Ticking Time Bomb Quotes & Sayings

We're creating these massive urban areas in the Third World. It's like you take the entire population of California and put it in one city. Then you remove basic sanitation and medical services, and you have a ticking biological time bomb. — Richard Preston

Before the prospect of an intelligence explosion, we humans are like small children playing with a bomb. Such is the mismatch between the power of our plaything and the immaturity of our conduct. Superintelligence is a challenge for which we are not ready now and will not be ready for a long time. We have little idea when the detonation will occur, though if we hold the device to our ear we can hear a faint ticking sound. — Nick Bostrom

Are you kidding? That guy was a mystery wrapped in an enigma and crudely stapled to a ticking fucking time bomb. He was either going to hit somebody or start a blog. — Lev Grossman

Clinton Cash book had been hyped by Rand Paul and Fox News as a ticking time bomb. — Kimberly Guilfoyle

Harb was a ticking time bomb. It was like watching a preacher with Tourette syndrome. You knew the "Shit! Balls!" was coming at some point during the sermon, probably while he was slapping you on the forehead during a faith healing. — John Corwin

The rash assertion that "God made man in His own image" is ticking like a time bomb at the foundation of many faiths. — Arthur C. Clarke

Beautiful but defeated and damaged. Damaged for the rest of her life and no amount of emotional mutilation will ever fully give her back her innocence. The girl is a ticking time bomb, a danger to herself and very possibly to others. I wasn't sure before, but now I know that she is more unstable than I ever could have imagined. And because she is so skilled at hiding it, not only from me but also from herself, she is more dangerous than I am. — J.A. Redmerski

That guy was a mystery wrapped in an enigma and crudely stapled to a ticking fucking time bomb. He was either going to hit somebody or start a blog. To tell you the truth I'm kind of glad he hit you. — Lev Grossman

There was a ticking time bomb inside my head and the one person I trusted to go in and get it out hadn't shown up or spoken to me for more than a year. — Jim Butcher

The lack of affordable, quality child care is a ticking time bomb. — Melanne Verveer

Ever since we'd found Wilson, his cousin's calmness bothered me. I realized now I felt less unease with angry outbursts from grieving relatives, than I had with the slow, ticking time bomb of the quiet and collected.
--Prepped for Kill, Marjorie Gardens Mystery Book 2 — A.E.H. Veenman

Torture is an impermissible evil. Except under two circumstances. The first is the ticking time bomb. An innocent's life is at stake. The bad guy you have captured possesses information that could save this life. He refuses to divulge. In such a case, the choice is easy. — Charles Krauthammer

Ninety percent of all people under 30 are in developing countries, and that means that this new access to tech, which is such a positive thing ... is also a ticking time bomb of frustration ... You get this clear mismatch of opportunity and expectation. — Ronan Farrow

If we do nothing, we are handing our children a ticking time bomb that will require they pay ever greater payroll taxes just as they are beginning their careers, starting their own families and staking their claim to the American Dream. — John McCain

The use of fetuses as organ and tissue donors is a ticking time bomb of bioethics. — Arthur Caplan

Writers get ideas all day every day. The FedEx guy delivers a package from Sears and the writer is thinking how it could actually be a ticking time bomb. — Dan Alatorre

The reactors in Japan are stable in the same way that a ticking time bomb is also stable. It wouldn't take much to light the fuse - a 6.6 earthquake, like what happened today in Japan, a pipe break, an over-pressurized containment vessel - anything could set it off, in which case we would have another Chernobyl, three times the magnitude of a Chernobyl accident. — Michio Kaku

And this note was a jittery time bomb, ticking beneath my normal life, in my pocket all day firecely reread, in my purse all week until I was afraid it would get crushed or snooped, in my drawer between two dull books to escape my mother and then in the box and now thunked back to you. A note, who writes a note like that? Who were you to write one to me? It boomed inside me the whole time, an explosion over and over, the joy of what you wrote to me jumpy shrapnel in my bloodstream. I can't have it near me anymore, I'm grenading it back to you, as soon as I unfold it and read it and cry one more time. Because me too, and fuck you. Even now.
I can't stop thinking about you. — Daniel Handler

Orlando had a Pinto, a car that hadn't been in existence for thirty-plus years. He still hadn't figured out why a strong, strapping werewolf would want one. Orlando said it was because he'd customized it. Painted pink with purple stripes, the younger male could often be found cruising up and down the streets of Wolf Town, with his terrible music blaring out of the windows.
The car was a ticking time bomb. Already, more than one werewolf had offered to blow it up. Orlando better enjoy it, Connor doubted he would have it for very much longer. — Rose Wynters

A democratic government that respects no limits on its power is a ticking time bomb, waiting to destroy the rights it was created to protect. — James Bovard

The truth that makes us free is always ticking away like a time-bomb in the basement of everybody's church. — Robert Farrar Capon

Suddenly it felt like there was a ticking time bomb in the house. I didn't have all the time in the world to make you love me again; I had only a few short months. — Natasha Anders

We've all seen the headlines implying that people with PTSD are dangerous. We must not resort to thinking, due to fear, that a person with PTSD equals a ticking time bomb. The stigma surrounding PTSD is so negative. It arouses concerns and provokes whispers and worried glances. People don't understand it at all. They assume I'm a potential powder keg just waiting for a spark to set me off into a rage, and that's just not true, about me or any person with PTSD. I have never physically assaulted anyone out of anger or rage. I'm suffering with it and people are afraid to ask me about it. — James Meuer

I was starting to fall in love with Michael Boutilier. Quickly, violently. It was a love that was both armed and dangerous, a ticking time-bomb of destruction that threatened to send my whole world up in flames
and it felt good. — Nenia Campbell

Parents are working more than ever before and unable to monitor what kids are eating at home, and schools are selling astronomical amounts of junk food in order to supplement shrinking budgets. It's a ticking time bomb, and America's children are exploding. — Lisa Ling

Don't you know. I am a ticking time bomb. I'm going to explode. This time, I may never be able to recover from it! — Lee In-woo

I was wrong about you, Izabel," I whisper near her ear; the pain engulfing my insides. "I am the ticking time bomb. I am more unstable than I ever could have imagined. You are discipline, and I am rage. And the only way I know to control the chaos inside, is to eradicate the things that control me. — J.A. Redmerski