The greatest danger of bombs is in the explosion of stupidity that they provoke.
When I worry about risks, I worry about the biggest ones, particularly those that are difficult to predict - the ones I call small but deep holes. While odds are you will avoid them, if you do fall in one, it's a long way down and nearly impossible to claw your way out.
The tree of nonsense is watered with error, and from its branches swing the pumpkins of disaster.
What I worry about is climate change, because that would have untold effects that we can't even measure yet.
We will not really address our foreign policy and these endless wars that show no end in sight and seem to be getting deeper and broader and more catastrophic with each passing day.
Alas! by what slight means are great affairs brought to destruction.
We're [humans] running great risks of doing things that will not be good for us. The cost can be very high indeed if we reach the point where we can't adapt to our own increasingly rapid adaptations. We run the risk of early extinction. So this certainly isn't a triumphalist story, but it is trying to get at what, in the very long run, leads to the amazing creatures that we are.
Life improves slowly and goes wrong fast, and only catastrophe is clearly visible.
I would much rather we concentrated on the immediate, still-potent dangers, such as nuclear weapons, runaway climate change, and so on. Sort those out, then worry about Hal 9000.
Obama never listened to anyone, always thought he was smarter than every expert in the room, and treated every meeting as an opportunity to lecture everyone else. This led to real-world disasters, like Syria and the rise of Isis.
We are in a race between knowledge and catastrophe. If we keep track of what is important, never lower our standards or forget why we are here, we have the ability to determine the fate of the world.
In times of revolution, it is dangerous to carry through fundamental changes suddenly, however reasonable and desirable they may be in themselves. This is to risk losing everything.
If there are two or more ways to do something and one of those ways can result in a catastrophe, then someone will do it.
American society in recent years has been imitating behavior patterns that have produced negative - and sometimes catastrophic - consequences in many other countries around the world.
If I were to think of and dwell on disastrous possibilities, I could do nothing. I throw myself headlong into my work, and come up again with my studies.
The witnessing of titanic events is always dangerous, usually painful, and often fatal.
