Variant: Nothing gives a fearful man more courage than another's fear.”" -
Source: The Name of the Rose
Quoted in K. Patrick Malone, Inside a Haunted Mind (2008) p. 167
“Men fear thought as they fear nothing else on earth – more than ruin, more even than death.”
Source: 1910s, Why Men Fight https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Why_Men_Fight (1917), pp. 178-179
Context: Men fear thought as they fear nothing else on earth – more than ruin, more even than death. Thought is subversive and revolutionary, destructive and terrible; thought is merciless to privilege, established institutions, and comfortable habits; thought is anarchic and lawless, indifferent to authority, careless of the well-tried wisdom of the ages. Thought looks into the pit of hell and is not afraid. It sees man, a feeble speck, surrounded by unfathomable depths of silence; yet it bears itself proudly, as unmoved as if it were lord of the universe. Thought is great and swift and free, the light of the world, and the chief glory of man.
“It often requires more courage to dare to do right than to fear to do wrong.”
“Nothing is more frightening than a fear you cannot name.”
Variant: Nothing is more terrifying than fearlessness.
Source: Inkheart
Source: Jack Faust (1997), Chapter 16, “The Wild Hunt” (p. 278)
“Courage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear - not absence of fear.”
