False Alarm Quotes

We are more often frightened than hurt; and we suffer more from imagination than from reality.

There was no imminent threat. This was made up in Texas, announced in January to the Republican leadership that war was going to take place and was going to be good politically. This whole thing was a fraud.

I've seen many troubles in my time, only half of which ever came true.

A lamb appears a lion, and we fear Each bush we see's a bear.

Free speech means the right to shout 'theatre' in a crowded fire.

Liberals always cry wolf.

Generally when there's a lot of smoke... there's just a whole lot more smoke.

A fire broke out backstage in a theatre. The clown came out to warn the public; they thought it was a joke and applauded. He repeated it; the acclaim was even greater. I think that's just how the world will come to an end: to the general applause of wits who believe it's a joke.

I was haunted by the constant awareness that I might be required to calculate and decide in an instant of time whether some kind of nuclear action might be required in response to a real or imagined or mistaken attack perceived to be under way against my country.

The trouble with emergencies is," she said, "that I always put on my finest underwear and then nothing happens.

You weren’t in any real danger. We knew exactly where you were all the time.

I felt foolish and tired, as if I had been running to escape someone chasing me, only to look behind to discover there was no one there.

The most stringent protection of free speech would not protect a man in falsely shouting fire in a theatre and causing a panic.

The noise is greater then the nuts.

There are more things to alarm us than to harm us, and we suffer more often in apprehension than reality.

He that first cries out stop thief, is often he that has stolen the treasure.

A scary dream makes your heart beat faster. Why doesn't the part of your brain that controls your heartbeat realize that another part of your brain is making the whole thing up? Don't these people communicate?

For every time she shouted "Fire!" They only answered "Little liar!" And therefore when her aunt returned, Matilda, and the house, were burned.

The fuel light's on, Frank! We're all going to die! Wait, wait... Oh, my mistake - that's the intercom light.

Nearly every morning, a certain woman in our community comes running out of her house with her face white and her overcoat flapping wildly. She cries out, "Emergency, emergency," and one of us runs to her and holds her until her fears are calmed. We know she is making it up; nothing is has really happened to her. But we understand, because there is hardly one of us who has no been moved at some time to do just what she has done, and every time, it has taken all our strength, and even the strength of our friends and families, too, to keep us quiet.

And besides, I'm so in Dutch with my neighbors here that I thought that was better than getting them all upset with what might be a fake bomb scare where they'd have to clear out the whole neighborhood.

There is, to be sure, sometimes only a small difference between being alert to possible danger and allowing oneself to become terrified to the point of paralysis by seeming or imagined portents.

I once sent a dozen of my friends a telegram saying 'flee at once - all is discovered.' They all left town immediately.

One time, a burglar came to my apartment, so we called the police. My son was here, so I think they left before they tried to steal something. So the police come to my apartment, and they say, 'Oh my God, did they steal everything?' I was like, 'No, it was like that!'

a delusion and a sham ... an empty menace to the great interest, made to answer the clamor of the ignorant and the unreasoning.