“What was reprehensible in being fearful in the presence of the unknown?”
Source: A Funeral for the Eyes of Fire (1975), Chapter 1, “Planetfall: The Hawks of Conscience” (p. 33)
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Michael Bishop25
American writer 1945Related quotes
“Instead of fearing the unknown, we must conquer our fear.”
Newton Lee American computer scientist
Google It: Total Information Awareness, 2016
H.P. Lovecraft (1890–1937) American author
"Supernatural Horror in Literature" (1927)
Non-Fiction
Variant: The oldest and strongest emotion of mankind is fear, and the oldest and strongest kind of fear is fear of the unknown
Source: The Complete Fiction of H.P. Lovecraft
“There's always fear of the unknown where there's mystery.”
David Lynch (1946) American filmmaker, television director, visual artist, musician and occasional actor
McKenna interview (1992)
Context: There's always fear of the unknown where there's mystery. It's possible to achieve a state where you realize the truth of life and fear disappears, and a lot of people have reached that state, but next to none of them are on Earth. There's probably a few.
Sophocles (-496–-406 BC) ancient Greek tragedian
Jocasta (Line 977?).
Oedipus Rex
Variant: Nay, what should mortal fear, for whom the decrees of fortune are supreme and who hath clear foresight of nothing? 'Tis best to live at random, as one may.
“Peace is that state in which fear of any kind is unknown.”
John Buchan (1875–1940) British politician
Pilgrim's Way (1940), p. 117
Memory Hold-The-Door (1940)
“Fear and superstition always follow the unseen, the unknown, the whispered of.”
Sheri S. Tepper (1929–2016) American fiction writer
Source: The Margarets (2007), Chapter 34, “I Am M’urgi/On B’Yurngrad” (p. 312)
“To acknowledge the presence of fear is to give birth to failure.”
Katherine Mansfield (1888–1923) New Zealand author
Journal entry, "Reading Notes" (1905-1907), quoted in Ruth Elvish Mantz and John Middleton Murry, The Life of Katherine Mansfield (1933), p. 212