Quotes about fear
page 17

“He struggled with himself, too. I saw it -- I heard it. I saw the inconceivable mystery of a soul that knew no restraint, no faith, and no fear, yet struggling blindly with itself.”

Joseph Conrad book Heart of Darkness

Source: Heart of Darkness

Faith, Soul

“Nothing will stop you being creative more effectively as the fear of making a
mistake.”

John Cleese (1939) actor from England

“When you reach the stars, boy, yes, and live there forever, all the fears will go, and Death himself will die.”

Ray Bradbury book The Halloween Tree

Source: The Halloween Tree

Death, Star, Boy

“perhaps because this time not fear but love made him read.”

Cornelia Funke Inkheart trilogy

Source: Inkdeath

Love, Time, Reading

“When we are unhurried and wise, we perceive that only great and worthy things have any permanent and absolute existence, that petty fears and petty pleasures are but the shadow of the reality.”

Henry David Thoreau book Walden ou la vie dans les bois

Source: Walden

Pleasure, Reality

“That's what tears are for, you know, to wash away the fear and cool the hate.”

Laurie R. King (1952) American novelist

Hate, Tear

“Fear is an insidious and deadly thing. It can warp judgment, freeze reflexes, breed mistakes. Worse, it's contagious.”

Jimmy Stewart (1908–1997) American film and stage actor

“hate blows a bubble of despair into
hugeness world system universe and bang
-fear buries a tomorrow under woe
and up comes yesterday most green and young”

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

Source: Complete Poems, 1904-1962

Hate, World, Universe, Despair

“One remedy for the fear of not being loved is to remember how good it feels to love someone. If you're feeling unloved and you want to feel better, go love someone, and see what happens.”

Dossie Easton (1944) American author and family therapist

Source: The Ethical Slut: A Guide to Infinite Sexual Possibilities

Love, Feeling

“I feel my fear moving away in rings through time for a million years.”

Breece D'J Pancake (1952–1979) American writer

Source: The Stories of Breece D'J Pancake

Feeling, Time

“Fear is a weakness. It makes a person lose her nerve and her cool. It makes people jumpy and organizations nervous, and when that happens, there is always a chance to take advantage.”

Ally Carter (1974) American writer

Source: Uncommon Criminals

People, Chance, Personality

“It's not the gods
But our own hearts
We need to fear.
The evil starts
Against all odds
Not there but here.”

Vikram Seth (1952) Indian writer

Source: Arion and the Dolphin

God, Evil, Heart

“I was beginning to see, though, that the unknown wasn't always the greatest thing to fear. The people who know you best can be risker, because the words they say and things they think have the potential to be not only scary but true, as well.”

Sarah Dessen book Just Listen

Source: Just Listen

People, Thinking

“I'm still prone to periods of isolation, still more fearful of the world out there and more averse to pleasure and risk than I'd like to be; I still direct more energy toward controlling and minimizing appetites than toward indulging them.”

Caroline Knapp (1959–2002) American writer

Source: Appetites: Why Women Want

Pleasure, World

“In every country where independence has taken the place of liberty, the first desire of a manly heart is to possess a weapon which at once renders him capable of defence or attack, and, by rendering its owner fearsome, makes him feared.”

Alexandre Dumas book The Count of Monte Cristo

Source: The Count of Monte Cristo

Heart, Country

“… I felt fear enter the halls of my mind, but I didn't give it the keys to every room.”

Dean Koontz book Life Expectancy

Source: Life Expectancy

“I write entirely to find out what I'm thinking, what I'm looking at, what I see and what it means. What I want and what I fear.”

Joan Didion (1934) American writer

Thinking

“Never let fear and stupid pride make you lose someone who's precious to you.”

Haruki Murakami book Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage

Source: Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage

Stupidity

“Everything you do is triggered by an emotion of either desire or fear.”

Brian Tracy (1944) American motivational speaker and writer

“She knew that was not an honest prayer, and she did not linger over it. The right prayer would have been, Lord… I am miserable and bitter at heart, and old fears are rising up in me so that everything I do makes everything worse.”

Marilynne Robinson Home

Source: Home

Heart

“I have done, this year, what I said I would: overcome my fear of facing a blank page day after day, acknowledging myself, in my deepest emotions, a writer, come what may.”

Sylvia Plath (1932–1963) American poet, novelist and short story writer

“If you knew who walked beside you at all times, on the path that you have chosen, you could never experience fear or doubt again.”

Wayne W. Dyer (1940–2015) American writer

Time

“You will never be able to escape from your heart. So it's better to listen to what it has to say. That way, you'll never have to fear an unanticipated blow.”

Paulo Coelho (1947) Brazilian lyricist and novelist

Way, Heart

“Fear," the doctor said, "is the relinquishment of logic, the willing relinquishing of reasonable patterns. We yield to it or we fight it, but we cannot meet it halfway.”

Shirley Jackson book The Haunting of Hill House

Source: The Haunting of Hill House

Fight

“Leo scratched his head. “Well I dunno about Enchiladas—”
“Enceladus,” Piper corrected.
“Whatever. But Old Potty Face mentioned another name. Porpoise Fear, or something?”
“Porphyrion?” Piper asked. ”He was the giant king, I think.”

Rick Riordan (1964) American writer

Thinking

“Today's worries are yesterday's fears and tomorrow's stories.”

Alyson Nöel book Evermore

Source: Evermore

“Chaos is what we've lost touch with. This is why it is given a bad name. It is feared by the dominant archetype of our world, which is Ego, which clenches because its existence is defined in terms of control.”

Terence McKenna (1946–2000) American ethnobotanist

World

“All the heat and fear had purged itself. I felt surprisingly at peace. The bell jar hung suspended a few feet above my head. I was open to the circulating air.”

Sylvia Plath book The Bell Jar

Source: The Bell Jar

Peace

“Fate is how your life unfolds when you let fear determine your choices. A path of destiny reveals itself to you, however, when you confront your fear and make conscious choices.”

Caroline Myss (1952) author from the United States

Life, Fate

“And loss of control is always the source of fear. It is also, however, always the source of change.”

James Frey book The Final Testament of the Holy Bible

Source: The Final Testament of the Holy Bible

Change, Loss

“I'm not going to act the lady among you, for fear I should starve.”

Emily Brontë book Wuthering Heights

Source: Wuthering Heights

“The problem, of course, was that [he] saw the world in black and white. And he got to decide what was black and what was white. You can't love a person who lives that way without fearing him too. Maybe even hating him a little.”

Khaled Hosseini book The Kite Runner

Source: The Kite Runner (2003)
Context: With me as the glaring exception, my father molded the world around him to his liking. The problem, of course, was that Baba saw the world in black and white. And he got to decide what was black and what was white. You can't love a person who lives that way without fearing him too. Maybe even hating him a little.

Love, Hate, World, Way

“You are not wise enough to fear me as I should be feared.”

Patrick Rothfuss book The Name of the Wind

Source: The Name of the Wind

“Divorce lawyers stoke anger and fear in their clients, knowing that as long as the conflicts remain unresolved the revenue stream will keep flowing.”

Craig Ferguson (1962) Scottish-born American television host, stand-up comedian, writer, actor, director, author, producer and voice a…

Source: American on Purpose: The Improbable Adventures of an Unlikely Patriot

Anger

“And this you can know- fear the time when Manself will not suffer and die for a concept, for this one quality is man, distinctive in the universe.”

John Steinbeck book The Grapes of Wrath

Source: The Grapes of Wrath

Suffering, Universe, Time

“‎When she looked up at him, it was suddenly easy for her to imagine that her fears were pointless. That he would love her no matter what she told him, and that he was the kind of man who loved her already and would love her forever.”

Nicholas Sparks book Safe Haven

Source: Safe Haven

Love, Imagination

“Tonight, she went into the woods, and I fear she shall live in the woods of my soul for the rest of my days.”

Libba Bray A Great and Terrible Beauty

Source: A Great and Terrible Beauty

Soul

“When I'm single, I'm this fabulous, independent, confident woman, and then I get involved with one disastrous man after another and I turn into this needy, insecure, fearful girl who becomes frightened of her own shadow.”

Jane Green (1968) British writer

Source: Dune Road

Confidence, Girl

“We came out here to find the American Dream, and now that we're right in the vortex you want to quit… You must realize that we've found the main nerve."

I know," he said. "That's what gives me the Fear.”

Hunter S. Thompson (1937–2005) American journalist and author

Dreams

“I guess that's the story of life: what you most fear never happens, but what you most yearn for never happens either. This is the difference between life and fiction. I suppose it's a good trade-off. But I'm not sure.”

Philip K. Dick (1928–1982) American author

Life

“There is no fear. Absolutely no fear. When one lives without fear, one cannot be broken. When one lives with fear one is broken before one begins to live.”

James Frey book A Million Little Pieces

Source: A Million Little Pieces

“The stony-minded orthodox were right in fearing the first movement of new knowledge and free thought. It has gone on, and will go on, irresistibly, until some day we shall have no respect for an alleged "truth" which cannot stand the full blaze of knowledge, the full force of active thought.”

Charlotte Perkins Gilman (1860–1935) American feminist, writer, commercial artist, lecturer and social reformer

The Living of Charlotte Perkins Gilman, (1935).

Truth, Knowledge

“Bless God, he went as soldiers,
His musket on his breast;
Grant, God, he charge the bravest
Of all the martial blest.

Please God, might I behold him
In epauletted white,
I should not fear the foe then,
I should not fear the fight.”

Emily Dickinson (1830–1886) American poet

Time and Eternity, p. 234
Collected Poems (1993)

God, Fight

“How sweet to be an idiot
At my back
With no fear of attack
As much retaliation as a toy.”

Neil Innes (1944–2019) British comic songwriter

How sweet to be an idiot (1973).

“Go, view the settling sea: the stormy wind is laid. The billows still tremble on the deep. They seem to fear the blast.”

James Macpherson (1736–1796) Scottish writer, poet, translator, and politician

"Conlath and Cuthona"
The Poems of Ossian

Sea

“Does Donald Trump have the temperament to be Commander-in-Chief? Donald Trump can't even handle the rough-and-tumble of a presidential campaign. He loses his cool at the slightest provocation. When he's gotten a tough question from a reporter. When he's challenged in a debate. When he sees a protestor at a rally. Imagine him in the Oval Office facing a real crisis. A man you can bait with a tweet is not a man we can trust with nuclear weapons. I can't put it any better than Jackie Kennedy did after the Cuban Missile Crisis. She said that what worried President Kennedy during that very dangerous time was that a war might be started – not by big men with self-control and restraint, but by little men – the ones moved by fear and pride.”

Hillary Clinton (1947) American politician, senator, Secretary of State, First Lady

Presidential campaign (April 12, 2015 – 2016), 2016 Democratic National Convention (July 28, 2016)

Men, War, Imagination, Question

“Europe is as fearful of Islam today as she has been in the past. She now knows that the strength of Islam (which in the past expressed that of the Arabs) has been reborn and has appeared in a new form: Arab nationalism.”

Michel Aflaq book On the Way of Resurrection

On the Way of Resurrection (1943)

Appearance, Past

“Of asphodel, that greeny flower,

::like a buttercup

::::upon its branching stem —

save that's green and wooden —

::I come, my sweet,

::::to sing to you.

We lived long together,

::a life filled,

::::if you will,

with flowers. So that

::I was cheered

::::when I first came to know

that there were flowers also

::in hell.

::::Today

I'm filled with the fading memory of those flowers

::that we both loved,

::::even to this poor

colorless thing —

::I saw it

::::when I was a child —

little prized among the living

::but the dead see,

::::asking among themselves:

What do I remember

::that was shaped

::::as this thing is shaped?
while our eyes fill
::with tears.
::::Of love, abiding love
it will be telling
::though too weak a wash of crimson
::::colors it
to make it wholly credible.
::There is something
::::something urgent
I have to say to you
::and you alone
::::but it must wait
while I drink in
::the joy of your approach,
::::perhaps for the last time.
And so
::with fear in my heart
::::I drag it out
and keep on talking
::for I dare not stop.”

William Carlos Williams book Journey to Love

Journey to Love (1955), Asphodel, That Greeny Flower

Love, Life, Color, Flowers

“He who fears and doubts cannot make any progress either in the spiritual or worldly sphere. The mind is cramped. He alone is a hero, he alone attains greatness, who moves forward to realise the truth without caring whether the world is real or not.”

Swami Adbhutananda Disciple

The Apostles of Sri Ramakrishna

Truth, World

“Saddam gave us a lot of things. The development of the country … but I think what he took away from us in the meantime, was our very souls. We got into a stage where we were fearing each other, where husbands and wives didn't talk to each other, where parents were afraid to express anything in front of their kids because the teachers often asked the kids, 'what does daddy think of uncle Saddam? What does your mummy think of uncle Saddam?.”

Zainab Salbi (1969) Iraqi American author, women's rights activist

And there are horror stories of parents being executed because of the child. <br class="br">About Human rights in Saddam Hussein's Iraq, as quoted in the documentary I Knew Saddam https://www.aljazeera.com/programmes/general/2008/02/2008525183923377591.html (2007) by Al Jazeera English.

Soul, Thinking, Parent, Teachers

“I really do fear that I'm dying
I really do fear that I'm dead
I saw it in your eyes what I'm looking for
I saw it in your eyes what will make me live.”

Rufus Wainwright (1973) American-Canadian singer-songwriter and composer

The Tower of Learning
Song lyrics, Poses (2001)

Dead

“The man who doesn’t fear, doesn’t live long. I fear everything.”

Leigh Brackett (1915–1978) American novelist and screenwriter

Source: The Ginger Star (1974), Chapter 5 (p. 32)

“I suppose that writers should, in a way, feel flattered by the censorship laws. They show a primitive fear and dread at the fearful magic of print.”

John Mortimer (1923–2009) English barrister, dramatist, screenwriter and author

Clinging to the Wreckage : A Part of Life (1982), p. 183

Law, Way, Feeling

“Still, you must know that the fear of death is irrational; death comes to everyone.”

Robert J. Sawyer book Calculating God

Source: Calculating God (2000), Chapter 25 (p. 235)

Death

“Well, you have to work out what it is. They are a little splinter. They can't summon many voters at any given time. They are a minority of a minority of a minority. They have everybody buffaloed because the great corporations like them and pay money to their candidates for sheriff and senator. And they're playing big-time politics. Yes, indeed. But the average person doesn't like them. You know, any time I want to get applause — and I lecture across America in state after state after state — when I fear things are getting a little low, I always say, “And another thing: Let us tax all the religions,” I bring down the goddamn house with that. And any politician would if he had sense enough to do it. The people don't like their tax exemption.”

Gore Vidal (1925–2012) American writer

On the religious right in America http://therealnews.com/t/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=31&Itemid=74&jumival=342 <br class="br">2000s, What I've Learned (2008), Gore Vidal's America (2009)

Money, People, Religion, Sense

“Fear goes where it is invited.”

Tad Williams (1957) novelist

Source: Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn, Stone of Farewell (1990), Chapter 7, “Spreading Fires” (p. 171).

“The world's best swordsman doesn't fear the second best; he fears the worst swordsman, because he can't predict what the idiot will do.”

David Weber (1952) author

quote from Honor Harrington (Take on Mark Twain's original quote)
"Honorverse", The Honor of the Queen (1993)

World

“Fear is like a fire in your belly. Controlled, it warms you and keeps you alive. Uncontrolled, it burns and destroys you.”

David Gemmell book Waylander II: In the Realm of the Wolf

Source: Drenai series, Waylander II: In the Realm of the Wolf, Ch. 1

“When politicians talk about immigration reform, they usually mean the following: amnesty, open borders, and lower wages. Immigration reform should mean something else entirely: it should mean improvements to our laws and policies to make life better for American citizens. But if we are going to make our immigration system work, then we have to be prepared to talk honestly and without fear about these important and sensitive issues.”

Donald J. Trump (1946) 45th President of the United States of America

Immigration speech (31 August 2016)
Source: https://www.politico.com/story/2016/08/donald-trump-immigration-address-transcript-227614

Life, Law

“Kings and princes have much more power when they undertake some enterprise on the advice of their subjects. They are then more feared by their enemies.”

Philippe de Commines book Mémoires

Les roys et princes en sont trop plus forts, quand ils l'entreprennent du consentement de leurs subjets, et en sont plus craints de leurs ennemis.
Bk. V, ch. 19.
Mémoires

“Here it is night: I stay at the Summit Temple.
Here I can touch the stars with my hand.
I dare not speak aloud in the silence
For fear of disturbing the dwellers of Heaven.”

Li Bai (701–762) Chinese poet of the Tang dynasty poetry period

"The Summit Temple" (夜宿山寺), in The White Pony: An Anthology of Chinese Poetry from the Earliest Times to the Present Day (1947), p. 173

Star, Silence, Night

“Mad, Bad, or just prepared to go where others fear to tread? The most controversial author and speaker in the world”

David Icke (1952) English writer and public speaker

Source: davidicke.com cf lifts quote from "where angels fear to tread"

World, Madness

“Such a tendency has the slave-trade to debauch men's minds, and harden them to every feeling of humanity! For I will not suppose that the dealers in slaves are born worse than other men—No; it is the fatality of this mistaken avarice, that it corrupts the milk of human kindness and turns it into gall. And, had the pursuits of those men been different, they might have been as generous, as tender-hearted and just, as they are unfeeling, rapacious and cruel. Surely this traffic cannot be good, which spreads like a pestilence, and taints what it touches! which violates that first natural right of mankind, equality and independency, and gives one man a dominion over his fellows which God could never intend! For it raises the owner to a state as far above man as it depresses the slave below it; and, with all the presumption of human pride, sets a distinction between them, immeasurable in extent, and endless in duration! Yet how mistaken is the avarice even of the planters? Are slaves more useful by being thus humbled to the condition of brutes, than they would be if suffered to enjoy the privileges of men? The freedom which diffuses health and prosperity throughout Britain answers you—No. When you make men slaves you deprive them of half their virtue, you set them in your own conduct an example of fraud, rapine, and cruelty, and compel them to live with you in a state of war; and yet you complain that they are not honest or faithful! You stupify them with stripes, and think it necessary to keep them in a state of ignorance; and yet you assert that they are incapable of learning; that their minds are such a barren soil or moor, that culture would be lost on them; and that they come from a climate, where nature, though prodigal of her bounties in a degree unknown to yourselves, has left man alone scant and unfinished, and incapable of enjoying the treasures she has poured out for him!—An assertion at once impious and absurd. Why do you use those instruments of torture? Are they fit to be applied by one rational being to another? And are ye not struck with shame and mortification, to see the partakers of your nature reduced so low? But, above all, are there no dangers attending this mode of treatment? Are you not hourly in dread of an insurrection? […] But by changing your conduct, and treating your slaves as men, every cause of fear would be banished. They would be faithful, honest, intelligent and vigorous; and peace, prosperity, and happiness, would attend you.”

Olaudah Equiano (1745–1797) African abolitionist

Chap. V
The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, or Gustavus Vassa, the African (1789)

Men, God, War, Happiness

“Much has been said in the present debate about conciliation and the value of conciliatory measures to Ireland…Conciliatory legislation is infinitely superior; but it depends for its efficacy on the circumstances under which it is used, and on the manner in which it is applied. Deterrent legislation, if vigorous and strong, at least deters, whatever the value of that process may be. But conciliatory legislation only conciliates where there is a full belief on the part of those with whom you are dealing that you are acting on a principle of justice, and not that you are acting on motives of fear. Where there is a suspicion or a strong belief that your conciliatory measures have been extorted from you by the violence which they are meant to put a stop to, all the value of that conciliation is taken away.”

Robert Gascoyne-Cecil, 3rd Marquess of Salisbury (1830–1903) British politician

Speech https://api.parliament.uk/historic-hansard/lords/1882/jun/05/motion-for-papers in the House of Lords (5 June 1882) <br class="br">1880s

Justice, Motivation, Strong, Parting

“The only really Christian art is that which, like St. Francis, does not fear being wedded to poverty. This rises far above art-as-ornament.”

André Gide (1869–1951) French novelist and essayist

“An Unprejudiced Mind,” p. 317
Pretexts: Reflections on Literature and Morality (1964)

Art, Wedding

“Monsieur, mon cousin,

I have seen the letters you have sent me by Buckingham herald, whereby I understand that you want my friendship in good form and manner, which contents me well enough; for I have no intention of breaking such truces as have previously been concluded between the late King of most noble memory, my brother, and you for as long as they still have to run. Nevertheless, the merchants of this my kingdom of England, seeing the great provocation your subjects have given them in seizing ships and merchandise and other goods, are fearful of venturing to go to Bordeaux and other places under your rule until they are assured by you that they can surely and safely carry on trade in all the places subject to your sway, according to the rights established by the aforesaid truces. Therefore, in order that my subjects and merchants may not find themselves deceived as a result of this present ambiguous situation, I pray you that by my servant this bearer, one of the grooms of my stable, you will let me know in writing your full intentions, at the same time informing me if there is anything I can do for you in order that I may do it with a good heart. And farewell to you, Monsieur mon cousin.”

Richard III of England (1452–1485) English monarch

Letter sent, as King of England, 18 August, 1483, to Louis XI of France. Reprinted in Richard the Third (1956) http://books.google.com/books?id=dNm0JgAACAAJ&dq=Paul+Murray+Kendall+Richard+the+Third&ei=TZHDR8zXKZKIiQHf2NCpCA

Friendship, Understanding, Memory, Time

“I used to think that television could be potentially the most powerful medium for the dissemination of knowledge that the world has ever known, it could be a very rich and rewarding thing if handled properly and that the problem was in the execution. I've now come, after ten years in the business, five years of which was as a television critic, to taking the very extreme view point. I think television itself is bad.
The idea of television, the act of watching television kills the imagination. It's not like radio, with radio you had to listen, had to make things, you had to build things in your mind. Movies do that. Television is something else again. Television lays it all out there in a very prescribed way and the bare minimum of imagination on the part of the viewer is needed and I really fear for all of us.”

Harlan Ellison (1934–2018) American writer

Interview in 1979, quoted in The Online Copywriter's Handbook (2002) by Robert W. Bly, p. 19

World, Way, Imagination, Idea

“In one experience I remember vividly, there was a rich range of shades. It must have been late 1941 or early 1942. Jews were required to wear the Star of David and to obey a 6 p. m. curfew. I had gone to play with a Christian friend and had stayed too late. I turned my brown sweater inside out to walk the few blocks home. As I was walking down an empty street, I saw a German soldier approaching. He was wearing the black uniform that I had been told to fear more than others - the one worn by specially recruited SS soldiers. As I came closer to him, trying to walk fast, I noticed that he was looking at me intently. Then he beckoned me over, picked me up, and hugged me. I was terrified that he would notice the star inside my sweater. He was speaking to me with great emotion, in German. When he put me down, he opened his wallet, showed me a picture of a boy, and gave me some money. I went home more certain than ever that my mother was right: people were endlessly complicated and interesting.”

Daniel Kahneman (1934) Israeli-American psychologist

Nobel Prize Autobiographical Information http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/economic-sciences/laureates/2002/kahneman-bio.html (2002).

Money, People, Home, Star

“Nothing makes us angrier than the fear that some pleasure is being enjoyed by others but forever denied to us.”

Charles A. Reich book The Greening of America

Source: The Greening of America (1970), Chapter X : Beyond Youth: Recovery Of Self, p. 279

Pleasure

“The good needs fear no law,
It is his safety and the bad man's awe.”

Philip Massinger The Old Law

The Old Law (c. 1615–18; printed 1656), with Thomas Middleton and William Rowley.

Law

“The labor unions of Indiana proceeded to meet and resolve. They resolved in such violent and vicious language that no partisan press could be found willing to print the resolutions. Long afterward I learned that I was shadowed for six months by Secret Service men in the fear that I might be assaulted by some over-zealous union man. Of this I was not aware at the time, or I should have taken steps to have prevented it. Whether I am a Presbyterian or a fatalist I do not know, but I do know that if I am to be shot, I will never be hanged.”

Thomas R. Marshall (1854–1925) American politician who served as the 28th Vice President of the United States

Recollections of Thomas R. Marshall: A Hoosier Salad (1925), Chapter XIV

Men, Secret, Learning, Time

“Life was growing and spreading here the way a disease propagates and eats and in the eating must kill. There should be something more, he thought. A kind of being might come into the universe that did not want to finally eat everything or to command all or to fill every niche and site with its own precious self. It would be a strange thing, with enough of the brute biology in it to have the quick, darting sense of survival. But it would also have to carry something of the machine in it, the passive and accepting quality of duty, of waiting, and of thought that went beyond the endless eating or the fear of dying. To such a thing the universe would not be a battleground but a theater, where eternal dramas were acted out and it was best to be in the audience. Perhaps evolution, which had been at the beginning a blind force that pushed against everything, could find a path to that shambling, curiously lasting state.”

Gregory Benford (1941) Science fiction author and astrophysicist

Part 6 “Aleph Null”, Chapter 4 (p. 226)
Against Infinity (1983)

Life, Disease, Way, Sense

“Sometimes I fear that, if Harvard does not give up trying to turn itself from an Institution of Learning into an Educational Institution, we may have a generation of professors whose duty it will be to disseminate information which they have not the time to acquire.”

Edwin Boring (1886–1968) American psychologist

Edwin G. Boring (1942) Sensation and Perception in the History of Experimental Psychology, Preface. p. xi

Education, Learning, Time

“The centuries are thick, dark waves that rise and fall, steeped in blood. Every moment is a gaping abyss.
Gaze on the dark sea without staggering, confront the abyss every moment without illusion or impudence or fear. … But this is not enough; take a further step: battle to give meaning to the confused struggles of man.”

Nikos Kazantzakis book The Saviors of God

The Saviors of God (1923)

Sea

“Let us learn wisdom from this illustrious example. We have passed the Red Sea of slaughter; our garments are yet wet with its crimson spray. We have crossed the fearful wilderness of war, and have led our four hundred thousand heroes to sleep beside the dead enemies of the Republic. We have heard the voice of God amid the thunders of battle commanding us to wash our hands of iniquity, to 'proclaim liberty throughout all the land unto all the inhabitants thereof.' When we spurned his counsels we were defeated, and the gulfs of ruin yawned before us. When we obeyed his voice, he gave us victory. And now at last we have reached the confines of the wilderness. Before us is the land of promise, the land of hope, the land of peace, filled with possibilities of greatness and glory too vast for the grasp of the imagination. Are we worthy to enter it? On what condition may it be ours to enjoy and transmit to our children's children? Let us pause and make deliberate and solemn preparation. Let us, as representatives of the people, whose servants we are, bear in advance the sacred ark of republican liberty, with its tables of the law inscribed with the 'irreversible guaranties' of liberty. Let us here build a monument on which shall be written not only the curses of the law against treason, disloyalty, and oppression, but also an everlasting covenant of peace and blessing with loyalty, liberty, and obedience; and all the people will say, Amen.”

James A. Garfield (1831–1881) American politician, 20th President of the United States (in office in 1881)

1860s, Speech in the House of Representatives (1866)

Wisdom, God, War, Children

“Due to Zionist tactics of silencing any Jewish criticisms within US Jewish organizations, and their threats to their opponents at the convention of the Central Conference of American Rabbis in June 1943, Reform Rabbi Louis Wolsey, a fierce anti-Zionist, feared that the prominent American Zionist Rabbi Stephen Wise had 'revealed by his tyranny over the non-conformist what the Zionists would do to the Arabs.”

Joseph Massad (1963) Associate Professor of Arab Studies

Ibid.
"The Ends of Zionism: Racism and the Palestinian Struggle"

Silence

“What [Nietzsche] calls slave morality is to him purely spite-morality; and this spite-morality gave new names to all ideals. Thus impotence, which offers no reprisal, became goodness; craven baseness became humility; submission to him who was feared became obedience; inability to assert one’s self became reluctance to assert one’s self, became forgiveness, love of one’s enemies. Misery became a distinction”

Georg Brandes (1842–1927) Danish literature critic and scholar

Source: An Essay on Aristocratic Radicalism (1889), pp. 31-32

Love, Forgiveness

“One might almost say that the plant is the framework, the foundation of the animal, and that to form the animal it sufficed to cover this foundation with a system of organs fitted to establish relations consists forms with the world outside. It follows of the succession substance of the animal form two quite distinct classes. One class in a continual into its own assimilation molecules that the functions and of excretion; through these functions the animal incessantly transsurrounding bodies, later to reject these molecules when they have become heterogeneous to it. Through this first class of functions the animal exists only within itself; through the other class it exists outside; it is an inhabitant of the world, and not, like the plant, of the place which saw its birth. The animal feels and perceives its surroundings, reflects its sensations, moves of its own will under their influence, and, as a rule, can communicate by its voice its desires and its fears, its pleasures or its pains. I call organic life the sum of the functions of the former class, for all organised creatures, plants or animals, possess them to a more or less marked degree, and organised structure is the sole condition necessary to their exercise. The combined functions of the second class form the ' animal' life named because it is the exclusive attribute of the animal kingdom.”

Marie François Xavier Bichat (1771–1802) French anatomist and physiologist

Original: (fr) On dirait que le végétal est l'ébauche, le canevas de l'animal, et que, pour former ce dernier, il n'a fallu que revêtir ce canevas d'un appareil d'organes extérieurs, propres à établir des relations. Il résulte de là que les fonctions de l'animal forment deux classes très-distinctes. Les unes se composent d'une succession habituelle d'assimilation et d'excrétion ; par elles il transforme sans cesse en sa propre substance les molécules des corps voisins, et rejette ensuite ces molécules, lorsqu'elles lui sont devenues hétérogènes. Il ne vit qu'en lui, par cette classe de fonctions ; par l'autre il existe hors de lui : il est l'habitant du monde, et non, comme le végétal, du lieu qui le vit naître. Il sent et aperçoit ce qui l'entoure, réfléchit ses sensations, se meut volontairement d'après leur influenc, et le plus souvent peut communiquer par la voix, ses désirs et ses craintes, ses plaisirs ou ses peines. J'appelle vie organique l'ensemble des fonctions de la première classe, parce que tous les êtres organisés, végétaux ou animaux, en jouissent à un degré plus ou moins marqué, et que la texture organique est la seule condition nécessaire à son exercice. Les fonctions réunies de la seconde classe forment la vie animale, ainsi nommée, parce qu'elle est l'attribut exclusif du règne animal. Recherches Physiologiques sur la Vie et la Mort (1800) Translation: [Russell, E. S., Form and Function: A Contribution to the History of Animal Morphology, 1916, London, 28,

https://archive.org/details/formfunctioncont00russ/page/n5/mode/2up]

Ref: en.wikiquote.org - Xavier Bichat / Quotes

Life, Pain, Pleasure, World

“I am a lawyer. I think that one of the most fundamental responsibilities, not only of every citizen, but particularly of lawyers, is to give testimony in a court of law, to give it honestly and willingly, and it will be a very unhappy day for Anglo-Saxon justice when a man, even a man in public life, is too timid to state what he knows and what he has heard about a defendant in a criminal trial for fear that defendant might be convicted. That would to me be the ultimate timidity.”

Adlai Stevenson (1900–1965) mid-20th-century Governor of Illinois and Ambassador to the UN

On why he gave testimony on behalf of Alger Hiss, as quoted in Adlai Stevenson of Illinois : The Life of Adlai E. Stevenson (1976) by John Bartlow Martin, p. 552; also in "History Remembers…Adlai Stevenson" by Maureen Zebian in The Epoch Times (4 November 2004) http://en.epochtimes.com/news/4-11-4/24153.html

Life, Justice, Law, Thinking

“The hope of courage lies in every heart, together with the fear that we will fail. When the test came, you did not fail.”

Romeo LeBlanc (1927–2009) Canadian politician

Source: speech at the Ceremony for Decorations for Bravery, June 23, 1995.

Hope, Courage, Heart

“Poor little warrior, science will never invent anything to assist the titanic death you want in the contra-terrene caverns of your fee-fi-fo-fumblingly fearful id!”

Brian W. Aldiss (1925–2017) British science fiction author

“Poor Little Warrior!” p. 80
Short fiction, Who Can Replace a Man? (1965)

Death, Science

“The precept to worship God 'in spirit and in truth' recommand to worship him as an inward and moral force, without physical attributes and with no relation to fears and egoist wishes.”

African Spir (1837–1890) Russian philosopher

Source: Words of a Sage : Selected thoughts of African Spir (1937), p. 40 The quotation is from the Gospel of John, VII, 24.

God, Truth

“Ken also identified the corporation, not “the market,” as the defining institution of modern economic activity, developing these and related themes both in his teaching and in such widely celebrated books as American Capitalism (1952) and The New Industrial State (1967). But his interest in these ideas persisted throughout his life. The central importance of the corporation, and the fear that government was no longer able to provide an adequate countervailing force against corporate influence exerted both legally and otherwise, was the subject of his last book, The Economics of Innocent Fraud”

Amartya Sen (1933) Indian economist

2004
Stephen A. Marglin, Richard Parker, Amartya Sen, and Benjamin M. Friedman, “John Kenneth Galbraith”, Harvard Gazette (February 7, 2008)
2000s

Life, Books, Idea, Fraud

“Fear ye God that ye may not identify yourselves with aught but the truth, inasmuch as ye have been exalted in the Bayán for being recognized as the bearers of the name of Him Who is the eternal Truth.”

Báb (1819–1850) Iranian prophet; founder of the religion Bábism; venerated in the Bahá'í Faith

XVII, 4
The Kitáb-I-Asmá

God, Truth

“Most intellectual people do not believe in God, but they fear him just the same.”

Wilhelm Reich (1897–1957) Austrian-American psychoanalyst

As quoted in Philosophy : An Introduction to the Art of Wondering (2005) by James Lee Christian, p. 556

God, People

“The onset of fear makes the simplest actions complex and difficult.”

David Gemmell book Waylander II: In the Realm of the Wolf

ibid
Drenai series, Waylander II: In the Realm of the Wolf

“Everything is subjective, but the real is objective. (…) It does not depend on memories and expectations, desires and fears, likes and dislikes. All is seen as it is. (…) It is solid, steady, changeless, beginningless and endless, ever new, ever fresh. (…) Desirelessness and fearlessness will take you there.”

Nisargadatta Maharaj (1897–1981) Indian guru

Reality
Source: "I am That." P.63.

Memory, Dependency

“When Satan attempts to draw you to sin by presenting God as a God all made up of mercy, oh then reply, that though God's general mercy extend to all the works of his hand, yet his special mercy is confined to those who are divinely qualified, to those who love him and keep his commandments, to those who trust in him, that by hope hang upon him, and who fear him; and that you must be such a one here, or else you can never be happy hereafter; you must partake of his special mercy, or else eternally perish in everlasting misery, notwithstanding God's general mercy.”

Thomas Brooks (1608–1680) English Puritan

page 44
Precious Remedies Against Satan's Devices, 1652

Love, God, Happiness, Hope

“Good Reader, I suspect I may have written some Things twice; if not the same in Words, yet in Sense, which I desire you to pass by favourably; forasmuch as you may well think, it was as difficult and dull a Thing for me, in so great a Number of independent Sentences, to find out the Repetitions, as it would be in a vast Heap of different Coins and Medals, confusedly thrown together, to pick out here and there one that bore the same and like Inscription, with some other among them. Besides the Pains, such a Search would cost me more Time, than I can afford it; for my Glass of Life running now low, I must not suffer one Sand to fall in waste, nor spend one Minute in picking of Straws. And moreover, my aged Eyes being grown weak and dim, I fear they will become quite dark, by much perusing and poring; or at least so far, so as to render me unable to perfect several Papers now lying by me, which I would willingly make a Present of to you.”

Thomas Fuller (writer) (1654–1734) British physician, preacher, and intellectual

Excerpt from Introductio ad prudentiam: Part II, To the Reader (Prefatory Remarks).
Introductio ad prudentiam: Part II (1727)

Life, Pain, Age, Search

“Fame far out-strips all Mischiefs in her course,
Which grows by Motion, gains, by flying, Force;
Kept under first by Fear, soon after shrouds,
Stalking or Earth, her Head amongst the Clouds.”

John Ogilby (1600–1676) Scottish academic

The Works of Publius Virgilius Maro (2nd ed. 1654), Virgil's Æneis

Flying

“Psychoanalysis does not distort the truth by accident. It does so by necessity. It is an effective system for the suppression of the truth about childhood, a truth feared by our entire society. Not surprisingly, it enjoys great esteem among intellectuals… Fear of the truth about child abuse is a leitmotif of nearly all forms of therapy known to me.”

Alice Miller (1923–2010) Swiss psychologist

Breaking Down the Wall of Silence (Abbruch der Schweigemauer) (1990)

Truth, Childhood

“There is no God, no man-made God; a bigger, stronger, crueller man;
Black phantom of our baby-fears, ere Thought, the life of Life, began.”

Richard Francis Burton (1821–1890) British explorer, geographer, translator, writer, soldier, orientalist, cartographer, ethnologist, spy, lin…

The Kasîdah of Hâjî Abdû El-Yezdî (1870)

Life, God, Baby

“For so many who had been driven from their office buildings, these five weeks were only the prelude to spending months cloistered in cramped and inadequate office space while they advised senators on some of the toughest calls they would ever have to make … As the gap widened between perceptions of fear or danger in Washington and in much of the rest of the country, I believe it had a significant influence on why representatives reacted to terrorism concerns in a way that was fundamentally different from most of their constituents.”

Russ Feingold (1953) Wisconsin politician; three-term U.S. Senator

On the effects of the 2001 anthrax attacks, from While America Sleeps: A Wake-up Call for the Post-9/11 Era, as quoted in [Moyer, Justin, The speed read: ‘While America Sleeps,’ by Russ Feingold, https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/we-read-so-you-dont-have-to-while-america-sleeps-by-russ-feingold/2012/02/28/gIQATdIszR_story.html?utm_term=.8231b88d08d1, 20 August 2018, The Washington Post, March 8, 2012]
2012

Way, Country

“I know nothing of that directly; I only know what I have been told by other young ones who couldn’t have known directly either. I want to find out the truth about them and the wanting has grown until there is more of curiosity in me than fear.”

Isaac Asimov book The Gods Themselves

Section 2, Chapter 2b, p. 104
The Gods Themselves (1972)

Truth

“That was how I came to understand, how I came to know why all these brothers wrote and talked so big. Even the Knowledged feared the streets. But the rhyme pad was a spell book—it summoned asphalt elementals, elder gods, and weeping ancestors, all of whom had your back. That summer, I knew what Fruitie was trying to say, that when under the aegis of hip-hop, you never lived alone, you never walked alone.”

Ta-Nehisi Coates (1975) writer, journalist, and educator

Source: The Beautiful Struggle: A Memoir (2008), p. 111.

God, Books, Understanding, Knowledge

“Love is the emblem of eternity; it confounds all notion of time; effaces all memory of a beginning, all fear of an end: we fancy that we have always possessed what we love, so difficult is it to imagine how we could have lived without it.”

Anne Louise Germaine de Staël book Corinne

Bk. 8, ch. 2, as translated by Isabel Hill (1833)
Variant translation: It is certainly through love that eternity can be understood; it confuses all thoughts about time; it destroys the ideas of beginning and end; one thinks one has always been in love with the person one loves, so difficult is it to conceive that one could live without him.
As translated by Sylvia Raphael (1998)
Corinne (1807)

Love, Imagination, Memory, Time