Too many people are thinking of security instead of opportunity. They seem to be more afraid of life than death

- James F. Bymes

A man must consider what a rich realm he abdicates when he becomes a conformist.

- Pubilius Syrus

Either you decide to stay in the shallow end of the pool or you go out in the ocean.

- Christopher Reeve

The fishermen know that the sea is dangerous and the storm terrible, but they have never found these dangers sufficient reason for remaining ashore.

- Vincent van Gogh

A true revolution of values will soon cause us to question the fairness and justice of many of our past and present policies. On the one hand, we are called to play the Good Samaritan on life's roadside, but that will be only an initial act. One day we must come to see that the whole Jericho Road must be transformed so that men and women will not be constantly beaten and robbed as they make their journey on life's highway. True compassion is more than flinging a coin to a beggar. It comes to see that an edifice which produces beggars needs restructuring.

- Martin Luther King, Jr.

If you banish fear, nothing terribly bad can happen to you.

- Margaret Bourke-White

Security is an attempt to try to make the universe static so that we feel safe.

- Anne Wilson Schaef

Become a student of change. It is the only thing that will remain constant.

- Anthony J. D'Angelo

The power of intuitive understanding will protect you from harm until the end of your days.

- Laozi (Lao Tzu, Lao Tse, Lao Tsu)

If there is anywhere on earth a lover of God who is always kept safe, I know nothing of it, for it was not shown to me. But this was shown: that in falling and rising again we are always kept in that same precious love.

- Julian of Norwich

It must be admitted that there is a degree of instability which is inconsistent with civilization. But, on the whole, the great ages have been unstable ones.

- Alfred North Whitehead

As long as we wish for safety, we will have difficulty pursuing what matters.

The Answer to How Is Yes

- Peter Block

The challenge of social justice is to evoke a sense of community that we need to make our nation a better place, just as we make it a safer place.

- Marian Wright Edelman

The average man does not want to be free. He simply wants to be safe.

- H. L. Mencken

I believe that liberty is the only genuinely valuable thing that men have invented, at least in the field of government, in a thousand years. I believe that it is better to be free than to be not free, even when the former is dangerous and the latter safe. I believe that the finest qualities of man can flourish only in free air – that progress made under the shadow of the policeman's club is false progress, and of no permanent value. I believe that any man who takes the liberty of another into his keeping is bound to become a tyrant, and that any man who yields up his liberty, in however slight the measure, is bound to become a slave.

- H. L. Mencken

If ye love wealth greater than liberty, the tranquility of servitude greater than the animating contest for freedom, go home from us in peace. We seek not your counsel, nor your arms. Crouch down and lick the hand that feeds you; and may posterity forget that ye were our countrymen.

- Samuel Adams



The pessimist sees difficulty in every opportunity. The optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty.

- Winston Churchill



Society, community, family are all conserving institutions. They try to maintain stability, and to prevent, or at least to slow down, change. But the organization of the post-capitalist society of organizations is a destabilizer. Because its function is to put knowledge to work -- on tools, processes, and products; on work; on knowledge itself -- it must be organized for constant change.

- Peter F. Drucker



Reform is affirmative, conservatism negative; conservatism goes for comfort, reform for truth.

The Conservative

- Ralph Waldo Emerson



The common dogma [of fundamentalists] is fear of modern knowledge, inability to cope with the fast change in a scientific-technological society, and the real breakdown in apparent moral order in recent years.... That is why hate is the major fuel, fear is the cement of the movement, and superstitious ignorance is the best defense against the dangerous new knowledge. ... When you bring up arguments that cast serious doubts on their cherished beliefs you are not simply making a rhetorical point, you are threatening their whole Universe and their immortality. That provokes anger and quite frequently violence. ... Unfortunately you cannot reason with them and you even risk violence in confronting them. Their numbers will decline only when society stabilizes, and adapts to modernity.

AOL Member

- G Gaia



People wish to be settled: only as far as they are unsettled is there any hope for them.

- Ralph Waldo Emerson



Security is when everything is settled. When nothing can happen to you. Security is the denial of life.

- Germaine Greer



Security is mostly a superstition. It does not exist in nature, nor do the children of men as a whole experience it. Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. Life is either a daring adventure or nothing.

- Helen Keller



The hens they all cackle, the roosters all beg,
But I will not hatch, I will not hatch.
For I hear all the talk of pollution and war
As the people all shout and the airplane roar,
So I'm staying in here where it's safe and it's warm,
And I WILL NOT HATCH!

- Shel Silverstein



I have every sympathy with the American who was so horrified by what he had read about the effects of smoking that he gave up reading.

- Henry G. Strauss



They who would give up an essential liberty for temporary security, deserve neither liberty or security

- Benjamin Franklin



There is no security on this earth. Only opportunity.

- Douglas MacArthur



True individual freedom cannot exist without economic security and independence.

- Franklin D. Roosevelt



I have named the destroyers of nations: comfort, plenty, and security - out of which grow a bored and slothful cynicism, in which rebellion against the world as it is, and myself as I am, are submerged in listless self-satisfaction.

- John Steinbeck



The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy.

- Martin Luther King, Jr.



There are only two lasting bequests we can hope to give our children. One is roots; the other, wings.

- Hodding Carter



It takes a lot of courage to release the familiar and seemingly secure, to embrace the new. But there is no real security in what is no longer meaningful. There is more security in the adventurous and exciting, for in movement there is life, and in change there is power.

- Alan Cohen



He who is firmly seated in authority soon learns to think security, and not progress, the highest lesson of statecraft.

- James Russell Lowell



A rut is a grave with the ends knocked out.

- Laurence J. Peter