Source: Faith of My Fathers: A Family Memoir
“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.
“Nothing gives a fearful man more courage than another's fear.”
Variant: Nothing gives a fearful man more courage than another's fear.”" -
Source: The Name of the Rose
Foreign Policy Congress in Milan, June 1938. Quoted in "The decline of the intellectual" - Page 189 - by Thomas Molnar - 1994.
“Your worst sin is that you have destroyed and betrayed yourself for nothing.”
Crime and Punishment (1866)
“Nothing is more frightening than a fear you cannot name.”
Variant: Nothing is more terrifying than fearlessness.
Source: Inkheart
“Religion has nothing more to fear than not being sufficiently understood.”
No. 36.
Maxims and Moral Sentences
“Nothing is more intolerable than to have admit to yourself your own errors.”
