“Pride is a reaction formation to the feeling of inferiority, of the experience of powerlessness, of not being worthy enough of love. Only anxiety compels a person to lose moderation and to want to be more than he is. Out of fear of being an animal, he has to become an angel. Out of fear of being a nothing, a god. Anxiety never allows him to be simply a man.”

— Eugen Drewermann

Strukturen des Bösen III LXXVII (fifth edition 1986)

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Eugen Drewermann 9

German psychologist and theologian 1940

Richard M. Weaver (1910–1963) American scholar

Source: Ideas have Consequences (1948), p. 16.
Context: Man is constantly being assured that he has more power than ever before in history, but his daily experience is one of powerlessness. … If he is with a business organization, the odds are great that he has sacrificed every other kind of independence in return for that dubious one known as financial.

“Out of love, God becomes man. He says: "See, here is what it is to be a human being."”

Sören Kierkegaard (1813–1855) Danish philosopher and theologian, founder of Existentialism

Source: 1840s, The Sickness unto Death (July 30, 1849), p. 161

“Religion has nothing more to fear than not being sufficiently understood.”

Stanisław Leszczyński (1677–1766) king of Poland

No. 36.
Maxims and Moral Sentences

“There are still a few erect human beings in the socalled world. Proudly and humbly, I say to these human beings:
"O my fellow citizens, many an honest man believes a lie. Though you are as honest as the day, fear and hate the liar. Fear and hate him when he should be feared and hated:now. Fear and hate him were he should be feared and hated:in yourselves.
"Do not hate and fear the artist in yourselves, my fellow citizens. Honour him and love him. Love him truly— do not try to possess him. Trust him as nobly as you trust tomorrow.
"Only the artist in yourselves is more truthful than the night."”

E.E. Cummings (1894–1962) American poet

Essay in the anthology The War Poets (1945) edited by Oscar Williams

“The prospect of more freedom stirs anxiety. We want it, but we fear it”

Ellen Willis (1941–2006) writer, activist

"Ghosts, Fantasies, and Hope" http://www.dissentmagazine.org/article/?article=190 Dissent (Fall 2005)
Context: It’s not only corruption that distorts the utopian impulse when it begins to take some specific social shape. The prospect of more freedom stirs anxiety. We want it, but we fear it; it goes against our most deeply ingrained Judeo-Christian definitions of morality and order. At bottom, utopia equals death is a statement about the wages of sin.

“The crowning experience of all, for the homecoming man, is the wonderful feeling that, after all he has suffered, there is nothing he need fear anymore—except his God.”

Viktor E. Frankl book Man's Search for Meaning

Source: Man's Search for Meaning

“A dignified man prefers to be feared and respected rather than being loved”

Ali Al-Wardi (1913–1995) Iraqi sociologist

“He knew, better than the cynic, that if you look out over the arc of history, human beings should be filled not with fear but with hope.”

Barack Obama (1961) 44th President of the United States of America

Remarks by President Obama at Memorial Service for Former Israeli President Shimon Peres on Mount Herzl in Jerusalem, Israel. https://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2016/09/30/remarks-president-obama-memorial-service-former-israeli-president-shimon (30 September 2016)
2016

“They hate because they fear, and they fear because they feel that the deepest feelings of their lives are being assaulted and outraged. And they do not know why; they are powerless pawns in a blind play of social forces.”

Richard Wright (1908–1960) African-American writer

Native Son (1940)

“The anxiety children feel at constantly being tested, their fear of failure, punishment, and disgrace, severely reduces their ability both to perceive and to remember, and drives them away from the material being studied into strategies for fooling teachers into thinking they know what they really don't know.”

John Holt book How Children Learn

How Children Learn (1967).

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