Dangerous Ground Quotes & Sayings

If we're going to prevent large parts of this Earth from becoming not only inhospitable but uninhabitable in our lifetimes, we're going to have to keep some fossil fuels in the ground rather than burn them and release more dangerous pollution into the sky. — Barack Obama

You got a problem?" he drawled, obviously expecting me to pee my pants before falling to the ground and groveling like an unworthy subject of the Emperor. And that was all it took. A new, screw-you attitude took precedence, trampling my fear under its boots. A highly dangerous approach, I still found it much easier to bear.
"Well it all goes back to my childhood ... ." I began, — Jennifer Rardin

The most dangerous myth is the demagoguery that business can be made to pay a larger share, thus relieving the individual. Politicians preaching this are either deliberately dishonest, or economically illiterate, and either one should scare us. Business doesn't pay taxes, and who better than business to make this message known? Only people pay taxes, and people pay as consumers every tax that is assessed against a business. Begin with the food and fiber raised in the farm, to the ore drilled in a mine, to the oil and gas from out of the ground, whatever it may be
through the processing, through the manufacturing, on out to the retailer's license. If the tax cannot be included in the price of the product, no one along that line can stay in business. — Ronald Reagan

You listen to me and you listen good, girl. I am a dark, twisted, and very fucked up man. Do you know what a sadist is? I don't give her time to answer. "I enjoy inflicting pain on women. Now granted, I have access to women that enjoy that side of my dark psyche but you, little girl, are treading on very dangerous ground. You are awakening a monster. If you feed that monster, there will be no possibility of caging the beast. — Suzanne Steele

What seems dangerous often is not - black snakes, for example, or clear-air turbulence. While things that just lie there, like this beach, are loaded with jeopardy. A yellow dust rising from the ground, the heat that ripens melons overnight - this is earthquake weather. You can sit here braiding the fringe on your towel and the sand will all of a sudden suck down like an hourglass. The air roars. In the cheap apartments onshore, bathtubs fill themselves and gardens roll up and over like green waves. If nothing happens, the dust will drift and the heat deepen till fear turns to desire. Nerves like that are only bought off by catastrophe. — Amy Hempel

It is ... treading on dangerous ground to paint the picturesque as I am at times doing. — E. J. Hughes

No one else has access to the world you carry around within yourself; you are its custodian and entrance. No one else can see the world the way you see it. No one else can feel your life the way you feel it. Thus it is impossible to ever compare two people because each stands on such different ground. When you compare yourself to others, you are inviting envy into your consciousness; it can be a dangerous and destructive guest. — John O'Donohue

Revenge is best left to fantasy," Munroe said. "It feels better there. In real life you can eventually learn to deal with the pain and trauma, learn to cope on some level, you know? But you can never undo death, and even if you think they deserve it, killing doesn't take away your pain, just puts you on dangerous ground that can collapse out from beneath you at any time. — Taylor Stevens

I'm human," he said in a tormented tone. "And I'm not." He dropped his hand to her shoulder. "I never knew softness," he breathed. "Not until the moment you touched me in your store. My life is violent and dangerous. Its dark and twisted and no place for someone like you. I have more people wanting me dead than I can count. They will stop at nothing, and you.." He ground his teeth before he spoke again. "You'll never want again for anything in your life. I swear it on what little bit of human soul I have left. — Sherrilyn Kenyon

Then
they saw the Groke. Everybody saw her. She sat motionless on the sandy path at the bottom of the steps and stared at them with round, expressionless eyes.
She was not particularly big and didn't look dangerous either, but your let that she was terribly evil and would wait for ever. And that was awful.
Nobody plucked up enough courage to attack. She sat there for a while, and then slid away into the darkness. But where she had been sitting the ground was frozen! — Tove Jansson

If a writer is honest, if what is at stake for him can seem to matter to his readers, then his work may be read. But a writer will work anyway, as I do, and as I have, in part to explore this terra incognita, this dangerous ground I seem to need to risk. — Frederick Busch

Jane Austen? I feel that I am approaching dangerous ground. The reputation of Jane Austen is surrounded by cohorts of defenders who are ready to do murder for their sacred cause. — Arnold Bennett

The idea of popular art, like that of a patriotic art, if not actually dangerous seemed to me ridiculous. If the intention was to make art accessible to the people by sacrificing refinements of form, on the ground that they are "all right for the idle rich" but not for anybody else, I had seen enough of fashionable society to know that it is there that one finds real illiteracy and not, let us say, among electricians. — Marcel Proust

The ground for preferring superintelligence to come before other potentially dangerous technologies, such as nanotechnology, is that superintelligence would reduce the existential risks from nanotechnology but not vice versa.4 Hence, if we create superintelligence first, we will face only those existential risks that are associated with superintelligence; whereas if we create nanotechnology first, we will face the risks of nanotechnology and then, additionally, the risks of superintelligence. — Nick Bostrom

They came with a massive force of numbers: to rip apart the veil of existence that few knew even existed. They tore their way into our world relentlessly, and once they breathed our air and stood on the soil of our homelands, they killed and maimed, surging from their rifts in numbers incalculable. Their troops on the ground were supported by winged creatures never intended for our world. The monsters swooped from the darkness beyond, filling the sky with dark silhouettes like bats, only much more dangerous. Never before had humanity faced such a force of evil and no one was immune to their violence. — Cailee Francis

There is no well defined boundary line between honesty and dishonesty. The frontiers of one blend with the outside limits of the other, and he who attempts to tread this dangerous ground may be sometimes in the one domain and sometimes in the other. — O. Henry

Budget cuts are a sad reality in most newsrooms, and I am concerned that they reduce the collective muscle of journalists who are doing the expensive, and often dangerous, work of on-the-ground reporting. — Jill Abramson

Reasons aren't really things that make you do other things. Reasons are things that you make up, much later, to reassure everyone that we are all logical and that the world makes sense. We do unreasonable things, because we want to, at the time. No reason. Much later we sit in the wreckage, building reasons out of little bits of wreckage, so we'll have something to show the crash investigators. Look, this is what caused it. So the whole mess at least appears reasonable. So we can convince ourselves that at least there was a reason for the disaster, something we can prevent or avoid, so it'll never happen again. But a lot of the time there's no reason. We just flew it to the ground. Because we felt like it. And we're still dangerous. And it could happen again anytime.
Its easier to live with each other afterwards if we give each other reasons. — Julian Gough

Democracy ... begins from the ground up. Anything living grows from the bottom up. Everything dangerous, like bombs, gets dropped from the sky down. — Vandana Shiva

A man may commit sin and yet be ignorant of it, and fancy himself innocent when he is guilty ... We shall do well to remember that when we make our own miserably imperfect knowledge and consciousness the measure of our sinfulness, we are on very dangerous ground. — J.C. Ryle

[St. Patrick] was a terror to any snake that came in his path, whether it was the cold, slimy reptile sliding along the ground or the more dangerous snake that oppresses men through false teachings. And he drove the snakes out of the minds of men, snakes of superstition and brutality and cruelty. — Arthur Brisbane

Not worried about the decor, Brandt. Seriously. Just find us some place where no one you knew from the good old days is going to walk in on us."
"The Black Bear Inn it is," Will said ( ... ) "For the record, those weren't the good old days. These days with you, these are the good old days. Right now. — Josh Lanyon

What are you doing?"
With an innocent smile, I joked, "Don't you mean, what am i thinking?"
But this time, he didn't so much as crack a smile.
"Fine" I said. "I know I'm treading on dangerous ground-"
"Deadly ground."
"Okay, I'm treading on some badass ground. — Veronica Wolff

Do you believe in God, Agent Garrett?" Julian asked suddenly, his eyes on the hallway. The question caught Zane off guard, but he wasn't sure that was Julian's goal. Religion didn't have much place in Zane's life anymore, like a lot of other things. But did he believe? "Yeah," he said quietly. Zane figured he'd have long ago been in the ground if it wasn't for some higher power watching out for him. Julian was nodding. "You should. It's a bloody miracle your partner has lived this long," he murmured. He began moving toward the kitchen. "Man's an idiot," he muttered under his breath as he passed Zane. — Abigail Roux

And besides, can't I do it the way I always used to as a child in matters that were dangerous? I don't even need to go to the country myself, it isn't necessary. I'll send my clothed body. If it staggers out of the door of my room, the staggering will indicate not fear but its nothingness. Nor is it excitement if it stumbles on the stairs, if it travels in the country, sobbing as it goes, and there eats its supper in tears. For I myself am meanwhile lying in my bed, smoothly covered over with the yellow-brown blanket, exposed to the breeze that is wafted through the seldom-aired room. The carriages and people in the street move and walk hesitantly on shining ground, for I am still dreaming. — Franz Kafka

Then Magrat, who in Nanny Ogg's opinion had an innocent talent for treading on dangerous ground, said: "I wonder if we did the right thing? I'm sure it was a job for a handsome prince." "Hah!" said Granny, who was riding ahead. "And what good would that be? Cutting your way through a bit of bramble is how you can tell he's going to be a good husband, is it? That's fairy godmotherly thinking, that is! Goin' around inflicting happy endings on people whether they wants them or not, eh? — Terry Pratchett

writing a story is dangerous more dangerous then anyone can know. Its planting small seeds of ideas into peoples minds. Some can grow and spread until there's a whole network of minds connected by one seed. It grows powerful the more ground it takes, sometimes for the better, sometimes for the worse. Be DELIBERATE in your words and, most importantly WRITE. — Natalie Stein

There is something noble as well as terrible about suicide. The downfall of many men is not dangerous, for they fall like children, too near the ground to do themselves harm. But when a great man breaks, he has soared up to the heavens, espied some inaccessible paradise, and then fallen from a great height. The forces that make him seek peace from the barrel of a gun cannot be placated. How many young talents confined to an attic room wither and perish for lack of a friend, a consoling wife, alone in the midst of a million fellow humans, while throngs of people weary of gold are bored with their possessions. — Honore De Balzac

We can guess that the unacceptable conduct of the soldiers at Abu Ghraib resulted in part from the dangerous state of affairs on the ground in a theater of war. — John Yoo

But deciding not to have children is a very, very hard decision for a woman to make: the atmosphere is worryingly inconducive to saying, "I choose not to," or "it all sounds a bit vile, tbh." We call these women "selfish" The inference of the word "childless" is negative: one of lack, and loss. We think of nonmothers as rangy lone wolves
rattling around, as dangerous as teenage boys or men. We make women feel that their narrative has ground to a halt in their thirities if they don't "finish things" properly and have children. — Caitlin Moran

It is high time for the living to get tough, for toughness is indispensable in the struggle to safeguard and develop the life-force; this will not detract from their goodness, as long as they stand courageously by the truth. There is ground for hope in the fact that among millions of decent, hard-working people there are only a few plague-ridden individuals, who do untold harm by appealing to the dark, dangerous drives of the armored average man and mobilizing him for political murder. There is but one antidote to the average man's predisposition to plague: his own feelings for true life. The life force does not seek power but demands only to play its full and acknowledged part in human affairs. It manifests itself through love, work and knowledge. — Wilhelm Reich

I never think of my audience when I write a poem. I try to write out of whatever is haunting me; in order for a poem to feel authentic, I have to feel I'm treading on very dangerous ground, which can mean that the resulting revelations may prove hurtful to other people. The time for thinking about that kind of guilt or any collective sense of responsibility, however, occurs much later in the creative process, after the poem is finished. — Rita Dove

Perhpas if I call out to Rat he might hear," said the Mole to himself, but without much hope.
Rat! Ratty! O Rat, please hear me!" he called out as loudly as he could, holding up his lantern as he did so, waving it about/ But the wind rushed and roared around him even more, and snatched his weak words away the moment they were they were uttered, and scattered them wildly and uselessly as if they were flakes of snow,
Even worse, the light of the lantern began to gutter, and then, quiet suddenly, an extra strong gust of wind blew it out.
Well then," said the daunted but resolute Mole, putting the spent lantern on the ground, "there's nothing else for it! Frozen rivers are dangerous thinngs, no doubt, but I must try to cross, despite the dangers."
The Willows in the Winter — William Horwood

What a sad and frightening time it was. Thousands of firefighters and other rescue workers swarmed the sixteen-acre disaster zone, searching for survivors. The area, which became known as Ground Zero, was extremely dangerous. Underground fires smoldered, and the smoke was a toxic mix of melted plastic, steel, lead, and many poisonous chemicals. Few of the rescue workers had on proper protective clothing or masks. And as it quickly became clear, there were not very many survivors to find. Only fourteen people were pulled out of the rubble alive, all within the first twenty-four hours of the collapse. About 50,000 people had been working in the buildings that day. Two thousand and sixteen died. Also among the dead: 343 firefighters and 60 police officers who were in or near the — Lauren Tarshis

In assembling this group of portraits of women, I'm aware that I'm treading on dangerous ground. When I was in college, I learned to be distrustful of men's depictions of women. I remember seeing Garry Winogrand's book Women Are Beautiful in the school library and being shocked that it hadn't been defaced for its blatant objectification of women. But looking back, maybe I was too harsh. Whether one photographs men or women, it is always a form of objectification. Whatever you say about Winogrand, his depiction was honest. — Alec Soth

The logic of all this seems to be that it is all right for young people in a democracy to learn about any civilization or social theory that is not dangerous, but that they should remain entirely ignorant of any civilization or social theory that might be dangerous on the ground that what you don't know can't hurt you ... a complete denial of the democratic principle that the general diffusion of knowledge and learning through the community is essential to the preservation of free government. — Carl L. Becker

Conscience is the most dangerous thing you possess. If you wake it up, it may destroy you. To live a life of total moral rigor is not necessarily the way to go. It's the path for very few people. Most people need to come up with some kind of middle ground that satisfies their practical, moral, and philosophical esthetic needs. — John Patrick Shanley

It is dangerous to leave written that which is badly written.
A chance word, upon paper, may destroy the world. Watch carefully and erase, while the power is still yours, I say to myself, for all that is put down, once it escapes, may rot its way into a thousand minds, the corn become a black smut, and all libraries, of necessity, be burned to the ground as a consequence.
Only one answer: write carelessly so that nothing that is not green will survive. — William Carlos Williams

Still in my coat and hat, I sank onto the stair to read the letter. (I never read without making sure I am in a secure position. I have been like this ever since the age of seven when, sitting on a high wall and reading The Water Babies, I was so seduced by the descriptions of underwater life that I unconsciously relaxed my muscles. Instead of being held buoyant by the water that so vividly surrounded me in my mind, I plummeted to the ground and knocked myself out. I can still feel the scar under my fringe now. Reading can be dangerous.) — Diane Setterfield

Love must be regarded as one of the religious and dangerous experiences, because it lifts people out of the arms of reason and sets them afloat with no ground under their feet. — Robert Musil

The snow in the mountains had changed everything. Frank swore as he listened on the phone to the head of search and rescue describing the conditions they'd run into on the other side of the Crazies.
"The terrain is too dangerous," Jim Martin said. "Even experienced ground crews found many areas too difficult to traverse with the snow."
"What about the searchers in the helicopters?"
"They should be able to see tracks in the snow once the clouds life." Jim didn't sound optimistic. "The storm isn't moving on as fast as the weatherman predicted. — B. J. Daniels

But let him consider that those disorders which are so dangerous that they have gained ground in spite of treatment can generally be treated by opposite methods. — Seneca.

I'm not the head of Scotland Yard," said Mrs. Oliver, retreating from dangerous ground. "I'm a private individual -"
"Oh, you're not that," said Rhoda, confusedly complimentary. — Agatha Christie

Bible worship, though at its best it may achieve sublimity by keeping its head in the skies, may also make itself both ridiculousand dangerous by having its feet off the ground. — George Bernard Shaw

You can't talk about solving the economic problem of the Negro without talking about billions of dollars. You can't talk about ending the slums without first saying profit must be taken out of the slums. You're really tampering and getting on dangerous ground because you are messing with folk then. You are messing with captains of industry. Now this means that we are treading in difficult water, because it really means that we are saying that something is wrong with capitalism. — Martin Luther King Jr.

The most dangerous prayer a human being could every pray, "Lord, make me like Christ. I don't care if you have to dethrone me, I don't care if you have to tear apart my ministry, I don't care if you have to destroy me, I don't care what happens - make me like Jesus Christ!" It's practically calling a death sentence upon yourself. But then again, unless a grain of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it abideth alone, but if it dies, it bringeth forth much fruit. — Paul David Washer

Dragons were dangerous in the sky. Of course, they were dangerous on the ground too. Just less dangerous. In the same way that a sword is less dangerous so long as it's pointed at someone else. — Brandon Sanderson

A crease of disquiet snakes across his brow. 'Your father plays with fire to gather them together like that. They are too clever. They form alliances. They develop - ambitions.'
He looks so solemn I wish to soothe his fears. 'You worry too much, I am sure,' I say lightly. 'After all, they are still rooted in the ground, are they not? They cannot pull themselves up and march around wrecking havoc, like an invading army.'
'Maybe,' he says, though he sounds unsure. 'I have never met their like before; that is all. It disturbs me.' He gestures around. 'And not only me. The forests, the fields, the moss that grows on the rocks - none of them are happy about that garden. Nature would have kept those plants safely apart, scattered over the continents, separated by oceans. But your father has summoned them from the corners of the earth and locked them together, side by side, hidden behind walls, where they can grow in secret. It is wrong, Jessamine - I fear it is dangerous - — Maryrose Wood

It's a dangerous thing, to divide yourself, to break off bits of yourself until there's no solid core. We are, after all, just the sum of our total experiences, each one lying beneath us like a brick in the foundation of a house. To be selective, to block out portions, is to destabilize the very ground on which you stand. — Mia Fontaine

Nobody wants to say, "I'm trying to get my feet on the ground" when they're in their twenties. They want you to think they're about to do something dangerous, or exciting, or different. We're not "living at home," we're "crashing until we can afford a pad in Brooklyn. — Alida Nugent

Now everything was changed. She walked about with cautious, anxious steps, staring constantly at the ground, on the lookout for things that crept and crawled. Bushes were dangerous, and so were sea grass and rain water. There were little animals everywhere. They could turn up between the covers of a book, flattened and dead, for the fact is that creeping animals, tattered animals, and dead animals are with us all our lives, from beginning to end. Grandmother tried to discuss this with her, to no avail. Irrational terror is so hard to deal with. [p. 136] — Tove Jansson

He's a complete fighter. He has some flaws, of course, but he has a good stand up game, good takedowns and a good ground game. He's a complete fighter, and that makes him dangerous. He hits hard, but I believe I can stop him. I believe I can finish this fight earlier. I'm not underestimating him, but I've learned a lot in my past fights. I have learned a lot in my fight against (Chris) Weidman, so it's likely that I will finish this fight before the fifth round. Whatever it takes. I'm training hard on my grappling skills and my striking, so I want to finish him with a knockout or a submission. — Lyoto Machida

On the street below, the weather is calm. But up here, high winds threaten to topple the workers. A sudden gust can knock them from their footing with its sheer force or send a fatal vibration through the beams on which they stand. And yet the men joke, laugh, stroll across the foot-wide beams as though they are on solid ground. To the people on the sidewalk, tiny as ants below, the skywalkers appear entirely unafraid. A hundred years ago, their grandfathers and great-grandfathers built the skyscrapers and bridges that surround them. — David Weitzman