No weapon is as dangerous as an idea. A weapon will kill you in that moment. A bad idea can kill you for a lifetime.

The way to combat noxious ideas is with other ideas. The way to combat falsehoods is with truth.

An idea that is not dangerous is unworthy of being called an idea at all.” — Oscar Wilde, writer and poet

The only thing more dangerous than an idea is a belief. And by dangerous I don't mean thought-provoking. I mean: might get people killed.

There’s nothing more dangerous than a good idea.

If there is anything more dangerous to the life of the mind than having no independent commitment to ideas, it is having an excess of commitment to some special and constricting idea.

It is better to die for an idea that will live, than to live for an idea that will die.

The best antidote for fear is knowledge.

Nothing is more dangerous than an idea when it is the only one you have.

Nothing is more dangerous than an idea, when you have only one idea.

The only thing more dangerous than an idea is a belief.

History itself is the only arbiter of "dangerous thoughts" and to whom they are dangerous. For the world does move. Men's thoughts change as the times change. You can no more freeze the thoughts of mankind than you can stop the earth from moving on its axis, than you can freeze a lovely face into eternal youth. To try to do this is not only to make a mockery of democracy, it is to stop the movement of progress and to whip up a fierce tide of reaction. Who should have the right to determine that another man's thoughts are "dangerous"? ("Jailed for her Thoughts")

If there is anything more dangerous to the life of the mind than having no independent commitment to ideas, it is having an excess of commitment to some special and constricting idea. The effect is as observable in politics as in theology: the intellectual function can be overwhelmed by an excess of piety expended within too contracted a frame of reference.

Ideas are dangerous, but the man to whom they are least dangerous is the man of ideas. He is acquainted with ideas, and moves among them like a lion-tamer. Ideas are dangerous, but the man to whom they are most dangerous is the man of no ideas. The man of no ideas will find the first idea fly to his head like wine to the head of a teetotaller. It is a common error, I think, among the Radical idealists of my own party and period to suggest that financiers and business men are a danger to the empire because they are so sordid or so materialistic. The truth is that financiers and business men are a danger to the empire because they can be sentimental about any sentiment, and idealistic about any ideal, any ideal that they find lying about, just as a boy who has not known much of women is apt too easily to take a woman for the woman, so these practical men, unaccustomed to causes, are always inclined to think that if a thing is proved to be an ideal it is proved to be the ideal.