Threats Quotes

“The threats that resurfaced in the past 10 years were not an aberration. Al Qaeda and terrorism or one such threat, but it was actually not the most serious threat that the United States faced. The president can and should speak of foreseeing an era in which these threats don't exist, but you must not believe his own rhetoric. To the contrary, he must gradually ease the country away from the idea that threats to imperial power will ever subside, then l lead it to an understanding that these threats are the price Americans pay for the wealth and power they hold.”

“There are environmental threats to health; there are internal threats to health - genetic conditions, viral threats, diseases like cancer and Parkinson's. And then there are societal and global ones, like poverty and lack of nutrition. And unknown viral threats - everything from a new kind of influenza to hemorrhagic fever.”

“His eyes widened just a bit, his lips flexed. I realized he was trying not to laugh. I hate it when people find my threats amusing.”

“The downside of attending to the emotional life of groups is that it can swamp the ability to get anything done; a group can become more concerned with satisfying its members than with achieving its goals. Bion identified several ways that groups can slide into pure emotion - they can become "groups for pairing off," in which members are mainly interested in forming romantic couples or discussing those who form them; they can become dedicated to venerating something, continually praising the object of their affection (fan groups often have this characteristic, be they Harry Potter readers or followers of the Arsenal soccer team), or they can focus too much on real or perceived external threats. Bion trenchantly observed that because external enemies are such spurs to group solidarity, some groups will anoint paranoid leaders because such people are expert at identifying external threats, thus generating pleasurable group solidarity even when the threats aren't real.”

“It is dangerous to exist in the world. To exist is to be threatened. We must live with threats.”

“Blackmail threats are e-mails from madmen.”

“When we begin to see our differences as opportunities rather than threats, then we can work together.”

“Threats to our standing in the eyes of others are remarkably potent biologically, almost as powerful as those to our very survival.”

“It was a defeat, resorting to crude threats in a game of subtlety, but sometimes one must sacrifice a battle to win the war.”