If ideas are "dangerous" then I am "dangerous" because I have ideas. I have ideas for a new system of government and society. Those ideas I have are called socialism. Socialism – a system where there will no longer exist a basis for the exploitation of man by man; a system of government where people – all people, without reservation – will be able to grow and develop into full human beings, where love will replace hate, where men, all men, can develop to their fullest potential.

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.

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.

Only ideals are dangerous.

The possession of a clear and definite ideal of society seems to me dangerous to its possessors. The Mediaeval Church had such an ideal: the result was the Inquisition, which was generally approved by the common consciousness.

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

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

[A] theory is a very dangerous thing to have.

There is nothing more dangerous than to build a society with a large segment of people in that society who feel that they have no stake in it; who feel that that have nothing to lose. People who have stake in their society, protect that society, but when they don't have it, they unconsciously want to destroy it.

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

The belief in a political Utopia is especially dangerous. This is possibly connected with the fact that the search for a better world, like the investigation of our environment, is (if I am correct) one of the oldest and most important of all the instincts.

Ideologies are substitutes for true knowledge, and ideologues are always dangerous when they come to power, because a simple-minded I-know-it-all approach is no match for the complexity of existence.

Idealism itself can become dangerous. But going too far in the other direction, towards relativism, amoral expediency and opportunism, is equally perilous.

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