We are to regard existence as a raid or great adventure; it is to be judged, therefore, not by what calamities it encounters, but by what flag it follows and what high town it assaults. The most dangerous thing in the world is to be alive; one is always in danger of one's life. But anyone who shrinks from that is a traitor to the great scheme and experiment of being.

Nothing is really so very frightening when everything is so very dangerous

We hope all danger may be overcome; but to conclude that no danger may ever arise would itself be extremely dangerous.

Even as a youngster, though, I could not bring myself to believe that if knowledge presented danger, the solution was ignorance. To me, it always seemed that the solution had to be wisdom. You did not refuse to look at danger, rather you learned how to handle it safely. After all, this has been the human challenge since a certain group of primates became human in the first place. Any technological advance can be dangerous. Fire was dangerous from the start, and so (even more so) was speech — and both are still dangerous to this day — but human beings would not be human without them.

Everything ahead of us is dangerous. There isn’t a power the President has asked for that isn’t dangerous. But there isn’t a power or a combination of powers he has asked for so dangerous as continuing to do nothing.

Real danger is nothing more than just living. Of course, living is merely the chaos of existence, but more than that it's a crazy mixed-up business of dismantling existence instant by instant to the point where the original chaos is restored, and taking strength from the uncertainty and the fear that chaos brings to re-create existence instant by instant. You won't find another job as dangerous as that. There isn't any fear in existence itself, or any uncertainty, but living creates it.

What thing so good which not some harm may bring?
Even to be happy is a dangerous thing.

The truth is that everything is risky; life itself is risky.

Anything scares me, anything scares anyone but really after all considering how dangerous everything is nothing is really very frightening.

Almost all general statements about the world are wrong. They are not necessarily false; they seem to me just to be inadequate. It is true, for example, that communism is a deadly danger, but Russia is a different kind of danger from Yugoslavia. A small Communist Party in Africa is a different danger from the Government of Red China. These different dangers require different policies and different actions, and different replies. As President, I have no special gift or prophecy. But I do have a special perspective, and a very special responsibility to anticipate the dangers and the opportunities of the future.

Isn't there something in living dangerously?

There’s nothing more dangerous than a good idea.

Believing everyone is dangerous, but believing nobody is more dangerous.

There's nothing more dangerous than someone who wants to make the world a better place.