Quotes about fear
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“You are braver and more courageous than you realize; but fail to act or speak out, for fear of displeasing others; the anguish one lives for not acting instinctively, hurts more than if you acted.”

Gandolfo – (RJ Intindola)

1998

Courage, Hurt

“...children are our treasures. They hold the promise of the future and therefore, it is only right that they should be given every opportunity to develop their physical, mental and spiritual potential to the fullest extent in an environment free of want and free of fear..."”

Jigme Singye Wangchuck (1955) King of Bhutan 1972–2006

Message during the international year of the child, 28 July 1979, quoted in The Talking Mountains (26 Oct 2015)

Future, Children

“Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, and fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people will not feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It is not just in some of us; it is in everyone and as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give others permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.”

Marianne Williamson (1952) American writer

Source: A Return to Love: Reflections on the Principles of "A Course in Miracles" (1992), Ch. 7 : Work, §3 : Personal Power, p. 190 (p. 165 in some editions). This famous passage from her book is very often erroneously attributed to Nelson Mandela. About the mis-attribution Williamson said, "Several years ago, this paragraph from A Return to Love began popping up everywhere, attributed to Nelson Mandela's 1994 inaugural address. As honored as I would be had President Mandela quoted my words, indeed he did not. I have no idea where that story came from, but I am gratified that the paragraph has come to mean so much to so many people."

Variant which appears in the film Coach Carter (2005): "Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won't feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine as children do. It's not just in some of us; it is in everyone. And as we let our own lights shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others."

Variant which appears in the film Akeelah and the Bee (2006), displayed in a picture frame on the wall, attributing it to Mandela: "Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. We ask ourselves, Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same."

God, Light, Children, People

“Even the most confident maintain an edge of doubt and fear; for they are the engines that remind us that confidence is a necessity for success.”

Gandolfo – (RJ Intindola)

1985

Self-confidence, Confidence, Success

“I fear lies more than death. Simply, because even the ideas of heaven and hell might fall within its domain.”

Mwanandeke Kindembo (1996) Congolese author

Hell, Idea, Death

“The repetition of the days have taught me to fear nothing in life except the fear of my own ignorance.”

Mwanandeke Kindembo (1996) Congolese author

Life

“Fear will hold you back from achieving happiness in life. Expectation is the mother of fear.”

Mwanandeke Kindembo (1996) Congolese author

Happiness, Life

“It's not the politician who's to be feared, but the qualities of selfishness, greed and the mindset of a businessman within.”

Mwanandeke Kindembo (1996) Congolese author

Selfishness

Stephie Pahlavi Zan

Childhood, Personality, Forgetting, Pain

“I'm motivated by the fear of being an average.”

Kian barazandeh (1998) Actor , Model

Source: https://www.instagram.com/p/CVfV-ndshd4/?igshid=YmMyMTA2M2Y=

Motivation

“Feel the fear. Do it anyway!”

Jillian Michaels

Feeling

“They are more to me than life, these voices, they are more than motherliness and more than fear; they are the strongest, most comforting thing there is anywhere: they are the voices of my comrades.”

Erich Maria Remarque book All Quiet on the Western Front

Source: All Quiet on the Western Front

Life

“Bedevil the devil and devil be dammed. I fear no devil and bow to no man.

- Adam Black”

Karen Marie Moning (1964) author

Source: Beyond the Highland Mist

“Between the fear that something would happen and the hope that still it wouldn't, there is much more space than one thinks. On that narrow, hard, bare and dark space a lot of us spend their lives.”

Ivo Andrič (1892–1975) novelist, short story writer

Hope, Thinking

“People fear death even more than pain. It's strange that they fear death. Life hurts a lot more than death. At the point of death, the pain is over. Yeah, I guess it is a friend”

Jim Morrison (1943–1971) lead singer of The Doors

Hurtful, Life, Death, Pain

“Fear makes idiots out of us all, at some time or other.”

Patricia Briggs (1965) American writer

Source: When Demons Walk

Time

“It is impossible to found a civilization on fear and hatred and cruelty. It would never endure.'
'Why not?'
'It would have no vitality. It would disintegrate. It would commit suicide.”

George Orwell book 1984

Source: 1984

Suicide

“The beauty, the poetry of the fear in their eyes. I didn't mind going to jail for, what, five, six hours? It was absolutely worth it.”

Johnny Depp (1963) American actor, film producer, and musician

Beauty

“If I could drown in sleep as I drown in fear I would be no longer alive.”

Franz Kafka book Letters to Milena

Source: Letters to Milena

Sleep

“Man's loneliness is but his fear of life.”

Eugene O'Neill (1888–1953) American playwright, and Nobel laureate in Literature

Life, Loneliness

“Fear best lends itself to the creation of Nature-defying illusions.”

H.P. Lovecraft (1890–1937) American author

Nature

“Learning is the only thing the mind never exhausts, never fears, and never regrets.”

Leonardo Da Vinci (1452–1519) Italian Renaissance polymath

Graduation, Learning

“If a society permits one portion of its citizenry to be menaced or destroyed, then, very soon, no one in that society is safe. The forces thus released in the people can never be held in check, but run their devouring course, destroying the very foundations which it was imagined they would save.

But we are unbelievably ignorant concerning what goes on in our country--to say nothing of what goes on in the rest of the world--and appear to have become too timid to question what we are told. Our failure to trust one another deeply enough to be able to talk to one another has become so great that people with these questions in their hearts do not speak them; our opulence is so pervasive that people who are afraid to lose whatever they think they have persuade themselves of the truth of a lie, and help disseminate it; and God help the innocent here, that man or womn who simply wants to love, and be loved. Unless this would-be lover is able to replace his or her backbone with a steel rod, he or she is doomed. This is no place for love. I know that I am now expected to make a bow in the direction of those millions of unremarked, happy marriages all over America, but I am unable honestly to do so because I find nothing whatever in our moral and social climate--and I am now thinking particularly of the state of our children--to bear witness to their existence. I suspect that when we refer to these happy and so marvelously invisible people, we are simply being nostalgic concerning the happy, simple, God-fearing life which we imagine ourselves once to have lived. In any case, wherever love is found, it unfailingly makes itself felt in the individual, the personal authority of the individual. Judged by this standard, we are a loveless nation. The best that can be said is that some of us are struggling. And what we are struggling against is that death in the heart which leads not only to the shedding of blood, but which reduces human beings to corpses while they live.”

James Baldwin (1924–1987) (1924-1987) writer from the United States

Source: nothing personal

Love, Life, Death, God

“What I fear most, I think, is the death of the imagination.”

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

Death, Imagination, Thinking

“Fear not because your prayer is stammering, your words feeble, and your language poor. Jesus can understand you.”

J.C. Ryle (1816–1900) Anglican bishop

Understanding

“He thought with a kind of astonishment of the biological uselessness of pain and fear, the treachery of the human body which always freezes into inertia at exactly the moment when a special effort is needed.”

George Orwell book 1984

Source: 1984

Pain, Effort

“Great minds are always feared by lesser minds.”

Dan Brown book The Lost Symbol

Source: The Lost Symbol

“We who are immortal, we are chained to this life by a chain of gold, and we dare not sever it for fear of what lies beyond the drop.”

Cassandra Clare book Clockwork Prince

Source: Clockwork Prince

Life

“peace cannot be built on the foundations of fear.”

Marshall B. Rosenberg (1934–2015) American psychologist

Source: Nonviolent Communication: A Language of Life

Peace

“If I let myself really understand another person, I might be changed by that understanding. And we all fear change. So as I say, it is not an easy thing to permit oneself to understand an individual”

Carl R. Rogers (1902–1987) American psychologist

Source: On Becoming a Person: A Therapist's View of Psychotherapy

Understanding, Change, Personality

“Listen to what you know instead of what you fear.”

Richard Bach (1936) American spiritual writer

“Fear not the path of Truth for the lack of People walking on it.”

Robert F. Kennedy (1925–1968) American politician and brother of John F. Kennedy

People, Truth

“Cities, like dreams, are made of desires and fears, even if the thread of their discourse is secret, their rules are absurd, their perspectives deceitful, and everything conceals something else.”

Italo Calvino book Invisible Cities

Page 44.
Source: Invisible Cities (1972)
Context: With cities, it is as with dreams: everything imaginable can be dreamed, but even the most unexpected dream is a rebus that conceals a desire or, its reverse, a fear. Cities, like dreams, are made of desires and fears, even if the thread of their discourse is secret, their rules are absurd, their perspectives deceitful, and everything conceals something else.

Secret, Dreams

“Despotic governments can stand 'moral force' till the cows come home; what they fear is physical force.”

George Orwell (1903–1950) English author and journalist

Home

“Since love and fear can hardly exist together, if we must choose between them, it is far safer to be feared than loved”

Niccolo Machiavelli book The Prince

Source: The Prince

Love

“Men go to far greater lengths to avoid what they fear than to obtain what they desire.”

Dan Brown book The Da Vinci Code

Source: The Da Vinci Code

Men

“But you could not have pure love or pure lust nowadays. No emotion was pure, because everything was mixed up with fear and hatred. Their embrace had been a battle, the climax a victory. It was a blow struck against the Party. It was a political act.”

George Orwell book 1984

Source: 1984

Love, Victory

“Do not fear mistakes - there are none.”

Miles Davis (1926–1991) American jazz musician

“If man is to survive, he will have learned to take a delight in the essential differences between men and between cultures. He will learn that differences in ideas and attitudes are a delight, part of life's exciting variety, not something to fear.”

Gene Roddenberry (1921–1991) American television screenwriter and producer

Life, Men, Idea, Learning

“I don't run away from a challenge because I am afraid. Instead, I run towards it because the only way to escape fear is to trample it beneath your foot”

Nadia Comăneci (1961) Romanian gymnast

Way

“The point was to learn what it was we feared more: being misunderstood or being betrayed.”

Adam Levine (1979) singer, songwriter, actor, and record producer from the United States

Source: The Instructions

Learning

“Pain is always emotional. Fear and depression keep constant company with chronic hurting.”

Siri Hustvedt (1955) novelist, essayist, poet

Source: The Shaking Woman, or A History of My Nerves

Heartbreaking, Depressing, Hurtful, Pain

“How can the bird that is born for joy
Sit in a cage and sing?
How can a child, when fears annoy,
But droop his tender wing,
And forget his youthful spring?”

William Blake Songs of Innocence and of Experience

Source: Songs of Innocence and of Experience

Youth, Spring, Bird, Singing

“Whatsoever therefore is consequent to a time of war, where every man is enemy to every man, the same consequent to the time wherein men live without other security than what their own strength and their own invention shall furnish them withal. In such condition there is no place for industry… no knowledge of the face of the earth; no account of time; no arts; no letters; no society; and which is worst of all, continual fear, and danger of violent death; and the life of man, solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.”

Thomas Hobbes (1588–1679) English philosopher, born 1588

Life, Death, Men, War

“Our doubts are traitors,
and make us lose the good we oft might win,
by fearing to attempt.”

William Shakespeare Measure for Measure

Source: Measure for Measure

“It is an open question whether any behavior based on fear of eternal punishment can be regarded as ethical or should be regarded as merely cowardly.”

Margaret Mead (1901–1978) American anthropologist

Attributed in American Quotations (1992) by Gorton Carruth and Eugene H. Ehrlich, p. 149
1990s

Behavior, Question

“We are afraid to care too much, for fear that the other person does not care at all.”

Eleanor Roosevelt (1884–1962) American politician, diplomat, and activist, and First Lady of the United States

Sad, Heartbreaking, Hurtful, Relationship

“We should all start to live before we get too old. Fear is stupid. So are regrets.”

Marilyn Monroe (1926–1962) American actress, model, and singer

Stupidity

“I fear being like everyone I hate, I fear failure, I fear losing control. I love balancing between chaos and control with everything I do. I always have a fear of going one way or another, getting lost in something, or losing everything to get lost in. And I fear being a completely acceptable sheep in society.”

Marilyn Manson (1969) American rock musician and actor

Love, Hate, Way, Failure

“My biggest fear of death is to come back reincarnated”

Tupac Shakur (1971–1996) rapper and actor

Death

“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

God, Feeling, Suffering

“You should never let your fears prevent you from doing what you know is right.”

Aung San Suu Kyi (1945) State Counsellor of Myanmar and Leader of the National League for Democracy

For women

“We have been to the moon, we have charted the depths of the ocean and the heart of the atom, but we have a fear of looking inward to ourselves because we sense that is where all the contradictions flow together.”

Terence McKenna (1946–2000) American ethnobotanist

The Archaic Revival (1991)
Context: The Beliefs of a Witoto shaman and the beliefs of a Princeton phenomenologist have an equal chance of being correct, and there are no arbiters of who is right. Here is something we have not assimilated. We have been to the moon, we have charted the depths of the ocean and the heart of the atom, but we have a fear of looking inward to ourselves because we sense that is where all the contradictions flow together.

Sense, Heart

“It is not power that corrupts but fear. Fear of losing power corrupts those who wield it and fear of the scourge of power corrupts those who are subject to it.”

Aung San Suu Kyi book Freedom from Fear

Source: Freedom from Fear (1991)
Context: It is not power that corrupts but fear. Fear of losing power corrupts those who wield it and fear of the scourge of power corrupts those who are subject to it. Most Burmese are familiar with the four a-gati, the four kinds of corruption. Chanda-gati, corruption induced by desire, is deviation from the right path in pursuit of bribes or for the sake of those one loves. Dosa-gati is taking the wrong path to spite those against whom one bears ill will, and moga-gati is aberration due to ignorance. But perhaps the worst of the four is bhaya-gati, for not only does bhaya, fear, stifle and slowly destroy all sense of right and wrong, it so often lies at the root of the other three kinds of corruption. Just as chanda-gati, when not the result of sheer avarice, can be caused by fear of want or fear of losing the goodwill of those one loves, so fear of being surpassed, humiliated or injured in some way can provide the impetus for ill will. And it would be difficult to dispel ignorance unless there is freedom to pursue the truth unfettered by fear. With so close a relationship between fear and corruption it is little wonder that in any society where fear is rife corruption in all forms becomes deeply entrenched.

“It is good to be a cynic—it is better to be a contented cat — and it is best not to exist at all. Universal suicide is the most logical thing in the world—we reject it only because of our primitive cowardice and childish fear of the dark. If we were sensible we would seek death—the same blissful blank which we enjoyed before we existed.”

H.P. Lovecraft (1890–1937) American author

"Nietzscheism and Realism" from The Rainbow, Vol. I, No. 1 (October 1921); reprinted in "To Quebec and the Stars", and also in Collected Essays, Volume 5: Philosophy edited by S. T. Joshi, p. 71
Non-Fiction
Source: Collected Essays 5: Philosophy, Autobiography and Miscellany

Death, World, Cats, Suicide

“Each man is master of his own death, and all that we can do when the time comes is to help him die without fear of pain.”

Gabriel García Márquez (1927–2014) Colombian writer

Death, Pain, Time, Help

“Fear is a good thing. It mean you're paying attention.”

Tamora Pierce book Page

Source: Page

“Fear makes come true that which one is afraid of.”

Viktor E. Frankl book Man's Search for Meaning

Source: Man's Search for Meaning

“Something like fear chilled me as I sat there in the small hours alone-I say alone, for one who sits by a sleeper is indeed alone; perhaps more alone than he can realise.”

H.P. Lovecraft (1890–1937) American author

“Better to die than to live in fear.”

Christopher Paolini book Inheritance

Roran, on the cause of the Varden
Inheritance (2011)

“If I thought my answer were to one
who would ever return to the world,
this flame should stay without another movement; but since none
ever returned alive from this depth, if what I hear is true,
I answer thee without fear of infamy.”

Dante Alighieri book Inferno

Canto XXVII, lines 61–66 (tr. Sinclair).
The Divine Comedy (c. 1308–1321), Inferno

World

“I mean that it is more natural for me to be wicked than virtuous, when I do a bad act, and I've done many, I never feel wither shame, remorse or fear, I sometimes wish it was not necessary as I don't like the trouble, but as for any moral sense of principle, I haven't a particle. Many people are like me as actions prove, but they are not so frank in owning it and insist on keeping up the humbug of virtue. You'll find that is true, Rose, when you know the world better.”

Louisa May Alcott A Long Fatal Love Chase

A Long Fatal Love Chase (1866)

People, World, Feeling, Nature

“When we are convinced of some great truths, and feel our convictions keenly, we must not fear to express it, although others have said it before us. Every thought is new when an author expresses it in a manner peculiar to himself.”

Luc de Clapiers, Marquis de Vauvenargues (1715–1747) French writer, a moralist

Source: Reflections and Maxims (1746), p. 187.

Truth, Feeling

“Literature that is not the breath of contemporary society, that dares not transmit the pains and fears of that society, that does not warn in time against threatening moral and social dangers — such literature does not deserve the name of literature; it is only a façade. Such literature loses the confidence of its own people, and its published works are used as wastepaper instead of being read.”

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn (1918–2008) Russian writer

Open letter to the Fourth Soviet Writers’ Congress (16 May 1967) “The Struggle Intensifies,” Solzhenitsyn: A Documentary Record, ed. Leopold Labedz (1970).

Pain, People, Confidence, Literature

“Follow the path of the unsafe, independent thinker. Expose your ideas to the danger of controversy. Speak your mind and fear less the label of "crackpot" than the stigma of conformity.”

Tom Watson (1874–1956) American businessman

Attributed to Watson in: Georg Blair, Sandy Meadows (1996) A Real-Life Guide to Organizational Change. p. 117.

Idea

“If a person abandons his prayer such that he neither desires its rewards nor fears its chastisement, for such a person I do not care if he dies a Jew, a Christian or a Magian.”

Muhammad (570–632) Arabian religious leader and the founder of Islam

Biharul Anwar, Volume 82, Page 202
Shi'ite Hadith

Personality

“In our darkest hour, in my deepest despair,
Will you still care? Will you be there?
In my trials and my tribulations,
Through our doubts and frustrations,
In my violence and my turbulence,
Through my fear and my confessions,
And my anguish and my pain,
Through my joy and my sorrow,
In the promise of another tomorrow,
I'll never let you part,
For you're always in my heart.”

Michael Jackson (1958–2009) American singer, songwriter and dancer

Will You Be There
Dangerous (1991)

Pain, Heart, Joy, Parting

“Germany, on the other hand, has based its domestic policies on new and modern social principles. That is why it is a danger to English plutocracy. It is also why English capitalists want to destroy Hitlerism. They see Hitlerism as all the generous social reforms that have occurred in Germany since 1933. The English plutocrats rightly fear that good things are contagious, that they could endanger English capitalism.”

Joseph Goebbels (1897–1945) Nazi politician and Propaganda Minister

“Englands Schuld,” Illustrierter Beobachter, Sondernummer, p. 14. The article is not dated, but is from the early months of the war, likely late fall of 1939. Joseph Goebbels’ speech in English is titled “England's Guilt.”
1930s

“Be resolute, fear no sacrifice and surmount every difficulty to win victory.”

Mao Zedong (1893–1976) Chairman of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China

Chapter 19 https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/mao/works/red-book/ch19.htm; originally published in The Foolish Old Man Who Removed the Mountains (June 11, 1945), Selected Works, Vol. III, p. 321. <br class="br">Quotations from Chairman Mao Zedong (The Little Red Book)

Victory

“We mustn't fear to adopt the advanced management methods applied in capitalist countries (…) The very essence of socialism is the liberation and development of the productive systems (…) Socialism and market economy are not incompatible (…) We should be concerned about right-wing deviations, but most of all, we must be concerned about left-wing deviations.”

Deng Xiaoping (1904–1997) Chinese politician, Paramount leader of China

Cited by António Caeiro in Pela China Dentro (translated), Dom Quixote, Lisboa, 2004. ISBN 972-20-2696-8

Country

“If tyranny is going to come in the United States, it's going to come from people who are so fearful of the liberty of Americans, that they believe that the government should shut down all sorts of freedoms that we hold dear.”

Ben Shapiro (1984) American journalist and attorney

2018-08-01
Is The Second Civil War Coming?
The Ben Shapiro Show
593
38:35
https://soundcloud.com/benshapiroshow/ep593
2018

People, Freedom

“(Whilst demonstrating how to ladder a chimney) "As you get a bit higher up, the holes have a tendency to get a bit deeper; I think it's called fear"”

Fred Dibnah (1938–2004) English steeplejack and television personality, with a keen interest in mechanical engineering

Unsourced

Thinking

“O God! If I worship You for fear of Hell, burn me in Hell
and if I worship You in hope of Paradise, exclude me from Paradise.
But if I worship You for Your Own sake,
grudge me not Your everlasting Beauty.”

Rabia Basri Muslim saint and Sufi mystic

as quoted in Khushwant Singh, The Freethinker's Prayer Book (2013), p. 35

God, Beauty, Hope, Hell

“There is a limit to caution and farsightedness; if one goes beyond the limit, fear and wretchedness will result.”

Hasan al-Askari (846–874) Eleventh of the Twelve Imams

Majlisi, Bihārul Anwār, vol.78, p. 364
General

“I am going the way of my fathers, as the Scripture says, for I see myself called by the Lord. Be you wary and undo not your long service of God, but be earnest to keep your strong purpose, as though you were but now beginning. You know the demons who plot against you, you know how savage they are and how powerless; therefore, fear them not. Let Christ be as the breath you breathe; in Him put your trust. Live as dying daily, heeding yourselves and remembering the counsels you have heard from me. … So do you also be earnest always to be in union first with the Lord and then with the Saints, that after death, they also may receive you into everlasting tabernacles as known friends. Ponder these things, and mean them. … And now God save you, children, for Antony departs and is with you no more.”

Anthony the Great (251–357) Christian saint, monk, and hermit

Book IV, Chapter 20 (his last words), St. Athanasius. Trans. Dom J.B. McLaughlin, O.S.B. St. Antony of the Desert. Rockford: Tan Books and Publishers, Inc, 1995.
From St. Athanasius' Life of St. Antony

Death, God, Children, Way

“Love, Fear, and Esteem, — Write these on three stones.”

Leonardo Da Vinci (1452–1519) Italian Renaissance polymath

"Of servants"
The Notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci (1883), X Studies and Sketches for Pictures and Decorations

Love

“Heaven, to keep its beauty,
cast them out, but even Hell itself would not receive them
for fear the wicked there might glory over them.”

Dante Alighieri book Inferno

Canto III, lines 40–42 (tr. Mark Musa).
The Divine Comedy (c. 1308–1321), Inferno

Beauty, Hell

“Let us hear the conclusion of the whole matter: Fear God, and keep his commandments: for this is the whole duty of man. For God shall bring every work into judgment, with every secret thing, whether it be good, or whether it be evil.”

Solomon (-990–-931 BC) king of Israel and the son of David

[Ecclesiastes, 12:13-14, 9]

God, Secret, Evil

“The person who obeys the unique God, will not fear the anger of the creatures of God.”

Ali al-Hadi (829–868) imam

Ibn Shu’ba al-Harrani, Tuhaf al-'Uqul, p. 10.
Religious Wisdom

God, Personality, Anger

“The body is a source of endless trouble to us by reason of the mere requirement of food; and is also liable to diseases which overtake and impede us in the search after truth: and by filling us so full of loves, and lusts, and fears, and fancies, and idols, and every sort of folly, prevents our ever having, as people say, so much as a thought.”

Socrates (-470–-399 BC) classical Greek Athenian philosopher

Plato, Phaedo

Love, People, Truth, Disease

“Today, America would be outraged if UN troops entered Los Angeles to restore order. Tomorrow they will be grateful! This is especially true if they were told that there was an outside threat from beyond, whether real or promulgated, that threatened our very existence. It is then that all people of the world will plead to deliver them from this evil. The one thing every man fears is the unknown. When presented with this scenario, individual rights will be willingly relinquished for the guarantee of their well-being granted to them by the world government.”

Henry Kissinger (1923–2023) United States Secretary of State

This is widely reported on many sites as coming from the Bilderberg Conference (1991) Evians, France, purportedly recorded by a Swiss diplomat, but no such recording has ever been provided.
Misattributed

People, World, Angels, Evil

“The works of the righteous would be mortal sins if they would not be feared as mortal sins by the righteous themselves out of pious fear of God.”

Martin Luther (1483–1546) seminal figure in Protestant Reformation

"Heidelberg Disputation: Thesis 7" (1518), http://bookofconcord.org/heidelberg.php#7

God

“I made a change from a common thief, to up-close and personal with Robin Leach, and I'm far from cheap. I smoke skunk with my peeps all day, spread love it's the Brooklyn way. The moet and alize keeps me pissy. Girls used to diss me, now they write letters cuz they miss me. I never thought it could happen this rapping stuff. I was too used to packing gats and stuff. Now honeys play me close like butter played toast, from the Mississippi down to the East Coast. Condos in queens, indoor for weeks. sold out seats to hear Biggy Smalls speak. Living life without fear, putting 5 carats in my baby girls ears. Lunchies, brunchies. Interviews by the pool, considered a fool 'cause I dropped out of high school. Stereotypes of a black male misunderstood and it's still all good.”

The Notorious B.I.G. (1972–1997) American rapper

Song lyrics, Ready to Die (1994), "Juicy"

Love, Life, School, Fools

“I have to find my peace 'cause no-one seems to let me be,
False prophets cry of doom, what are the possibilities?
I told my brothers 'There'll be problem times and tears for fears,
We must live each day like it's the last,
Go with it, go with it, jam!”

Michael Jackson (1958–2009) American singer, songwriter and dancer

Dangerous (1991)

Peace, Problem, Tear, Time

“The fear of the other makes us resemble the other who fears us.”

Jorge Majfud (1969) Uruguayan-American writer

Cybors (2012)

“A baby is born into this world in a state of fear. Total paranoia and awareness. He sees the world with eyes not used yet. As he grows up, his parents lay all this stuff on him. They tell him, when they should be letting him tell them. Let the children lead you.”

Charles Manson (1934–2017) American criminal and musician

Rolling Stone interview (June 1970)

Children, World, Parent, Baby

“From Russia I didn’t bring out a single happy memory, only sad, tragic ones. The nightmare of pogroms, the brutality of Cossacks charging young Socialists, fear, shrieks of terror …”

Golda Meir (1898–1978) former prime minister of Israel

Fallaci interview (1973)

Sadness, Memory, Happiness

“In England, a century of strong government has developed what O. Henry called the stern and rugged fear of the police to a point where any public protest seems an indecency. But in France everyone can remember a certain amount of civil disturbance, and even the workmen in the bistros talk of la revolution — meaning the next revolution, not the last one. The highly socialised modern mind, which makes a kind of composite god out of the rich, the government, the police and the larger newspapers, has not been developed — at least not yet.”

George Orwell (1903–1950) English author and journalist

Review of The Civilization of France by Ernst Robert Curtius; translated by Olive Wyon, in The Adelphi (May 1932)

God, Strong

“There is but One God, His name is Truth, He is the Creator, He fears none, he is without hate, He never dies, He is beyond the cycle of births and death, He is self illuminated, He is realized by the kindness of the True Guru. He was True in the beginning, He was True when the ages commenced and has ever been True, He is also True now.”

Nanak (1469–1539) Founder of Sikhism

Guru Nanak quotes

Death, God, Hate, Truth

“I am a Canadian, a free Canadian, free to speak without fear, free to worship God in my own way, free to stand for what I think right, free to oppose what I believe wrong, free to choose those who shall govern my country. This heritage of freedom I pledge to uphold for myself and all mankind.”

John Diefenbaker (1895–1979) 13th Prime Minister of Canada

July 1, 1960. From the Canadian Bill of Rights.

God, Way, Thinking, Freedom

“You want to have proven to you that the soul is imperishable and immortal, and you think that the philosopher who is confident in death has but a vain and foolish confidence, if he thinks that he will fare better than one who has led another sort of life, in the world below, unless he can prove this; and you say that the strength and divinity of the soul, and of her existence prior to our becoming men, does not necessarily imply her immortality. …For any man, who is not devoid of natural feeling, has reason to fear, if he has no knowledge or proof of the soul's immortality. That is what I suppose you to say, Cebes, which I designedly repeat, in order that nothing may escape us…”

Socrates (-470–-399 BC) classical Greek Athenian philosopher

Plato, Phaedo

Life, Death, Men, World

“If a man is endowed with a noble and courageous soul, if he is painstaking, proud, ambitious, without meanness, of a profound a deep-seated intelligence, I dare assert that he lacks nothing to be neglected by the great and men in high office, who fear, more than other men, those whom they cannot dominate.”

Luc de Clapiers, Marquis de Vauvenargues (1715–1747) French writer, a moralist

Source: Reflections and Maxims (1746), p. 188.

Men, Soul, Intelligence, Courage

“Balthasar of Waldshit has fallen into prison here - a man not merely irreverent and unlearned, but even empty. Learn the sum of the matter. When he came to Zurich our Council fearing lest he should cause a commotion ordered him to be taken into custody. Since, however, he had once in freakishness of disposition and fatuity, lurked out in Waldshut against our Council, of which place he, by the gods, was a guardian [i. e., he has pastor there], until the stupid fellow disunited and destroyed everything, it was determined that I should discuss with him in a friendly manner the baptising of infants and Catabaptists, as he earnestly begged first from prison and afterwards from custody. I met the fellow and rendered him mute as a fish. The next day he recited a recantation in the presence of certain Councillors appointed for the purpose [which recantation when repeated to the Two Hundred it was ordered should be publicly made Therefore having started to write it in the city, he gave it to the Council with his own hand, with all its silliness, as he promised. At length he denied that he had changed his opinion, although he had done so before a Swiss tribunal, which with us is a capital offence, affirming that his signature had been extorted from him by terror, which was most untrue].
The council was so unwilling that force should be used on him that when the Emperor or Ferdinand twice asked that the fellow be given to him it refused the request. Indeed he was not taken prisoner that he might suffer the penalty of his boldness in the baptismal matter, but to prevent his causing in secret some confusion, a thing he delighted to do. Then he angered the Council; for there were present most upright Councillors who had witnessed his most explicit and unconstrained withdrawal, and had refused to hand to him over to the cruelty of the Emperor, helping themselves with my aid. The next day he was thrust back into prison and tortured. It is clear that the man had become a sport for demons, so he recanted not frankly as he had promised, nay he said that he entertained no other opinions than those taught by me, execrated the error and obstinacy of the Catabaptists, repeated this three times when stretched on the racks, and bewailed his misery and the wrath of God which in this affair was so unkind. Behold what wantonness! Than these men there is nothing more foolhardy, deceptive infamous - for I cannot tell you what they devise in Abtzell - and shameless. Tomorrow or next day the case will come up.”

Huldrych Zwingli (1484–1531) leader of the Protestant Reformation in Switzerland, and founder of the Swiss Reformed Churches

Letter to Capito, January 1, 1526 (Staehelin, Briefe ausder Reformationseit, p. 20), ibid, p. 249-250

Men, God, Secret, Stupidity

“If I cannot offer some relief to our world, if I cannot inspire our generation to join me, then I feel I am a complete waste of space. This constant fear of feeling irrelevant in our society has been the catalyst behind all my efforts and passions for as long as I can remember.”

Masiela Lusha (1985) Albanian actress, writer, author

Quoted by Masiela Lusha in a 2009 press conference http://www.masielalusha.com/board.php

World, Feeling, Effort, Passion

“The Optimist thinks this is the best of all possible worlds, the Pessimist fears it is true.”

Robert Oppenheimer (1904–1967) American theoretical physicist and professor of physics

This is derived from a statement of James Branch Cabell, in The Silver Stallion (1926) : The optimist proclaims that we live in the best of all possible worlds; and the pessimist fears this is true.
Misattributed
Variant: The optimist thinks this is the best of all possible worlds. The pessimist fears it is true.

World, Thinking

“The sword above here smiteth not in haste
Nor tardily, howe'er it seem to him
Who fearing or desiring waits for it.”

Dante Alighieri book Paradiso

Canto XXII, lines 16–18 (tr. Longfellow).
The Divine Comedy (c. 1308–1321), Paradiso

Waiting