Quotes about fear (4956 quotes, page 22)

““I will not beg your forgiveness,” she said. Only her voice betrayed her fear; it was not its usual strong, clear tone. “I did what I felt was right.”
“Of course you did,” I said. “It was the wise thing to do.””

N. K. Jemisin book The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms

Source: The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms (2010), Chapter 29 (p. 394)

Forgiveness , Strong

“Our limited perspective, our hopes and fears become our measure of life, and when circumstances don't fit our ideas, they become our difficulties.”

Benjamin Franklin (1706–1790) American author, printer, political theorist, politician, postmaster, scientist, inventor, civic activist, …

Attributed in Jack Kornfield, A Path with Heart (1993) and popularized in Richard Carlson's bestselling Don't sweat the Small Stuff (1997). The phrasing is anachronistic and no earlier connection to Franklin is known.
Misattributed

Life , Hope , Idea

“I’m not afraid. When you live as long as I’ve lived, you lose that, too. I never liked lobster in my life, and mainly because I’d never tried it. On my eightieth birthday I tried it. I can’t say I’m greatly excited over lobster still, but I have no doubt as to its taste now, and I don’t fear it. I dare say death will be a lobster, too, and I can come to terms with it.”

Ray Bradbury book Dandelion Wine

Source: Dandelion Wine (1957), p. 150

Life , Death , Birthday

“Dogmatic religion any form of mind control actually, has been used, and refined to fantastic effect over thousands of years since the "restart" of Modern civilisation-Sumeria/Sumer according to Official history. To incite and exploit emotions like fear, guilt, frustration, anger, and the feeling of 'Emptiness'. Which has assisted our prison warders, who've encouraged the "masses" to hand over their Responsibilty, and right to think and feel to a politician, book, media presenter, priest, experts because they feel and are encouraged to perpetuate the consensus reality, therefore subconcious belief that we/they don't have the ability or confidence for that matter to establish truth for themselves regardless of any external influences and without fear of being "crucified" for doing so. You and I have the right, to take control of our minds and therefore of lives, which is the first step on the road to infinite, now is a good time as any to start to make your own decisions.”

David Icke (1952) English writer and public speaker

"… and the truth shall set you free", 1995

Truth , Books , Religion , Feeling

“A few years after the Constitution was adopted Alexander Hamilton said to Josiah Quincy that he thought the Union might endure for thirty years. He feared the centrifugal force of the system. The danger, he said, would proceed from the States, not from the national government. But Hamilton seems not to have considered that the vital necessity which had always united the colonies from the first New England league against the Indians, and which, in his own time, forced the people of the country from the sands of a confederacy to the rock of union, would become stronger every year and inevitably develop and confirm a nation. Whatever the intention of the fathers in 1787 might have been, whether a league or confederacy or treaty, the conclusion of the children in 1860 might have been predicted. Plant a homogeneous people along the coast of a virgin continent. Let them gradually overspread it to the farther sea, speaking the same language, virtually of the same religious faith, inter- marrying, and cherishing common heroic traditions. Suppose them sweeping from end to end of their vast domain without passports, the physical perils of their increasing extent constantly modified by science, steam, and the telegraph, making Maine and Oregon neighbors, their trade enormous, their prosperity a miracle, their commonwealth of unsurpassed importance in the world, and you may theorize as you will, but you have supposed an imperial nation, which may indeed be a power of evil as well as of good, but which can no more recede into its original elements and local sources than its own Mississippi, pouring broad and resistless into the Gulf, can turn backward to the petty forest springs and rills whence it flows. 'No, no', murmurs the mighty river, 'when you can take the blue out of the sky, when you can steal heat from fire, when you can strip splendor from the morning, then, and not before, may you reclaim your separate drops in me.”

George William Curtis (1824–1892) American writer

'Yes, yes, my river,' answers the Union, 'you speak for me. I am no more a child, but a man; no longer a confederacy, but a nation. I am no more Virginia, New York, Carolina, or Massachusetts, but the United States of America'.
1860s, The Good Fight (1865)

Children , People , World , Faith

“There was never a conspiracy, never a tremendous fear. This is a society which is now in its third generation of severe political repression, so that children in North Korea have several hours of political education a day. Their parents did, and their grandparents did.”

Ash Carter (1954) United States Secretary of Defense

pbs.org interview http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/kim/interviews/acarter.html

Children , Education , Parent

“I should like to point out two other fields for serious attention by control people. These are (1) The need for 'optimizing the process of making automatic control', i. e. bridging the gap between theory and practice. (2) The need for working with qualified people in the social, economic, and political fields to help make the net effect of automatic control and automation a cause for hope rather than a reason for fear… The opportunities for a better world at peace make the challenge for using automation for the betterment of man one that is certainly worth working for.”

Harold Chestnut (1917–2001) American engineer

H. Chestnut (1964) Automatic and remote control - Volume 2 International Federation of Automatic Control. p. xxxvi. Cited in: " Harold Chestnut, First IFAC President: Editorial http://www.autsubmit.com/editorials/ed38_6.html". In: Automatica, June 2002, Volume 38, No. 6

People , World , Peace , Hope

“And I fear my fear is greater than my faith”

Tori Amos (1963) American singer

Suede.
Songs

Faith

“The Koran calls for belief and consequent obedience. It is, surely, calculated to inspire fear, indeed abject terror, rather than love.”

Antony Flew (1923–2010) British analytic and evidentialist philosopher

Antony Flew, "The Terrors of Islam", Atheist Notes No. 6, 2004, ISBN 1856372928

Love

“Mr. Greenwood, when moving the Amendment yesterday, told us that the war would shake many strongly held views. I fear that this war will do very much more than that. The war will bring about changes which may be fundamental and revolutionary in the economic and social life of this country. On that we are all agreed.”

Anthony Eden (1897–1977) British Conservative politician, prime minister

Speech http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/commons/1939/dec/06/debate-on-the-address to the House of Commons (6 December 1939)

Life , War , Change , Country

“The first thing brought forth by the study of any religion, ancient or modern, is that it is based upon Fear, born of it, fed by it — and that it cultivates the source from which its nourishment is derived.”

Upton Sinclair book The Profits of Religion

Book One : The Church of the Conquerors, "The Great Fear"
The Profits of Religion (1918)

Religion , Study

“Let us then in the brief prescribed moments simply consider the tax collector. Throughout all the ages he has been presented as the prototype of an honest and God-fearing churchgoer. Yet is seems to me that he is even more closely related to going to Communion, he who said, “God, be merciful to me, a sinner.” Is it not as if he were now going to Communion, he of whom it is said, “He went home to his house justified””

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

is it not as if he now went home from Communion!
Three Discourses at Friday Communion November 14, 1849 Hong translation 1997 P. 128
1840s, Three Discourses at the Communion on Fridays (1849)

God , Age , Home , Housing

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

Thomas Watson, Jr. (1914–1993) American businessman and diplomat

Attributed to Watson Jr. in: "Stand up and be counted" in: Year: encyclopedia news annual (1965). p. 280.

Idea

“His mind was destitute of that dread which has been erroneously decried as if it were nothing higher than a man’s animal care for his own skin: that awe of the Divine Nemesis which was felt by religious pagans, and, though it took a more positive form under Christianity, is still felt by the mass of mankind simply as a vague fear at anything which is called wrong-doing. Such terror of the unseen is so far above mere sensual cowardice that it will annihilate that cowardice: it is the initial recognition of a moral law restraining desire, and checks the hard bold scrutiny of imperfect thought into obligations which can never be proved to have any sanctity in the absence of feeling.”

George Eliot book Romola

Volume I, Chapter XI
Romola (1863)

Law , Feeling , Animals

“Satirists gain the applause of others through fear, not through love.”

William Hazlitt (1778–1830) English writer

No. 72
Characteristics, in the manner of Rochefoucauld's Maxims (1823)

Love

“Now they saw it — its newness, its raw crudeness, and its strength — and turned their shuddering eyes away. "Give us back our well-worn husk," they said, "where we were so snug and comfortable." And then they tried word magic. "Conditions are fundamentally sound," they said — by which they meant to reassure themselves that nothing now was really changed, that things were as they always had been, and as they always would be, forever and ever, amen. But they were wrong. They did not know that you can't go home again. America had come to the end of something and to the beginning of something else. But no one knew what that something else would be and out of the change and uncertainly and the wrongness of the leaders grew fear and desperation and before long hunger stalked the streets. Through it all there was still only one certainty, though no one saw it yet. America was still America, and whatever new thing came of it would be American.”

Thomas Wolfe book You Can't Go Home Again

Book III: An End and a Beginning
You Can't Go Home Again (1940)

Hunger , Home , Change

“In every nature, and in every portion of nature, which we can descry, we find attention bestowed upon even the minutest parts. The hinges in the wings of an earwig, and the joints of its antennae, are as highly wrought, as if the Creator had nothing else to finish. We see no signs of dimunition of care by multiplicity of objects, or of distraction of thought by variety. We have no reason to fear, therefore, our being forgotten, or overlooked, or neglected.”

William Paley (1743–1805) Christian apologist, natural theologian, utilitarian

Source: Natural Theology (1802), Ch. 27 : Conclusion.

Nature , Parting

“The fear of becoming a "has been" keeps some people from becoming anything.”

Eric Hoffer (1898–1983) American philosopher

Section 231 http://books.google.com/books?id=msOwAAAAIAAJ&q=%22The+fear+of+becoming+a+has+been+keeps+some+people+from+becoming+anything%22&pg=PA134#v=onepage
The Passionate State Of Mind, and Other Aphorisms (1955)

People

“I said
"Lily, Oh Lily I'm so afraid
I fear I am walking in the Veil of Darkness"
And she said
"Child, take what I say
With a pinch of salt
And protect yourself with fire"”

Kate Bush (1958) British recording artist; singer, songwriter, musician and record producer

Song lyrics, The Red Shoes (1993)

“It is time for us to put an end to our fear for which we paid a very heavy price, to face all the lies of the Syrian security regime.”

Gebran Tueni (1957–2005) journalist

Dec. 1, 2005, editorial in An-Nahar.
Attributed

Time

“The history of medicine proves that in so far as man seeks to know himself and face his whole nature, he has become free from bewildered fear, despondent shame, or arrant hypocrisy. As long as sex is dealt with in the current confusion of ignorance and sophistication, denial and indulgence, suppression and stimulation, punishment and exploitation, secrecy and display, it will be associated with a duplicity and indecency that lead neither to intellectual honesty nor human dignity.”

Alfred Kinsey (1894–1956) American scientist (1894–1956)

Sexual Behaviour in the Human Male (1948)

Sex , History , Nature

“Only six months ago, I discovered that, over the years, some cubby-hole editors at Ballantine Books, fearful of contaminating the young, had, bit by bit, censored some 75 separate sections from the novel. Students, reading the novel which, after all, deals with the censorship and book-burning in the future, wrote to tell me of this exquisite irony. Judy-Lynn Del Rey, one of the new Ballantine editors, is having the entire book reset and republished this summer with all the damns and hells back in place.”

Ray Bradbury book Fahrenheit 451

Fahrenheit 451 (1953), Coda (1979)

Books , Hell , Reading , Future

“Early and provident fear is the mother of safety.”

Edmund Burke (1729–1797) Anglo-Irish statesman

Speech on the Petition of the Unitarians (11 May 1792), volume vii, p. 50
1790s

“Many of the world’s troubles are not due just to Russia or communism. They would be with us in any event because we live in an era of revolution—the revolution of rising expectations. In Asia, the masses now count for something. Tomorrow, they will count for more. And, for better or for worse, the future belongs to those who understand the hopes and fears of masses in ferment. The new nations want independence, including the inalienable able right to make their own mistakes. The people want respect—and something to eat every day. And they want something better for their children.”

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

Look, p. 46 (22 September 1953)

Children , People , World , Hope

“Ashamed to decline the challenge, yet fearing to accept it.”

Homér Iliad

VII. 93 (tr. Samuel Butler).
Iliad (c. 750 BC)

“Instead of fearing the unknown, we must conquer our fear.”

Newton Lee American computer scientist

Google It: Total Information Awareness, 2016

“Be a constant outrage to modesty There is nothing to fear: modesty is exercised only among the blind.”

Jean Cocteau (1889–1963) French poet, novelist, dramatist, designer, boxing manager and filmmaker

Diary of an Unknown (1988)

Exercises

“One of the great weaknesses of the progressive, as distinct from the religious, mind, is that it has no awareness of truth as such; only of truth in terms of enlightened expediency. The contrast is well exemplified in two exact contemporaries — Simone Weil and Simone de Beauvoir; both highly intelligent and earnestly disposed. In all the fearful moral dilemmas of our time, Simone Weil never once went astray, whereas Simone de Beauvoir, with I am sure the best of intentions, has found herself aligned with apologists for some of the most monstrous barbarities and falsehoods of history.”

Malcolm Muggeridge (1903–1990) English journalist, author, media personality, and satirist

"A Knight of the Woeful Countenance" in The World of George Orwell (1972) edited by Miriam Gross, p. 167

Truth , History , Intelligence , Time

“If he is infinitely good, what reason should we have to fear him?
If he is infinitely wise, why should we have doubts concerning our future?
If he knows all, why warn him of our needs and fatigue him with our prayers?
If he is everywhere, why erect temples to him?
If he is just, why fear that he will punish the creatures that he has filled with weaknesses?
If grace does everything for them, what reason would he have for recompensing them?
If he is all-powerful, how offend him, how resist him?
If he is reasonable, how can he be angry at the blind, to whom he has given the liberty of being unreasonable?
If he is immovable, by what right do we pretend to make him change his decrees?
If he is inconceivable, why occupy ourselves with him?
If he has spoken, why is the universe not convinced?
If the knowledge of a God is the most necessary, why is it not the most evident and the clearest?”

Percy Bysshe Shelley book The Necessity of Atheism

The Necessity of Atheism (1811)

God , Knowledge , Universe , Change

“I look upon an increase in the power of the State with the greatest fear because, although while apparently doing good by minimizing exploitation, it does the greatest harm to mankind by destroying individuality, which lies at the root of the progress. We know of so many cases where men have adopted trusteeship, but none where the State has really lived for the poor.”

Mahatma Gandhi (1869–1948) pre-eminent leader of Indian nationalism during British-ruled India

Modern Review (October, 1935) p. 412. Interview with Nirmal Kumar Bose (9/10 November 1934)
1930s

Men

“Thought nourishes, sustains and gives continuity to fear and pleasure.”

Jiddu Krishnamurti (1895–1986) Indian spiritual philosopher

3rd Public Talk, Bombay (Mumbai), India (14 February 1971)
1970s

Pleasure

“So great was the faith of the Sultan in the Abbasid Khalifas," says he, "that he would have sent all his treasures in Delhi to Egypt, had it not been for the fear of robbers.”

Muhammad bin Tughluq (1290–1351) Turkic Sultan of Delhi

Ziyauddin Barani, quoted from Lal, K. S. (1999). Theory and practice of Muslim state in India. New Delhi: Aditya Prakashan. Chapter 5. Also quoted in Robert Spencer, The history of Jihad, 2018.

Faith

“Forgoing privacy in a quest for absolute safety is as harmful to a healthy psyche and life of an individual as it is to a healthy political culture. For the individual, safety first means a life of paralysis and fear, never entering a car or airplane, never engaging in an activity that entails risk, never weighing quality of life over quantity, and paying any price to avoid danger. […] A population, a country that venerates physical safety above all other values will ultimately give up it’s liberty and sanction any power seized by authority in exchange for the promise, no matter how illusory, of total security. However, absolute safety is itself chimeric, pursued but never obtained. The pursuit degrades those who engage in it as well as any nation that comes to be defined by it.”

Glenn Greenwald book No Place to Hide

Penguin Books 2015 edition, page 208.
No Place to Hide (2014)

Life , Cars , Country

“Let hopes and sorrows, fears and angers be,
And think each day that dawns the last you'll see;
For so the hour that greets you unforeseen
Will bring with it enjoyment twice as keen.”
Inter spem curamque, timores inter et iras, Omnem crede diem tibi diluxisse supremum: Grata superveniet quae non sperabitur hora.

Horace book Epistles

Book I, epistle iv, line 12 (translated by John Conington)
Epistles (c. 20 BC and 14 BC)

Hope , Thinking , Anger

“You and he were adversaries, but you were allied in a determination that the world should not be blown up. The danger which troubled my husband was that war might be started not so much by the big men as by the little ones. While big men know the need for self-control and restraint, little men are sometimes moved more by fear and pride.”

Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis (1929–1994) public figure, First Lady to 35th U.S. President John F. Kennedy

Letter to Nikita Khrushchev after JFK assassination, as quoted in One Minute to Midnight: Kennedy, Khrushchev, and Castro on the Brink of Nuclear War (2009) by Michael Dobbs.

Men , War , World

“As a child I was helpless and filled with trust, but now I am fortunately sick with fear and filled with distrust. Now I am sharp-sighted, but then I was stupid and blind goose, and I had to experience it over and over again.”

Timo K. Mukka (1944–1973) Finnish writer

p. 166

Stupidity

“In Europe we see different visions of government in an interdependent world. Across the world we see a new order struggling to be born, one based on the rule of law and addressing the planetary imperatives of tackling mass poverty and global warming. These changes in governance are not to be feared but rather to be embraced. It is, after all, the essence of democracy that what has always been so, need not always be so.”

Alex Salmond (1954) Scottish National Party politician and former First Minister of Scotland

Third Session of Parliament (June 30, 2007)

World , Law , Democracy , Change

“The media, itself an arm of mega-corporate power, feeds the fear industry, so that people are primed like pumps to support wars on rumor, innuendo, legends, and lies.”

Mumia Abu-Jamal (1954) Prisoner, Journalist, Broadcaster, Author, Activist

"A Year In: More Same Than Change" http://prisonradio.org/more_of_same.htm

War , People , Support

“Have no fear for giving in,
Have no fear for giving over.
You'd better know that in the end
It's better to say too much
Than never say what you need to say again.Even if your hands are shaking
And your faith is broken,
Even as the eyes are closing,
Do it with a heart wide open.”

John Mayer (1977) guitarist and singer/songwriter

Say
Song lyrics, From the film The Bucket List (2007)

Faith , Heart

“The result of this is fear. And man gasps for safety and morality.”

Sukarno (1901–1970) first President of the Republic of Indonesia

Speech at the Opening of the Bandung Conference

“The fear of missing out means today's media, more than ever before, hunts in a pack. In these modes it is like a feral beast, just tearing people and reputations to bits. But no-one dares miss out.”

Tony Blair (1953) former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

Lecture on Our Nation's Future - Public Life http://web.archive.org/20071029204355/www.number10.gov.uk/output/Page11923.asp, Reuters, 12 June 2007.
2000s

People , Tear

“Fear not, but trust in Providence,
Wherever thou may'st be.”

Thomas Haynes Bayly (1797–1839) English poet, songwriter, dramatist, and writer

The Pilot, reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).

“He has no native Passion, because he is not a Thinker — & has probably weakened his Intellect by the haunting Fear of becoming extravagant.”

Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772–1834) English poet, literary critic and philosopher

Letter to William Sotheby (10 September 1802)
Letters

Passion

“I considered that life was sweet in all living creatures, and the taking it away became a very tender point with me. The creatures, or many of them, were given, or as I take it, rather lent us to be governed in the great Creator's fear.”

Joshua Evans (Quaker minister) (1731–1798) American Quaker minister and abolitionist

Source: Journal, pp. 27-28

Life

“Then empty rumour to well-grounded fear gave strength.”
Vana quoque ad veros accessit fama timores.

Marcus Annaeus Lucanus book Pharsalia

Book I, line 469 (tr. E. Ridley).
Pharsalia

“Let tyrants fear, I have always so behaved myself that, under God, I have placed my chiefest strength and safeguard in the loyal hearts and good-will of my subjects.”

Elizabeth I of England (1533–1603) Queen regnant of England and Ireland from 17 November 1558 until 1603

Speech to the Troops at Tilbury (1588)

God , Heart

“And he wanted a wife. He wanted to raise children. He wanted to prove that goodness wasn’t beaten into children, that fear was not the fount from which virtue flowed. He wanted to be able to gather his family in his arms and know that not one of them dreaded the sight of him, or felt the need to lie to him in order to have his love.”

Orson Scott Card (1951) American science fiction novelist

(Chapter reference needed).
The Tales of Alvin Maker, Alvin Journeyman (1995)

Love , Children , Lie , Family

“The outcome of the Brexit Referendum could very likely to prove to be as significant and as beneficial to Europe as the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989. And the benefits of Brexit won’t just be felt in the UK and Europe - many African countries may reap long-term economic and political benefits from Britain’s vote to leave the European Union. Project Fear’s apocalyptic claims turned out to be bunkum. We are not in the midst of World War Three. Western Civilization has not collapsed.”

Peter Whittle (politician) (1961) British author, politician, and journalist

100 Reasons to be Cheerful about the Brexit Results http://www.peterwhittleam.com/press-releases/100-reasons-to-be-cheerful-about-the-brexit-result (September 30, 2016)

War , World , Country

“A fearful thing stood at the cloister's end
And eyed him for a while, then 'gan to wend
Adown the cloisters, and began again
That rattling, and the moan like fiends in pain.
And as it came on towards him, with its teeth
The body of a slain goat did it tear,
The blood whereof in its hot jaws did seethe,
And on its tongue he saw the smoking hair;
Then his heart sank, and standing trembling there,
Throughout his mind wild thoughts and fearful ran:
"Some fiend she was," he said, "the bane of man."
Yet he abode her still, although his blood
Curdled within him: the thing dropped the goat,
And creeping on, came close to where he stood,
And raised its head to him and wrinkled throat.
Then he cried out and wildly at her smote,
Shutting his eyes, and turned and from the place
Ran swiftly, with a white and ghastly face.”

William Morris (1834–1896) author, designer, and craftsman

The Earthly Paradise (1868-70), The Lady of the Land

Pain , Tear , Heart

“Nation states are archaic leftovers from when each man feared the tribe over the hill, an attitude we can’t afford anymore.”

David Brin book Earth

Part X (p. 539)
Earth (1990)

“What I fear most is that you will know where the laughs are going to come, or that you will know a character so well that you know when they're going to sing a song. In some shows, you just know that the audience is sitting there going "Oh no, she's going to sing."”

Tracey Ullman (1959) English-born actress, comedian, singer, dancer, screenwriter, producer, director, author and businesswoman

"Tracking Tracey" http://www.dareland.com/emulsionalproblems/ullman.htm (Interview, January 1989)

Singing

“You were both correct,” said Morningstar. “It is the same thing that you both describe, although neither of you sees it as it really is. Each of you colors reality in keeping with your means of controlling it. For if it is uncontrollable, you fear it. Sometimes then, you color it incomprehensible. In your case, a machine; in theirs, a demon.”

Roger Zelazny book Jack of Shadows

Source: Jack of Shadows (1971), Chapter 6 (p. 63)

Color , Reality

““I see Alvin with a son. That what he want most.”
“I see him with a woman,” said Rien. “That is what he miss the most.”
“I see him kneeling by a child’s grave,” said Dead Mary. “That is what he fears the most.””

Orson Scott Card (1951) American science fiction novelist

Source: The Tales of Alvin Maker, The Crystal City (2003), Chapter 16 “Labor” (p. 307).

Dead

“The sun, that brave man,
Comes through boughs that lie in wait,
That brave man.

Green and gloomy eyes
In dark forms of the grass
Run away.

The good stars,
Pale helms and spiky spurs,
Run away.

Fears of my bed,
Fears of life and fears of death,
Run away.

That brave man comes up
From below and walks without meditation,
That brave man.”

Wallace Stevens (1879–1955) American poet

"The Brave Man"
Ideas of Order (1936)

Life , Death , Lie , Star

“We all know that there is evil in the world — we read of it — we hear of it — but we never think of its entering our own charmed circle. Look round our circle of acquaintance; how it would startle us to be asked to name one whom we thought capable of crime; how much more so to find that crime had been committed by one near and dear to our inmost heart. What a moral revulsion would such a discovery produce — how weak we should find ourselves under such a trial — how soon we should begin to disconnect the offender and the offence; then, for the first time, we should begin to understand the full force of temptation, and to allow for its fearful strength; and should we not begin to excuse what had never before seemed capable of palliation?”

Letitia Elizabeth Landon (1802–1838) English poet and novelist

No.11. The Heart of Mid Lothian — JEANNIE DEANS.
Literary Remains

World , Understanding , Thinking , Evil

“I asked you to conquer your fear, but all you did was give in to it. If you were in love with her, that would be one thing. Love is something to be afraid of, but this, this is embarrassing. So she talks too much, so she's too enthused about every little thing, so what? Get in, get your question answered, and get out. Stand up to her, for cryin' out loud!”

Wendelin Van Draanen Flipped

Flipped (2001)

Love , Question

“Defenders of Western civilization should not sugarcoat Islam or downplay its violent tendencies out of a misguided fear of offending its adherents.”

Geert Wilders (1963) Dutch politician

Source: 2010s, Marked for Death (2012), Ch. 3: "Islamofascism", p. 45

“Do you know what a good life is? A good life is a life in which you never have to think about yourself again. You know why? Because you can't think about yourself without producing fear.”

Guy Finley (1949) American self-help writer, philosopher, and spiritual teacher, and former professional songwriter and musician

Secrets of Being Unstoppable

Life , Thinking

“I am going to take this bucket of water and pour it on the flames of hell, and then I am going to use this torch to burn down the gates of paradise so that people will not love God for want of heaven or fear of hell, but because He is God.”

John Green book Looking for Alaska

Dr. Hyde explaining a quote by Rabe'a al-Adiwiyah, p. 174
Looking for Alaska (2005)

Love , God , People , Hell

“For Muslims, the season of and its reliance on God’s eternal power. It highlights the distance between Muslims and the cesspool of corruption, humiliation and tyranny that international oppressors and bullies impose on human communities…. Those who have reduced hajj to a religious-tourist trip and have hidden their enmity and malevolence towards the faithful and revolutionary people of Iran under the name of “politicizing hajj”, are themselves small and puny satans who tremble for fear of jeopardizing the interests of the Great Satan, the U. S.”

Ali Khamenei (1939) Iranian Shiite faqih, Marja' and official independent islamic leader

2016, Hajj hijacked by oppressors, Muslims should reconsider management of Hajj (September 2015)

God , People , Faith , Communication

“George W. Bush revels in being a war president. His campaign is shamelessly exploiting the fears generated by 9/11. Vice President Cheney is conjuring mushroom clouds into our cities. But fear is a bad counselor; we must resist it wherever it comes from. President Roosevelt had the right idea when he said, "We have nothing to fear but Fear itself."”

George Soros (1930) Hungarian-American business magnate, investor, and philanthropist

Speech at the National Press Club (2004)

War , Idea

“Many in my family were ambivalent about it, but my mother encouraged me to put aside my fears. Vera (my wife) and I finally decided to leave Utah, where we were very happy, take a 40 per cent salary cut and move to the Laboratory of Molecular Biology at Cambridge.”

Venkatraman Ramakrishnan (1952) Nobel prize winning American and British structural biologist

About his moving to Cambridge from Utah
Venkatraman Ramakrishnan

Family , Happiness

“Abu Hurayra said, "I heard the Messenger of Allah say, "Allah divided mercy into a hundred parts and He kept back ninety-nine parts with Himself and left one part on the earth. It is from this part that creatures show mercy to one another so that an animal lifts its hoof from its young fearing to hurt them."”

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

Sunni Hadith

Animals , Parting , Hurt

“Today the world changes so quickly that in growing up we take leave not just of youth but of the world we were young in. I suppose we all realize the degree to which fear and resentment of what is new is really a lament for the memories of our childhood.”

Peter Medawar (1915–1987) scientist

1960s, Presidential Address, 1969

Youth , World , Memory , Change

“Let the fear of a danger be a spur to prevent it: He that fears otherwise, gives advantage to the danger.”

Francis Quarles (1592–1644) English poet

Enchiridion (1640)

“Even the blandest (or bluffest) “scholarly work” fears getting into trouble: less with the adversaries whose particular attacks it keeps busy anticipating than through what, but for the spectacle of this very activity, might be perceived as an overall lack of authorization. It is as though, unless the work at once assumed its most densely professional form, it would somehow get unplugged from whatever power station (the academy, the specialization) enables it to speak. Nothing expresses—or allays—this separation anxiety better than the protocol requiring an introduction to “situate” the work within its institutional and discursive matrix. The same nervous ritual that attests a positive dread of being asocial — of failing to furnish the proper authorities with one’s papers, and vice versa — places these possibilities at an infinite remove from a writing whose thorough assimilation, courted from the start, makes it too readable to need to be read much further.”

D. A. Miller (1948) American literary critic

The Novel and the Police (1988), p. vii

Business , Reading

“Fearlessness may be a gift but perhaps more precious is the courage acquired through endeavour, courage that comes from cultivating the habit of refusing to let fear dictate one's actions, courage that could be described as "grace under pressure" — grace which is renewed repeatedly in the face of harsh, unremitting pressure.”

Aung San Suu Kyi book Freedom from Fear

Freedom from Fear (1991)

Courage

“Anyone who bar-codes their employees isn’t likely to be the forgiving type, and the reflex of long-held obedience through hierarchy is usually enough to overcome fear of a combat death. That’s how you fight wars, after all—with soldiers who are more afraid of stepping out of line than they are of dying on the battlefield.”

Richard K. Morgan book Altered Carbon

Source: Altered Carbon (2002), Chapter 14 (p. 182)

Death , War , Forgiveness , Fight

“We had a very hostile period [towards drag] after 9/11, especially in America, that was very fear based. And right now, we are enjoying an open window, politically and culturally. But don’t be fooled – all of this is cyclical. I’ve seen the window open in my lifetime and I’ve seen it close.”

RuPaul (1960) Actriz de Televisa, dueña y señora de los ejidos cacaoahuateros

Quoted by Owen Myers in The subversive genius of RuPaul http://www.dazeddigital.com/artsandculture/article/24914/1/the-subversive-genius-of-rupaul (2015)

Hostility , Fools

“In 1965 alone we had 300 private talks for peace in Vietnam, with friends and adversaries throughout the world. Since Christmas your government has labored again, with imagination and endurance, to remove any barrier to peaceful settlement. For 20 days now we and our Vietnamese allies have dropped no bombs in North Vietnam. Able and experienced spokesmen have visited, in behalf of America, more than 40 countries. We have talked to more than a hundred governments, all 113 that we have relations with, and some that we don't. We have talked to the United Nations and we have called upon all of its members to make any contribution that they can toward helping obtain peace. In public statements and in private communications, to adversaries and to friends, in Rome and Warsaw, in Paris and Tokyo, in Africa and throughout this hemisphere, America has made her position abundantly clear. We seek neither territory nor bases, economic domination or military alliance in Vietnam. We fight for the principle of self-determination—that the people of South Vietnam should be able to choose their own course, choose it in free elections without violence, without terror, and without fear. The people of all Vietnam should make a free decision on the great question of reunification. This is all we want for South Vietnam. It is all the people of South Vietnam want. And if there is a single nation on this earth that desires less than this for its own people, then let its voice be heard. We have also made it clear—from Hanoi to New York—that there are no arbitrary limits to our search for peace. We stand by the Geneva Agreements of 1954 and 1962. We will meet at any conference table, we will discuss any proposals—four points or 14 or 40—and we will consider the views of any group. We will work for a cease-fire now or once discussions have begun. We will respond if others reduce their use of force, and we will withdraw our soldiers once South Vietnam is securely guaranteed the right to shape its own future. We have said all this, and we have asked—and hoped—and we have waited for a response. So far we have received no response to prove either success or failure.”

Lyndon B. Johnson (1908–1973) American politician, 36th president of the United States (in office from 1963 to 1969)

1960s, State of the Union Address (1966)

People , World , Peace , Hope

“I have a dark side; it's been pretty well documented. It wouldn't be bad to show that in some light in my work…It's something I no longer fear doing and am actually excited about doing.”

Matthew Perry (actor) (1969) American actor

Lawrie Masterson (October 10, 2004) "Prime Time", The Sunday Telegraph, News Limited, p. V05.

Light

“At the base of her ankle is a deep, ugly scar she got when a car ran over her foot when she was six years old. That was in a small town in Bangladesh. Thus, even today, she hesitates superstitiously before crossing the road, and is painfully shy of walking distances. Her fears make her laughable. The scar is printed on her skin like a radiant star.”

Amit Chaudhuri (1962) contemporary Indian-English novelist

Afternoon Raag (1993)

Cars , Star

“Outside the wind of Jehovah still beat on the door, trying to enter. There was no other sound. Not a jackal on the earth, nor a crow in the air. Every living thing cowered in fear, waiting for the Lord's anger to pass.”

Nikos Kazantzakis book The Last Temptation of Christ

Source: The Last Temptation of Christ (1951), Ch. 10

Waiting , Anger

“You can find out far more about a writer from his poems or fiction.. because in his stories or poems, his preoccupations, obsessions, moral standards, the quality of his intelligence, his loves, hates, aspirations, belief and fears.. insist on expression.”

Vernon Scannell (1922–2007) British boxer and poet

Tiger and the Rose, 1971

Love , Hate , Intelligence

“She certainly is a great queen, and were she only a Catholic she would be our dearly beloved. Just look how well she governs; she is only a woman, only mistress of half an island, and yet she makes herself feared by Spain, by France, by the Empire, by all.”

Pope Sixtus V (1520–1590) pope

On Queen Elizabeth I of England, said to the Venetion ambassador in Rome in the autumn of 1585, reported in Walter Walsh, The Jesuits in Great Britain (1903), p. 111.

“Flaming torches arching from hand to hand, the silken rolling of flesh on flesh, tautened wire vibrating to the human word, ideogrammatic gestures of fear, love, and rage, the mathematical grace of bodies moving through space—all seemed revealed as shadows on the void, the pauvre panoply of man’s attempt to transcend the universe of space and time through the transmaterial purity of abstract form.
Yet beyond this noble dance of human art, the highest expression of our spirit’s striving to transcend the realm of time and form, lay that which could not be encompassed by the artifice of man. From nothing are we born, to nothing do we go; the universe we know is but the void looped back upon itself, and form is but illusion’s final veil.
We touch that which lies beyond only in those fleeting rare moments when the reality of form dissolves—through molecule and charge, the perfection of the meditative trance, orgasmic ego-loss, transcendent peaks of art, mayhap the instant of our death.
Vraiment, is not the history of man from pigments smeared on the walls of caves to our present starflung age, our sciences and arts, our religions and our philosophies, our cultures and our noble dreams, our heroics and our darkest deeds, but the dance of spirit round this central void, the striving to transcend, and the deadly fear of same?”

Norman Spinrad book The Void Captain's Tale

Source: The Void Captain's Tale (1983), Chapter 10 (p. 117)

Love , Death , Age , Religion

“Still on the whole the campaign is the best, cleanest and most satisfactory of the war. I have received the most fulsome praise of all men from the President down, but I fear the world will jump to the wrong conclusion that because I am in Atlanta the work is done. Far from it. We must kill three hundred thousand I have told of so often, and the further they run the harder for us to get them.”

William T. Sherman (1820–1891) American General, businessman, educator, and author.

Letter to wife https://books.google.com/books?id=GGbkHUePtVwC&pg=PA211
1860s

Men , War , World

“An old dissembler who lived out his lie
Lies here as if he did not fear to die.”

J. V. Cunningham (1911–1985) American writer

"An Epitaph for Anyone", 1942 The Poems of J. V. Cunningham, edited by Timothy Steele, Ohio University Press/Swallow Press, 1997, ISBN 0-804-00997-X
Epigrams

Lie

“Fain would I climb, yet fear I to fall.”

Walter Raleigh (1554–1618) English aristocrat, writer, poet, soldier, courtier, spy, and explorer

Poem written in a glass window obvious to the Queen's eye, reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919). "Her Majesty, either espying or being shown it, did under-write, 'If thy heart fails thee, climb not at all'", Thomas Fuller, Worthies of England, vol. i. p. 419.

“These are people who want to foil elections… Benghazi has been always defiant, and always will be despite the pain and fear. It will succeed.”

Salwa Bugaighis (1963–2014) Libyan activist

Salwa Bugaighis in phone interview by al-Nabaa network interrupted by gunfire, 25 June 2014: Quoted in: Chris Stephen. "Libya in shock after murder of human rights activist Salwa Bugaighis," The Guardian, Thursday 26 June 2014 16.42 BST.

Pain , People

“A mother’s life, you see, is one long succession of dramas, now soft and tender, now terrible. Not an hour but has its joys and fears.”

Honoré de Balzac (1799–1850) French writer

La maternité comporte une suite de poésies douces ou terribles. Pas une heure qui n’ait ses joies et ses craintes.
Part I, ch. XLV.
Letters of Two Brides (1841-1842)

Life , Success , Joy

“In every cry of every Man,
In every Infant’s cry of fear,
In every voice, in every ban,
The mind-forg'd manacles I hear.”

William Blake London

London, st. 2
1790s, Songs of Experience (1794)

Cry

“If by enlightenment and intellectual progress we mean the freeing of man from superstitious belief in evil forces, in demons and fairies, in blind fate—in short, emancipation of fear—then denunciation of what is currently called reason is the greatest service reason can render.”

Max Horkheimer book Eclipse of Reason

Eclipse of Reason (1947)

Fate , Evil

“I usually quite like women, but this advert makes me want to kill about 900 of them with my bare hands. It ends with the tiresome ladettes marching down a high street triumphantly singing the Here Come the Girls song out loud, like an invading squadron tormenting the natives with its war cry. Next year they'll probably be armed. Fear this.”

Charlie Brooker (1971) journalist, broadcaster and writer from England

The Guardian 16 November 2009. http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/nov/16/charlie-brooker-christmas-television-adverts
Guardian columns

Women , War , Girl , Singing

“Nobody can doubt that the entire range of applied science contributes to the very format of a newspaper. But the headline is a feature which began with the Napoleonic Wars. The headline is a primitive shout of rage, triumph, fear, or warning, and newspapers have thrived on wars ever since.”

Marshall McLuhan (1911–1980) Canadian educator, philosopher, and scholar-- a professor of English literature, a literary critic, and a …

Source: 1950s, The Mechanical Bride (1951), p. 7

War , Rage , Science

“So, is “Caliph Ibrahim” of the Islamic State an extremist, a militant, a terrorist or an Islamic fighter? None of the above. All those labels imply behavior that makes some sort of sense in terms of human reality and normal ideologies. Yet the Islamic State and its kindred have broken out of the entire conceivable range of political activity, even its extreme forms. A “militant” spends much of his time promoting an idea or a political program within acceptable rules of behavior. The neo-Islamists, by contrast, recognize no rules apart from those they themselves set; they have no desire to win an argument through hard canvassing. They don’t even seek to impose a point of view; they seek naked and brutal domination. A “terrorist,” meanwhile, tries to instill fear in an adversary from whom he demands specific concessions. Yet the Islamic State et al. use mass murder to such ends. They don’t want to persuade or cajole anyone to do anything in particular; they want everything. “Islamic fighter” is equally inapt. An Islamic fighter is a Muslim who fights a hostile infidel who is trying to prevent Muslims from practicing their faith. That was not the situation in Mosul. No one was preventing the city’s Muslim majority from practicing their faith, let alone forcing them to covert to another religion. Yet the Islamic State came, conquered and began to slaughter. The Islamic State kills people because it can. And in both Syria and Iraq it has killed more Muslims than members of any other religious community. How, then, can we define a phenomenon that has made even al Qaeda, the Taliban and the Khomeinist gangs appear “moderate” in comparison? The international community faced a similar question in the 18th century when pirates acted as a law onto themselves, ignoring the most basic norms of human interaction. The issue was discussed in long negotiations that led to the Treaty of Utrecht (1713) and the Treaty of Rastadt (1714) and developed a new judicial concept: the crime against humanity. Those who committed that crime would qualify as “enemies of mankind” — in Latin, hostis generis humanis. Individuals and groups convicted of such a crime were no longer covered by penal codes or even the laws of war. They’d set themselves outside humanity by behaving like wild beasts… Neo-Islamist groups represent a cocktail of nihilism and crimes against humanity. Like the pirates of yesteryear, they’ve attracted criminals from many different nationalities… Having embarked on genocide, the neo-Islamists do not represent an Iraqi or Syrian or Nigerian problem, but a problem for humanity as a whole. They are not enemies of any particular religion, sect or government but enemies of mankind. They deserve to be treated as such (as do the various governments and semi-governmental “charities” that help them). To deal with these enemies of mankind, we need much more than frozen bank accounts and visa restrictions.”

Amir Taheri (1942) Iranian journalist

"Beyond terrorism: ISIS and other enemies of humanity" http://nypost.com/2014/08/20/beyond-terrorism-isis-and-other-enemies-of-humanity/, New York Post (August 20, 2014).
New York Post

Hostility , War , People , Faith

“He feared neither God, nor devil, nor man, nor wind, nor sea, nor his own conscience. And I believe he hated everybody and everything. But I think he was afraid to die. I believe I am the only man who ever stood up to him.”

Joseph Conrad book The Shadow Line

Referring to Mr. Burns. Compare to Heart of Darkness' manager: "He was becoming confidential now, but I fancy my unresponsive attitude must have exasperated him at last, for he judged it necessary to inform me he feared neither God nor devil, let alone any mere man. I said I could see that very well..."
The Shadow Line (1915)

God , Hate , Thinking , Sea

“Don't fear for your life, fear for your honor.”

Aleksey Mozgovoy (1975–2015) pro-Russian rebel and warlord in Eastern Ukraine

In Russian: Не бойся за шкуру, бойся за честь.
Source: Speech in Lugansk, March 14, 2014. Video https://ok.ru/video/4652139916 available on ok.ru.

Life

“But are there not reasons against all this? Is there not such a law or principle as that of self-preservation? Does not every race owe something to itself? Should it not attend to the dictates of common sense? Should not a superior race protect itself from contact with inferior ones? Are not the white people the owners of this continent? Have they not the right to say what kind of people shall be allowed to come here and settle? Is there not such a thing as being more generous than wise? In the effort to promote civilization may we not corrupt and destroy what we have? Is it best to take on board more passengers than the ship will carry? To all this and more I have one among many answers, altogether satisfactory to me, though I cannot promise it will be entirely so to you. I submit that this question of Chinese immigration should be settled upon higher principles than those of a cold and selfish expediency. There are such things in the world as human rights. They rest upon no conventional foundation, but are eternal, universal and indestructible. Among these is the right of locomotion; the right of migration; the right which belongs to no particular race, but belongs alike to all and to all alike. It is the right you assert by staying here, and your fathers asserted by coming here. It is this great right that I assert for the Chinese and the Japanese, and for all other varieties of men equally with yourselves, now and forever. I know of no rights of race superior to the rights of humanity, and when there is a supposed conflict between human and national rights, it is safe to go the side of humanity. I have great respect for the blue-eyed and light-haired races of America. They are a mighty people. In any struggle for the good things of this world, they need have no fear, they have no need to doubt that they will get their full share. But I reject the arrogant and scornful theory by which they would limit migratory rights, or any other essential human rights, to themselves, and which would make them the owners of this great continent to the exclusion of all other races of men. I want a home here not only for the negro, the mulatto and the Latin races, but I want the Asiatic to find a home here in the United States, and feel at home here, both for his sake and for ours.”

Frederick Douglass (1818–1895) American social reformer, orator, writer and statesman

1860s, Our Composite Nationality (1869)

Men , People , World , Law

“You must picture me alone in that room in Magdalen, night after night, feeling, whenever my mind lifted even for a second from my work, the steady, unrelenting approach of Him whom I so earnestly desired not to meet. That which I greatly feared had at last come upon me. In the Trinity Term of 1929 I gave in, and admitted that God was God, and knelt and prayed: perhaps, that night, the most dejected and reluctant convert in all England.”

Clive Staples Lewis book Surprised by Joy

Surprised by Joy (1955)

God , Feeling , Night

“Children, Fear God; that is to say, have an holy awe upon your minds to avoid that which is evil, and a strict care to embrace and do that which is good.”

William Penn (1644–1718) English real estate entrepreneur, philosopher, early Quaker and founder of the Province of Pennsylvania

Advice to his children (1699)

God , Children , Evil

“Every human being lived behind an impenetrable wall of choking mist within which no other but he existed. Occasionally there were the dim signals from deep within the cavern in which another man was located — so that each might grope toward the other. Yet because they did not know one another, and could not understand one another, and dared not trust one another, and felt from infancy the terrors and insecurity of that ultimate isolation — there was the hunted fear of man for man, the savage rapacity of man toward man.”

Isaac Asimov (1920–1992) American writer and professor of biochemistry at Boston University, known for his works of science fiction …

Source: The Foundation series (1951–1993), Second Foundation (1953), Chapter 8 “Seldon’s Plan”; in part II, “Search by the Foundation” originally published as “—And Now You Don’t” in Astounding (November and December 1949 and January 1950)

Understanding

“The Afghans have stood firm in the face of all odds and pressures and have indeed made the greatest of sacrifices. They have sacrificed a million and a half people. They are no longer afraid of death. The truth is that when death seems far away then fear of it is magnified, but this fear disappears for those who see it close to them. For the Afghans, death is no longer something to be avoided!”

Israr Ahmed

http://www.jamiat.org.za/al-jamiat/june/taliban.html.

Death , People , Truth

“…it is a revolution without any mandate from the people. (Cheers.) Now, gentlemen, it is in the first place a revolution in fiscal methods…this Budget is introduced as a Liberal measure. If so, all I can say is that it is a new Liberalism and not the one that I have known and practised under more illustrious auspices than these. (Cheers.) Who was the greatest, not merely the greatest Liberal, but the greatest financier that this country has ever known? (A voice, "Gladstone.") I mean Mr. Gladstone. (Cheers.) With Sir Robert Peel—he, I think, occupied a position even higher than Sir Robert Peel—for boldness of imagination and scope of financing Mr. Gladstone ranks as the great financial authority of our time. (Cheers.) Now, we have in the Cabinet at this moment several colleagues, several ex-colleagues of mine, who served in the Cabinet with Mr. Gladstone…and I ask them, without a moment's fear or hesitation as to the answer that would follow if they gave it from their conscience, with what feelings would they approach Mr. Gladstone, were he Prime Minister and still living, with such a Budget as this? Mr. Gladstone would be 100 in December if he were alive; but, centenarian as he would be, I venture to say that he would make short work of the deputation of the Cabinet that waited on him with the measure, and they would soon find themselves on the stairs and not in the room. (Laughter and cheers.) In his eyes, and in my eyes, too, as a humble disciple, Liberalism and Liberty were cognate terms. They were twin-sisters. How does the Budget stand the test of Liberalism so understood and of Liberty as we have always comprehended it? This Budget seems to establish an inquisition, unknown previously in Great Britain, and a tyranny, I venture to say, unknown to mankind…I think my friends are moving on the path that leads to Socialism. How far they are advanced on that path I will not say, but on that path I, at any rate, cannot follow them an inch. (Loud cheers.) Any form of protection is an evil, but Socialism is the end of all, the negation of faith, of family, of prosperity, of the monarchy, of Empire.”

Archibald Primrose, 5th Earl of Rosebery (1847–1929) British politician

Loud cheers.
Speech in Glasgow attacking the "People's Budget" (10 September 1909), reported in The Times (11 September 1909), pp. 7-8.

People , Family , Faith , Feeling

“It’s easy to laugh at someone like celebrity chef Gordon Ramsay who swears and shouts in his kitchen, but to ensure a successful life you must avoid making others sad, unhappy or fearful. To do this, you have to learn to keep your emotions in check.”

Nigel Cumberland (1967) British author and leadership coach

Your Job-Hunt Ltd – Advice from an Award-Winning Asian Headhunter (2003), Successful Recruitment in a Week (2012) https://books.google.ae/books?idp24GkAsgjGEC&printsecfrontcover&dqnigel+cumberland&hlen&saX&ved0ahUKEwjF75Xw0IHNAhULLcAKHazACBMQ6AEIGjAA#vonepage&qnigel%20cumberland&ffalse, 100 Things Successful People Do: Little Exercises for Successful Living (2016) https://books.google.ae/books?idnu0lCwAAQBAJ&dqnigel+cumberland&hlen&saX&ved0ahUKEwjF75Xw0IHNAhULLcAKHazACBMQ6AEIMjAE

Life , Sadness , Learning , Success