church has nothing more to do than to go on in her own proper duties, in confidence and peace; to stand still and to see the salvation of God. ~ John Henry Newman

The sad irony here is that the FDA, which does not regulate fluoride in drinking water, does regulate toothpaste and on the back of a tube of fluoridated toothpaste ... it must state that "if your child swallows more than the recommended amount, contact a poison control center."
The amount that they're talking about, the recommended amount, which is a pea-sized amount, is equivalent to one glass of water.
The FDA is not putting a label on the tap saying don't drink more than one glass of water. If you do, contact a poison center ...
There is no question that fluoride - not an excessive amount - can cause serious harm. ~ Paul Connett

Suppose a bad guy guesses the password for your throwaway Yahoo address. Now he goes to major banking and commerce sites and looks for an account registered to that email address. When he finds one, he clicks the 'forgot my password' button and a new one is sent - to your compromised email account. Now he's in a position to do you serious harm. ~ Barton Gellman

Any chemical, whether is comes from the root of a tree or the shelves of your medicine cabinet, can cause serious harm. It depends how much you take. That is why one of the fundamental tenets of medicine holds that the dose makes the poison. ~ Michael Specter

He's harmless. Well, he could do some serious harm with that thing between his legs. For the love of all that's holy, what am I thinking? Gods, it's big - ~ Monica La Porta

When I was a kid, my goodness, corporate America was a bunch of stolid white guys in gray suits trying to be serious, and now it's stolid white guys in gray suits trying to be funny. ~ Emo Philips

If there is no enemy within the enemy outside can do us no harm. ~ Eric Thomas

Simon: You're in a dangerous line of work, Jayne. Odds are you'll be under my knife again, often. So I want you to understand one thing very clearly: No matter what you do or say or plot, no matter how you come down on us, I will never, ever harm you. You're on this table, you're safe ... 'cause I'm your medic. And however little we may like or trust each other, we're on the same crew. Got the same troubles, same enemies, and more than enough of both. Now, we could circle each other and growl, sleep with one eye open, but that thought wearies me. I don't care what you've done, I don't know what you're planning on doing, but I'm trusting you. I think you should do the same. 'Cause I don't see this working any other way.
River: Also, I can kill you with my brain. ~ Ben Edlund

I looked at my body, the body that had kept me alive for nearly 30 years, without any serious health problems, the body that had taken me where I needed to go and protected me. I had never appreciated or loved the body that had done so much for me. I had thought of it as my enemy, as nothing more than a shell that enclosed my real self, but it wasn't a shell. The body was me. ~ Sarai Walker

I have no business being a journalist. I'm the least, I'm the least - I'm the most trusting, I absolutely make a habit of believing anything that anybody tells me about themselves. I've never had any reason in the world to think that anyone has wanted to harm me, or lie to me. I believe whatever is being sold, most of the time. ~ Elizabeth Gilbert

I love a novel that's funny, and The Taxman Cometh is very funny, delightfully well-written, yet with a serious message about how government bureaucracy affects us all. Read. Enjoy. And if a comparison to Catch 22 pops into your mind, that's not surprising. ~ Marvin Kalb

Evolution is a fact. Beyond reasonable doubt, beyond serious doubt, beyond sane, informed, intelligent doubt, beyond doubt evolution is a fact ... That didn't have to be true. It is not self-evidently, tautologically, obviously true, and there was a time when most people, even educated people, thought it wasn't. It didn't have to be true, but it is ... Evolution is the only game in town, the greatest show on earth. ~ Richard Dawkins

Prizes were announced for any superhero that could take down the Evil, and more people showed up with weapons, bombs, fumes, and other inventions to kill the giant bugs and clean the land, the air and the waters. But none succeeded. All they succeeded was to harm the planet even more, make the Evil Snake, the Evil Scientist and his superbugs become more Evil. Prizes were getting bigger and bigger with no one to collect them, just as the bugs were getting bigger and more numerous, sweets were everywhere and people were eating them, getting sicker and complaining about tooth and tummy aches. The future looked grim. ~ Adrian Cristian Proca

Art is a kind of artificial memory and the pain which attends all serious art is a sense of that factitiousness. ~ Iris Murdoch

I don't know what to do," he said. "No harm in that. I've never known what to do," said Rincewind with hollow cheerfulness. "Been completely at a loss my whole life." He hesitated. "I think it's called being human, or something. ~ Terry Pratchett

If women die in childbed, that does no harm. It is what they were made for. ~ Martin Luther

The danger of disturbing the public tranquillity by interesting too strongly the public passions, is a still more serious objection against a frequent reference of constitutional questions to the decision of the whole society. ~ James Madison

Orthodoxy is the wide open field within which successful breeding can take place. If one maintains that Jesus was an eater of magic mushrooms or a Martian, then this will not make for fertility. There is not enough in common for there to be intercourse in any sense. How different can two believers be for the encounter to be fertile? This is a complex question which we do not need to explore here. Of course ultimately we must share orthodoxy, but this is not to narrow the scope of the conversation; it is to enter the broad terrain of the mystery, in which we are liberated from the tightness of ideology. It is a serious misuse of language to use the word 'orthodox' to mean conservative or, even worse, rigid. Orthodoxy does not lie in the unvarying and thoughtless repetition of received formulas. As Karl Rahner pointed out, that can be a form of heresy. Orthodoxy is speaking about our faith in ways that keep open the pilgrimage towards the mystery. Often it is hard to know immediately whether a new statement of belief is a new way of stating our faith or its betrayal. It takes time for us to tell. ~ Timothy Radcliffe

However we assess the relief of the siege of Orleans and the subsequent successes in the Loire Valley, the military proficiency of the French shocked the English to the point that French victory now seemed almost inevitable. If the English had learned that the French had new materiel or a brilliant new commander, they might have been able to devise counter procedures. But they had underestimated everything, from the loyalty evoked by Joan's leadership at Orleans to the fresh resolve of the men who knew her. In a way she also stood for something like a principle of minimal violence, for although she was always exposed to injury and indeed sustained serious wounds, she never personally harmed an enemy solider. The events of the late spring and early summer of 1929 engendered a new collective spirit among the French. ~ Donald Spoto

My experience has been that most really serious creative people I know have very, very routine and not particularly glamorous work habits," Adams said ~ Mason Currey

All dwarfs are by nature dutiful, serious, literate, obedient and thoughtful people whose only minor failing is a tendency, after one drink, to rush at enemies screaming "Arrrrrrgh!" and axing their legs off at the knee. ~ Terry Pratchett

The most harm of all is done when power is in the hands of people who are absolutely persuaded of the purity of their instincts-- and the purity of their intentions ~ Milton Friedman

I think we have some serious problems now, but, if you look back over the last thirty or forty years that my book deals with, I think we are in better shape now than we would have been if all of those cases had not come down. ~ Floyd Abrams

Not very picky, are you?"
"Yes. I am, actually." Jackson turned serious.
"I don't like women who play games, and that girl had 'Twister' written all over her. ~ Bobbie C. Bandy

"Solid wastes" are the discarded leftovers of our advanced consumer society. This growing mountain of garbage and trash represents not only an attitude of indifference toward valuable natural resources, but also a serious economic and public health problem. ~ Jimmy Carter

I'm more disturbed when people expect me to be serious. ~ Calvin Trillin

For people who have been raised to expect books to be 100 percent pleasurable and to make that pleasure effortless, it is hard for them to read and appreciate serious fiction. That's not good. The problem isn't that today's readership is "dumb," I don't think. Just that TV and the commercial-art culture's trained it to be sort of lazy and childish in its expectations. But it makes trying to engage today's readers both imaginatively and intellectually unprecedentedly hard. ~ David Foster Wallace

The DC 9/11: Time of Crisis film was hard to get the part; I had to audition three times. It was very serious and very sobering. We studied and tried to re-create all the stuff that we all saw that day. ~ Timothy Bottoms

Oh, there was harm indeed for a young lady flattered by the brief attentions of a handsome man. ~ Kate Morton

If nihilism is the inability to believe, then its most serious symptom is not found in atheism, but in the inability to believe in what is, to see what is happening, and to live life as it is offered. This infirmity is at the root of all idealism. Morality has no faith in the world. ~ Albert Camus

Usually the script is much more funny than the film turns out to be, in my case. The script is almost like a comic book but when you start making it, for some reason the film gets very serious. ~ Dagur Kari

No people do so much harm as those who go about doing good. ~ Mandell Creighton

Starting in '98 when I was researching 'Traffic,' I got to meet really serious people in Washington, which for a screenwriter was kind of a great gift. And I really valued these guys; I stayed in touch with them, and I find their point-of-view quite interesting. ~ Stephen Gaghan

Jaden: "Dude, you've found something wrong with every girl. I'm about to play this one solo if you can't make up your mind."
Bastian: "We're not trying to decide between a Big Mac or a chicken sandwich here. This is some serious shit. We want epicness, we have to be choosy. ~ Nyrae Dawn

Diane, in Jackie's mind, looked just like a woman who would be an active PTA mom, with her kind face and comfortable clothing. She also thought Diane looked like a woman who would be a loan officer, with her conservative makeup choices and serious demeanor. She would look like a pharmacist if she ever were to wear the standard white coat, gas mask, and hip waders. ~ Joseph Fink

The European brand of fascism will probably present its most serious postwar threat to us via Latin America. ~ Henry A. Wallace

The story of Sybil is true, not fictional or fraudulent. One early commentator actually suggested that Sybil and Dr. Cornelia Wilbur, her treating psychiatrist, were a case of folie à deux, or shared psychosis (Victor, 1975). Having met Dr. Wilbur, listened to her presentations on multiple personality (now known as dissociative identity disorder), and read the many critiques and reviews of Sybil, I have concluded that Sybil was not iatrogenically created by Dr. Wilbur. ~ Philip M. Coons

This hobble of being alive is rather serious, don't you think so? ~ Thomas Hardy

If gun laws in fact worked, the sponsors of this type of legislation should have no difficulty drawing upon long lists of examples of criminal acts reduced by such legislation. That they cannot do so after a century and a half of trying - that they must sweep under the rug the southern attempts at gun control in the 1870-1910 period, the northeastern attempts in the 1920-1939 period, the attempts at both Federal and State levels in 1965-1976 - establishes the repeated, complete and inevitable failure of gun laws to control serious crime. ~ Orrin Hatch

You don't understand. I only prostitute the part of the body that isn't important, and nobody suffers except my karma a little bit. I don't do big harm. You prostitute your mind. Mind is seat of Buddha. What you do is very very bad. You should not use your mind in that way ~ John Burdett

I think there's gonna be three networks, and then the rest will be Internet-based, and Amazon is gonna be huge and one of the networks. This is so serious. Ha. But really, you see it happening right now. You can see the shifts. ~ Derek Waters

The most embarrassing thing to me about this autobiography, surely, is its unbroken chain of proofs that I was never a serious man. I have been in a lot of trouble over the years, but that was all accidental. Never have I risked my life, or even my comfort, in the service of mankind. Shame on me. People ~ Kurt Vonnegut

She speaks French," Graeme muttered.
Traigh turned quite serious and nodded his head. "Aye, she be speakin' French. Mayhap she learned it from listenin' to ye and yer French friend speakin' it these past days." Though his tone sounded serious, there was a decidedly sarcastic undertone to it.
"Ye knew," Graeme said as he glared angrily at his brother.
Traigh feigned innocence. "Moi?"
Graeme's glare intensified. "Why did ye no' tell me? Why did she no' tell me?"
Traigh smiled thoughtfully and placed a hand on Graeme's shoulder . "Ye did no' ask. ~ Suzan Tisdale

When you're doing a comedy and you want to somehow satirise people who are taking themselves seriously, I think the most serious genre is the thing you're going to get the most out of. If you're trying to satirise a comedy, it's hard to do that - it doesn't really work as well. But I love the war movie genre and I'm a fan of all those movies that are part of what this movie is. ~ Ben Stiller

When that second airplane hit the building, we all changed. We need to get back to some serious thinking. ~ Steven Tyler

Dissociation (being split-off from one's deepest truth) mimics enlightenment – but it isn't enlightenment. People who are dissociated live in great peace. But this is only because they have blocked their negative feelings. The enlightened person resolves his negatives feelings, and thus his peace is not false.

People who are dissociated do not suffer. But this is only because they have abandoned their healing process and numbed their pain. Enlightenment grows from the fertilized soil of suffering.

People who are dissociated call themselves enlightened. But this is only because they have they have no conception of what enlightenment is. Enlightenment is the polar opposite of dissociation.

People who are dissociated feel they have mastered forgiveness. But this is only because they completely deny the harm done to them – and the damage remaining. The enlightened forgive spontaneously and without effort because they have fully embraced their damaged parts and grieved every honest ounce of their misery. ~ Daniel Mackler

Note to self: I take entirely too much pleasure in causing bodily harm to others. ~ Adrianne Brooks

Is Donald Trump a serious candidate? The reason I ask this is, if you're going to close the Internet, realize, America, what that entails. That entails getting rid of the First amendment, ok? It's no small feat. ~ Rand Paul

Claud twisted the television dial and amused himself by studying Flora's fair, pensive face. Her eyes were lowered and her mouth compressed over the serious business of arranging Elfine's future. He fancied she was tracing a pattern with the tip of her shoe. She could not look at him, because public telephones were not fitted with television dials. 'Oh, yes, we certainly don't ~ Stella Gibbons