Quotes about fear (4956 quotes, page 34)

“But we have an opportunity before us to reassert our desire and to lend the force of our example for the peaceful adjudication of differences between nations. Such action would be in entire harmony with the policy which we have long advocated. I do not look upon it as a certain guaranty against war, but it would be a method of disposing of troublesome questions, an accumulation of which leads to irritating conditions and results in mutually hostile sentiments. More than a year ago President Harding proposed that the Senate should authorize our adherence to the protocol of the Permanent Court of International Justice, with certain conditions. His suggestion has already had my approval. On that I stand. I should not oppose other reservations, but any material changes which would not probably receive the consent of the many other nations would be impracticable. We can not take a step in advance of this kind without assuming certain obligations. Here again if we receive anything we must surrender something. We may as well face the question candidly, and if we are willing to assume these new duties in exchange for the benefits which would accrue to us, let us say so. If we are not willing, let us say that. We can accomplish nothing by taking a doubtful or ambiguous position. We are not going to be able to avoid meeting the world and bearing our part of the burdens of the world. We must meet those burdens and overcome them or they will meet us and overcome us. For my part I desire my country to meet them without evasion and without fear in an upright, downright, square, American way.”

Calvin Coolidge (1872–1933) American politician, 30th president of the United States (in office from 1923 to 1929)

1920s, Freedom and its Obligations (1924)

Hostility , War , World , Peace

“People with real power never fear of losing it. People with control think of little else.”

Joss Whedon (1964) American director, writer, and producer for television and film

"Mom, He's Doing It Again..", at Whedonesque.com (10 November 2007) http://whedonesque.com/comments/14699#more

People , Thinking

“We are apprehensive that an ear turned to our inwardness will detect at most only meaningless murmurings, that a resort to the inner self will be a dizzying tumble into a bottomless pit. Fearing this, we anchor ourselves upon external things, we cast our lot with the fortunes of objects and events that appear to be untainted by the disease of selfhood.”

David L. Norton (1930–1995) American philosopher

Source: Personal Destinies: A Philosophy of Ethical Individualism (1976), p. 4

Disease , Appearance

“Boredom is fear's patience. Fear doesn't want to exaggerate.”

Herta Müller book The Hunger Angel

Source: The Hunger Angel (2012), p. 198

Patience

“The puella mother who has never taken up residence in her own body, and therefore fears her own chthonic nature, is not going to experience pregnancy as a quiet meditation with her unborn child, nor birth as a joyful bonding experience. Although she may go through the motions of natural childbirth, the psyche/soma split in her is so deep that physical bonding between her and her baby daughter does not take place. Her child lives with a profound sense of despair, a despair which becomes conscious if in later years she does active imagination with her body and releases waves of grief and terror that resonate with the initial, primal rejection. […] The body that appears in dreams wrapped in fire, encircled by a black snake or encumbered by a fish tail from the waist down, may be holding a death-wish too deep for tears.”

Marion Woodman (1928–2018) Canadian writer

Source: The Pregnant Virgin (1985), p. 37

Death , Dreams , Imagination , Birth

“Whom, then, did the Master mean by the poor in spirit to whom the kingdom belongs?Not those who are rightly called "poor spirited." There ought to be no need of saying that, but there is, for some may still be found who consider crawling the Christian's proper gait.There are men who fear to call their souls their own, and if they did, they would deceive— themselves. At times such men baptize their cowardice in holy water, name it humility, and tremble…. They are not blessed. Their life is a creeping paralysis. Afraid to stand for their convictions, they end by having no convictions to stand to.”

William Burnet Wright (1836–1924) American clergyman

Source: Master and Men (1894), pp. 39-40

Life , Men , Soul , Water

“The reason for the phenomenon we call organization is as fundamental as human life itself. It has its roots in the fact that man, in every fibre of his being, with the full force of every motive he has brought with him through the ages, is stamped indelibly as a social creature.
Our primitive ancestors, before history began to be written, felt both the urge and the necessity to band together. By day, this awkward creature, with his new-found weapons in his clumsy hands, could stand alone and hold his enemy at bay by the power of his growing cunning. But when night fell, his helplessness weighed upon him and he fled in terror to the retreats where others of his kind were congregated, and sought with them a mutual solace of the fears that beset them all”

James D. Mooney (1884–1957) American businessman

Source: Onward Industry!, 1931, p. 1; Lead paragraphs

Life , Age , History , Motivation

“You will hardly find one among the profounder sort of scientific minds without a peculiar religious feeling of his own. But it is different from the religion of the naive man. For the latter God is a being from whose care one hopes to benefit and whose punishment one fears; a sublimation of a feeling similar to that of a child for its father, a being to whom one stands to some extent in a personal relation, however deeply it may be tinged with awe. But the scientist is possessed by the sense of universal causation. The future, to him, is every whit as necessary and determined as the past. There is nothing divine about morality, it is a purely human affair. His religious feeling takes the form of a rapturous amazement at the harmony of natural law, which reveals an intelligence of such superiority that, compared with it, all the systematic thinking and acting of human beings is an utterly insignificant reflection. This feeling is the guiding principle of his life and work, in so far as he succeeds in keeping himself from the shackles of selfish desire. It is beyond question closely akin to that which has possessed the religious geniuses of all ages.”

Albert Einstein (1879–1955) German-born physicist and founder of the theory of relativity

1940s, The World As I See It (1949)

Life , God , Age , Religion

“Twin-sister of Religion, Selfishness!
Rival in crime and falsehood, aping all
The wanton horrors of her bloody play;
Yet frozen, unimpassioned, spiritless,
Shunning the light, and owning not its name,
Compelled by its deformity to screen
With flimsy veil of justice and of right
Its unattractive lineaments that scare
All save the brood of ignorance; at once
The cause and the effect of tyranny;
Unblushing, hardened, sensual and vile;
Dead to all love but of its abjectness;
With heart impassive by more noble powers
Than unshared pleasure, sordid gain, or fame;
Despising its own miserable being,
Which still it longs, yet fears, to disenthrall.”

Percy Bysshe Shelley Queen Mab

Canto V
Queen Mab (1813)

Love , Pleasure , Religion , Justice

“Through us you got guidance in the darkness and secured high position, and through us you got out of the gloomy night. The ears which do not listen to the cries may become deaf. How can one who remained deaf to the loud cries (of the Qur'an and the Prophet) listen to (my) feeble voice. The heart that has ever palpitated (with fear of Allah) may get peace.”

Ali book Nahj al-Balagha

Nahj al-Balagha

Peace , Heart , Night

“Fear and Sex are the two most effective weapons that are used against the people. Tempering desire motivates liberation.”

Lupe Fiasco (1982) rapper

Rules 2 Rule

People , Sex , Motivation

“For centuries men looked for comfort to their deepest anguish, but all answers seemed small before death. Until someone, it’s unknown who, discovered the truth. And since they saw it served all as an answer to the fears of the first man, they defended it with their blood and with the blood of others, first and then with the lie.”

Jorge Majfud (1969) Uruguayan-American writer

La ciudad de la Luna (2009)

Death , Men , Truth , Lie

“[Voluntary social work] has indeed become a new profession and quite a large number of people now make their livelihood by such work. At the same time the State has expanded its social services beyond all recognition within the space of a single generation and a large part of the produce of taxation is now devoted to every form of social amelioration… I should like to see us less concerned with palliation and more concerned with providing the means whereby our people by self-help, that demoded Victorian virtue, should be able to work out their own salvation, even if in fear and trembling.”

Hugh Macmillan, Baron Macmillan (1873–1952) British judge

Source: A Man of Law's Tale (1952), In London, p. 292-3

People , Time , Help , Parting

“Some things were perfectly clear, seen with the vision of youth.
No doubts and nothing to fear, I claimed the corner on truth.
These days it's harder to say I know what I'm fighting for.
My faith is falling away.
I'm not that sure anymore.
Shades of grey wherever I go
The more I find out the less that I know.
Black and white is how it should be
But shades of grey are the colors I see.”

Billy Joel (1949) American singer-songwriter and pianist

Shades of Grey.
Song lyrics, River of Dreams (1993)

Truth , Youth , Faith , Color

“The things you hear now about European unemployment -- that there are structural problems, that real wages have failed to adjust, that there are inflationary fears -- are the same things that were said during the early 1930. It is well established that government spending began to pull Germany out of its slump in 1935. There is no known reason why spending for peace can't do as well at getting the economy going as spending for war.”

Lawrence H. Summers (1954) Former US Secretary of the Treasury

Lawrence Summers in: David Warsh (April 27, 1986) "It Did Happen Here, Too", Boston Globe, p. A1.
1980s

War , Peace , Problem

“I was angry with you about him, furious that he so much as set eyes on you. I would rather kill you than see you lie in his arms.” “is that love then? A thing that leads to murder?” “I don’t know. In all honesty, I don’t know. You’re mine. What’s mine I keep, I rule, and give my body over to defend. I offer you my honor, and my life. That’s not an easy thing. Its within your power to break my pride, and take that life, insignificant though it is.” “you put it very simply.” “its not. Such a gift rouses strange passions, fears of treachery, and deep distrust. I’m not immune to them.” “no one told me it would be like this. Perhaps it won't go into words, what I feel for you. Its not desire, yet I love your touch, the warm softness of your flesh against mine.””

Alice Borchardt (1939–2007) American fiction writer

Devoted

Love , Life , Lie , Feeling

“As I said, in the Fifties I had the 'angst' (= Dutch for 'fear') to survive materialistically. In the city Paris it was a battle. I painted with a knife and called the results 'human landscapes', abstract landscapes with human faces here and there. Today I can do without fight or struggle; every brushstroke now is ready, goes by itself: la peinture depouillé you could say. I discovered that in Picasso's late paintings. You look very closely but there is nothing anymore. He painted here and there a little bit; it is not finished, but once you step back you see a fantastic image, life by itself. I'm not fighting anymore; I'm floating, surfing on the wind.”

Karel Appel (1921–2006) Dutch painter, sculptor, and poet

Source: Karel Appel – the complete sculptures,' (1990), p. 95 'Quotes', K. Appel (1989)

Life , Fight , Painting

“Since 1895, the media has alternated between global cooling and warming scares during four separate and sometimes overlapping time periods. From 1895 until the 1930’s the media peddled a coming ice age. From the late 1920's until the 1960's they warned of global warming. From the 1950's until the 1970's they warned us again of a coming ice age. This makes modern global warming the fourth estate's fourth attempt to promote opposing climate change fears during the last 100 years.”

James Inhofe (1934) American politician

" Hot & Cold Media Spin: A Challenge To Journalists Who Cover Global Warming http://epw.senate.gov/speechitem.cfm?party=rep&id=263759", Senate Floor speech ()

Age , Change , Time

“I often ask myself if I am afraid of being detained again. I love freedom as much as anybody else, maybe more than most. But it is a tragedy to live your life in fear. It is worse than actually losing your freedom.”

Ai Weiwei (1957) Chinese concept artist

2010-, Living in Fear Is Worse Than Imprisonment, 2012

Love , Life , Freedom

“As far too many know, it is the small, loving acts that help an enormous amount in times of grief. My father is good with advice, as you might guess, but he keeps it short, and the takeaway is usually the same: to help us find our own way, and our own gifts. If you do what you love, hold nothing back, and never let fear of failure get in the way, then you've pretty much figured out the Trump formula.”

Tiffany Trump (1993) American Internet personality and daughter of Donald Trump and Marla Maples

Speech at the 2016 Republican National Convention (July 19, 2016)

Love , Way , Failure , Time

“Any country that has Milton Friedman as an adviser has nothing to fear from a few million Arabs.”

John Kenneth Galbraith (1908–2006) American economist and diplomat

on Friedman's advising of the Israeli government, "The Private Man and the Public Life; Interview With Galbraith", The Washington Post (26 April 1981)

Country

“When entering a studio the most pleasant thing to see is a blank canvas. It looks so inviting to make a start, you are fresh and hoping for the best. Then a terrible time follows when everything seems lost and ruined, you fear you will never get it done, than suddenly a ray of light! And it seems you get what you wanted to tell. My best works usually are going trough such a struggle.”

Anton Mauve (1838–1888) Dutch painter (1838–1888)

translation from original Dutch, Fons Heijnsbroek, 2018
(version in original Dutch / origineel citaat van Anton Mauve, in het Nederlands:) Het meest aangename te zien wanneer men een atelier betreedt is een leeg doek. Het oogt zo uitnodigend om een begin te maken, je bent fris en hoopt op het beste. Dan volgt een vreselijke tijd waarin alles verloren en verprutst lijkt, je vreest dat je het nooit zal maken, en plotseling een lichtstraal! En het lijkt alsof je krijgt dat wat je wilde vertellen. Mijn beste werken gaan doorgaans door zulk een strijd.
Mauve's remark, later quoted by Mauve's student nl:Arina Hugenholtz, in her In memoriam mr. Anton Mauve, RKD Den Haag; as cited in The land of Mauve: utopia or a reality? / Het land van Mauve: utopie of werkelijkheid? https://www.rug.nl/research/kenniscentrumlandschap/mscripties/christina_vlasma-het_land_van_mauve-masterscriptie.pdf; master-scriptie by Christina van Staats-Vlasma; Rijksuniversiteit Groningen, La Broquerie, Manitoba Canada, Nov. 2010, p. 93
undated quotes

Hope , Light , Time

“Let us march on ballot boxes, march on ballot boxes until race-baiters disappear from the political arena.
Let us march on ballot boxes until the salient misdeeds of bloodthirsty mobs will be transformed into the calculated good deeds of orderly citizens.
Let us march on ballot boxes until the Wallaces of our nation tremble away in silence.
Let us march on ballot boxes until we send to our city councils, state legislatures, and the United States Congress, men who will not fear to do justly, love mercy, and walk humbly with thy God.
Let us march on ballot boxes until brotherhood becomes more than a meaningless word in an opening prayer, but the order of the day on every legislative agenda.
Let us march on ballot boxes until all over Alabama God’s children will be able to walk the earth in decency and honor. There is nothing wrong with marching in this sense.”

Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929–1968) American clergyman, activist, and leader in the American Civil Rights Movement

1960s, How Long, Not Long (1965)

Love , Men , God , Children

“Fear is unnatural. Lightning and thunder are unnatural. Pain, death, reality, these are all unnatural. We can't bear these things as they are. We know too much. So we resort to repression, compromise and disguise. This is how we survive the universe. This is the natural language of the species.”

Don DeLillo book White Noise

White Noise (1984)

Death , Pain , Nature , Reality

“Fools rush in where angels fear to tread, both of their futures so full of dread.”

Bob Dylan (1941) American singer-songwriter, musician, author, and artist

Song lyrics, Infidels (1983), Jokerman

Fools , Angels , Future

“There are many who dare not kill themselves for fear of what the neighbours will say.”

Cyril Connolly book The Unquiet Grave

Part II: Te Palinure Petens (p. 62)
The Unquiet Grave (1944)

“And fighting the battle of life is fighting against fearful odds, too. There are giants and dragons in this nineteenth century, and the golden casket that they guard is not so easy to win as it appears in the story-books.”

Jerome K. Jerome book Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow

Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow (1886)

Life , Books , Appearance , Fight

“O Mother of Good Counsel, lend
Intelligence to me!
Encompass me with wisdom,
Thou Tower of Ivory!
"This is the Man of Lies," she says,
"Disguised with fearful art:
He has the wounded hands and feet,
But not the wounded heart."”

Joyce Kilmer (1886–1918) American poet, editor, literary critic, soldier

Main Street and Other Poems (1917), The Robe of Christ

Wisdom , Art , Intelligence , Heart

“But France's powerful armies, and a very large number of fortresses, ensure that the French Sovereign will possess the throne forever, and they do not have anything to fear now concerning internal wars or their neighbors invading France.”

Frederick II of Prussia book Anti-Machiavel

Source: Anti-Machiavel, Chapter IV

War

“I think I see another motive in the French writers who in 1914 adopted the attitude of M. Romain Rolland – the fear that they would fall into national partiality if they admitted that their nation was in the right. It may be asserted that these writers would have warmly taken up the cause of France, if France had not been their own country. Whereas Barrès said, "I always maintain my country is right even if it is in the wrong," these strange friends of justice are not unwilling to say: "I always maintain my country is in the wrong, even if it is right."”

Julien Benda (1867–1956) French essayist

There again we see that the frenzy of impartiality, like any other frenzy, leads to injustice.
Source: Treason of the Intellectuals (1927), pp. 187–188

Justice , Motivation , Thinking , Country

“But who is there to help when all the "helpers" fear their own personal history? Bogus traditional morality, destructive religious interpretations, and confusion in our methods of childrearing all make this experience harder and hinder our initiative. Without a doubt, the pharmaceutical industry also profits from our blindness and despondency.”

Alice Miller (1923–2010) Swiss psychologist

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

History , Help , Personality

“Today the world is playing with fire. We have to be ready to face fire, water and great storms and not be shaken. We have to go beyond the hope of life and the fear of death. Whatever happens we must go ahead. Then only can we benefit the world. We have to bring the path of karma into the light. Now the world is in deep darkness. The Revolution spreading in this world can be controlled by karma alone.”

Haidakhan Babaji teacher in northern India

Maha Kranti
Source: The Teachings of Babaji, 19 September 1983.

Life , Death , World , Hope

“What are the fundamental motives that explain the present rivalry of armaments in Europe, notably the Anglo-German? Each nation pleads the need for defence; but this implies that someone is likely to attack, and has therefore a presumed interest in so doing. What are the motives which each State thus fears its neighbors may obey?
They are based on the universal assumption that a nation, in order to find outlets for expanding population and increasing industry, or simply to ensure the best conditions possible for its people, is necessarily pushed to territorial expansion and the exercise of political force against others…. It is assumed that a nation's relative prosperity is broadly determined by its political power; that nations being competing units, advantage in the last resort goes to the possessor of preponderant military force, the weaker goes to the wall, as in the other forms of the struggle for life.
The author challenges this whole doctrine. He attempts to show that it belongs to a stage of development out of which we have passed that the commerce and industry of a people no longer depend upon the expansion of its political frontiers; that a nation's political and economic frontiers do not now necessarily coincide; that military power is socially and economically futile, and can have no relation to the prosperity of the people exercising it; that it is impossible for one nation to seize by force the wealth or trade of another — to enrich itself by subjugating, or imposing its will by force on another; that in short, war, even when victorious, can no longer achieve those aims for which people strive….”

Norman Angell book The Great Illusion

The Great Illusion (1910)

Life , War , People , Exercises

“Instead of joining us on the right side of history, all Republicans have come up with is this slow down, stop everything, let's start over. You think you've heard these same excuses before, you're right. When this country belatedly recognized the wrongs of slavery, there were those who dug in their heels and said, slow down, it's too early. Let's wait. Things aren't bad enough. When women spoke up for the right to speak up, they wanted to vote, some insisted slow down, there will be a better day to do that. The day isn't quite right. When this body was on the verge of guaranteeing equal civil rights to everyone, regardless of the color of their skin, some senators resorted to the same filibuster threats that we hear today. More recently, when chairman Chris Dodd of Connecticut, one of the people who will go down as a chief champion of the bill before us today, said that Americans should be able to take care of their families without fear of losing their jobs, you heard the same old excuses, seven years of fighting and more than one presidential veto, it was slow down, stop everything, start over. History is repeating itself before our eyes. There are now those who don't think it is the right time to reform health care. If not now, when, madam president? But the reality for many that feel that way, it will never, never be a good time to reform health care.”

Harry Reid (1939) American politician

On the Senate floor, during a debate on health care reform, December 7, 2009
Reid Compares Health Reform Bill with Slavery, Suffrage - George's Bottom Line, abcnews.com, December 7, 2009, 2009-12-08 http://blogs.abcnews.com/george/2009/12/reid-compares-health-reform-bill-with-slavery-suffrage.html,

Women , People , Health , Family

“Passion was animal flesh, raw desire gnawing and ripping at its early limitations. These passions were to be feared only if undirected by the conscience of the higher self. Mind was the key to the process of enlightenment. Hence reason was the first principle, light itself.”

B. W. Powe (1955) Canadian writer

Emanations, Destinies, p. 4
Mystic Trudeau: The Fire and the Rose (2007)

Light , Passion , Animals

“Racism is evil -- and those who cause violence in its name are criminals and thugs, including KKK, neo-Nazis, white supremacists, and other hate groups are repugnant to everything we hold dear as Americans. Those who spread violence in the name of bigotry strike at the very core of America. As a candidate I promised to restore law and order to our country and our federal law enforcement agencies are following through on that pledge. We will spare no resource in fighting so that every American child can grow up free from violence and fear. We will defend and protect the sacred rights of all Americans and we will work together so that every citizen in this blessed land is free to follow their dreams, in their hearts, and to express the love and joy in our souls.”

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

Subsequent statement regarding the violence at a far-right Charlottesville, VA rally held on August 11-12, 2017; Trump calls KKK, neo-Nazis, white supremacists 'repugnant' http://www.cnn.com/2017/08/14/politics/trump-condemns-charlottesville-attackers/index.html (14 August 2017)
2010s, 2017, August

Love , Hate , Law , Dreams

“If you're wondering by now who I am, look no further than the mirror,
Because I am the greed and fear - and every ounce of hate in you.”

Paul Weller (singer) (1958) English singer-songwriter, Guitarist

Carnation
The Gift (1982)

Hate

“Press on! there's no such word as fail!
Press nobly on! the goal is near,—
Ascend the mountain! breast the gale!
Look upward, onward,—never fear!
Why shouldst thou faint? Heaven smiles above,
Though storm and vapor intervene;
That sun shines on, whose name is Love,
Serenely o'er Life's shadow'd scene.”

Park Benjamin, Sr. (1809–1864) American journalist

Press On.

Love , Life , Smile , Mountain

“I understood that it was only the very best in us, our capacity for love and self-respect, that enabled us to survive in a perpetually fragmenting multiverse. Only our deepest sense of justice allowed us to remain sane and relish the wonders of chaotic Time and Space, to be free at least of fear. Further violence would bring only an endless chain of bloodshed and an inevitable descent of our race into bestiality and ultimate insentience. To survive, we must love.”

Michael Moorcock book The Steel Tsar

Book 2, Chapter 7 “A Mechanical Man” (pp. 388-389)
The Steel Tsar (1981)

Love , Justice , Sense , Time

“… the fear of God together with a keen eye for the main chance.”

Ralph Barton Perry (1876–1957) American philosopher

Chap XXXV. (Among the traits Barton Perry lists as being possessed by Americans and inherited from British Puritans.)
The Present Conflict of Ideals: A Study of the Philosophical Background of the World War (1918)

God , Chance

“Satire is at once the most agreeable and most dangerous of mental qualities. It always pleases when it is refined, but we always fear those who use it too much, yet satire should be allowed when unmixed with spite, and when the person satirised can join in the satire. It is unfortunate to have a satirical turn without affecting to be pleased or without loving to jest.”

François de La Rochefoucauld (1613–1680) French author of maxims and memoirs

Reflections on Various Subjects (1665–1678), II. On Difference of Character

Love , Personality

“People are really rather afraid that this country might be rather swamped by people with a different culture…So, if you want good race relations, you have got to allay peoples' fears on numbers…we do have to hold out the prospect of an end to immigration except, of course, for compassionate cases…We are not in politics to ignore peoples' worries: we are in politics to deal with them.”

Margaret Thatcher (1925–2013) British stateswoman and politician

TV Interview for Granada World in Action (27 January 1978) http://www.margaretthatcher.org/speeches/displaydocument.asp?docid=103485
Leader of the Opposition

People , Country

“Upon this, one has to remark that men ought either to be well treated or crushed, because they can avenge themselves of lighter injuries, of more serious ones they cannot; therefore the injury that is to be done to a man ought to be of such a kind that one does not stand in fear of revenge.”

Niccolo Machiavelli book The Prince

Source: The Prince (1513), Ch. 3; Variant translation: Never do any enemy a small injury for they are like a snake which is half beaten and it will strike back the first chance it gets.

Men , Revenge

“I can hear another drum beating for the dead that rise, whom Nature's beast fears as they come.”

Bob Dylan (1941) American singer-songwriter, musician, author, and artist

Song lyrics, Empire Burlesque (1985), Dark Eyes

Nature , Dead

“In a cycle as old as tribalism, ignorance of the Other engenders fear; fear engenders hatred; hatred engenders violence; violence engenders further violence until the only "rights," the only law, are whatever is willed by the most powerful.”

David Mitchell book Cloud Atlas

"An Orison of Sonmi~451", p. 303 (Nook Edition)
Cloud Atlas (2004)

Law

“Death’s a fearful thing when we must count its steps!”

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

The Improvisatrice (1824)

Death

“What is the internally free man free from? First of all - he or she is free from fear of people and life; from conventional opinion. He or she is independent from the crowd, from stereotypical thinking. He or she is able to have their own personal point of view; free from prejudices. He or she is free from envy, selfishness and from aggressive personal drives.”

Simon Soloveychik (1930–1996) Russia writer and philosopher

Talent of Freedom. What Is Internal Freedom? http://parentingforeveryone.com/freedom/
Chelovek Svobodny (Free Man) (1994)

Life , People , Thinking , Envy

“The Court has no fears for the safety of the Christian religion. It does not believe that the rock upon which Christianity stands can ever be shaken.”

Sir John Bayley, 1st Baronet (1763–1841) British judge

Trial of Mary Ann Carlile (1821), 1 St. Tr. (N. S.) 1050.

Religion

“I get scared all the time. I try not to let it have any impact on the decision of whether to do it or not. I think you can separate yourself from your fears. You know what you should do, and it’s just scary to do it. But I’d hate to let the fact that I’m scared to do it make me not do it. It ends up defining you.”

Josh Homme (1973) American musician

Reported in Eddy Lawrence, " Josh Homme: Interview http://www.timeout.com/london/music/features/4199/Josh_Homme-interview.html", Time Out London (February 5, 2008).

Hate , Thinking , Decision , Time

““I — I don’t regret what I did. I think that you are a kind man, Mr. Poirot, and that possibly you might understand. You see, I’ve been so terribly afraid.”
“Afraid?”
“Yes, it’s difficult for a gentleman to understand, I expect. But you see, I’m not a clever woman at all, and I’ve no training and I’m getting older — and I’m so terrified for the future. I’ve not been able to save anything — how could I with Emily to be cared for? — and as I get older and more incompetent there won’t be any one who wants me. They’ll want somebody young and brisk. I’ve — I’ve known so many people like I am — nobody wants you and you live in a one room and you can’t have a fire or any warmth and not very much to eat and at last you can’t even pay the rent on your room … There are Institutions, of course, but it’s not very easy to get into them unless you have influential friends, and I haven’t. There are a good many others situated like I am — poor companions — untrained useless women with nothing to look forward to but a deadly fear…””

Agatha Christie book The Labours of Hercules

The Labours of Hercules (1967)

Women , People , Understanding , Thinking

“Evoking fear is, in itself, an art form – and nothing in the entire history of storytelling has explored it better than video games.”

Ben Croshaw (1983) English video game journalist

http://web.archive.org/web/20081015182445/http://www.news.com.au/technology/story/0,25642,24493980-5014239,00.html
Other Articles

Art , History , Game

“Yes, for me, for me He careth
With a brother's tender care;
Yes, with me, with me He shareth
Every burden, every fear.”

Horatius Bonar (1808–1889) British minister and poet

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 93.

“Like a steely blade in a silken sheath
We don't see what they're made of
They shout about love, but when push comes to shove
They live for the things they're afraid of

And the knowledge that they fear is a weapon to be used against them…
- The Weapon (Part II of 'Fear') (1982)”

Neil Peart (1952–2020) Canadian-American drummer , lyricist, and author

Rush Lyrics

Love , Knowledge , Parting

“Imagine […] that thousands of armed foreign troops were constantly patrolling American streets in military vehicles. Imagine they were here under the auspices of "keeping us safe" or "promoting democracy" or "protecting their strategic interests." Imagine that they operated outside of US law, and that the Constitution did not apply to them. Imagine that every now and then they made mistakes or acted on bad information and accidentally killed or terrorized innocent Americans, including women and children, most of the time with little to no repercussions or consequences. Imagine that they set up checkpoints on our soil and routinely searched and ransacked entire neighborhoods of homes. Imagine if Americans were fearful of these foreign troops, and overwhelmingly thought America would be better off without their presence. Imagine if some Americans were so angry about them being in Texas that they actually joined together to fight them off, in defense of our soil and sovereignty, because leadership in government refused or were unable to do so. Imagine that those Americans were labeled terrorists or insurgents for their defensive actions, and routinely killed, or captured and tortured by the foreign troops on our land. Imagine that the occupiers' attitude was that if they just killed enough Americans, the resistance would stop, but instead, for every American killed, ten more would take up arms against them, resulting in perpetual bloodshed. […] The reality is that our military presence on foreign soil is as offensive to the people that live there as armed Chinese troops would be if they were stationed in Texas.”

Ron Paul (1935) American politician and physician

Imagine by Ron Paul http://www.lewrockwell.com/paul/paul512.html (11 March 2009).
2000s, 2006-2009

Women , Children , People , Law

“Yet all this is not ressentiment. These are only stages in the development of its sources. Revenge, envy, the impulse to detract, spite, *Schadenfreude*, and malice lead to ressentiment only if there occurs neither a moral self-conquest (such as genuine forgiveness in the case of revenge) nor an act or some other adequate expression of emotion (such as verbal abuse or shaking one's fist), and if this restraint is caused by a pronounced awareness of impotence. There will be no ressentiment if he who thirsts for revenge really acts and avenges himself, if he who is consumed by hatred harms his enemy, gives him “a piece of his mind,” or even merely vents his spleen in the presence of others. Nor will the envious fall under the dominion of ressentiment if he seeks to acquire the envied possession by means of work, barter, crime, or violence. Ressentiment can only arise if these emotions are particularly powerful and yet must be suppressed because they are coupled with the feeling that one is unable to act them out—either because of weakness, physical or mental, or because of fear. Through its very origin, ressentiment is therefore chiefly confined to those who serve and are dominated at the moment, who fruitlessly resent the sting of authority. When it occurs elsewhere, it is either due to psychological contagion—and the spiritual venom of ressentiment is extremely contagious—or to the violent suppression of an impulse which subsequently revolts by “embittering” and “poisoning” the personality. If an ill-treated servant can vent his spleen in the antechamber, he will remain free from the inner venom of ressentiment, but it will engulf him if he must hide his feelings and keep his negative and hostile emotions to himself.”

Max Scheler (1874–1928) German philosopher

Das Ressentiment im Aufbau der Moralen (1912)

Hostility , Feeling , Forgiveness , Revenge

“If it is God who gives the spirit of power and strength, then it is also the same God who gives “the spirt of self-control,” and if ignoble cowardice and fear of people are just as detestable in any age, the excess of eager enthusiasm, “zeal without wisdom,” are no less corrupting and at times are fundamentally just as detestable, just as blasphemous.”

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

Søren Kierkegaard, Upbuilding Discourses in Various Spirits, Hong p. 323
1840s, Upbuilding Discourses in Various Spirits (1847)

Wisdom , God , People , Age

“To be true, you have to take the plunge, to touch bottom. But most people want to be in control. They fear the worst. You can’t control anything. What you have to do is let yourself be taken over... All the paintings I have made, I was compelled to make. You must never force yourself.”

Bram van Velde (1895–1981) Dutch painter

1960's, Conversations with Samuel Beckett and Bram van Velde' (1965 - 1969)

People , Painting

“Giacomo Rizzolatti… calls these "mirror neurons" and suggests that they provide the first insight into imitation, identification, empathy, and possibly the ability to mime vocalization—the mental processes intrinsic to human interaction. Vilayanur Ramachandran has found evidence of comparable neurons in the premotor cortex of people. …one can see a whole new area of biology opening up… that can give us a sense of what makes us social, communicating beings. An ambitious undertaking of this sort might… teach us something about the factors that give rise to tribalism, which is so often associated with fear, hatred, and intolerance of outsiders.”

Eric R. Kandel (1929) American neuropsychiatrist

In Search of Memory (2006)

People , Communication , Sense

“To embrace the fullness of possible experience without fear strikes me as heroic, impossibly heroic.”

Martin Firrell (1963) British artist and activist

"Complete Hero" (2009)

““Most people have a price. And they have a price because of human emotions named fear and greed.”

Robert T. Kiyosaki (1947) American finance author , investor

Rich Dad Poor Dad: What the Rich Teach Their Kids About Money-That the Poor and the Middle Class Do Not!

People

“Bathtub falls and police officers kill more Americans than terrorism, yet we've been asked to sacrifice our most sacred rights for fear of falling victim to it.”

Edward Snowden (1983) American whistleblower and former National Security Agency contractor

Interview with Glenn Greenwald, 6 June 2013, Part 1

“The tragedy of our day is the climate of fear in which we live, and fear breeds repression. Too often sinister threats to the bill of rights, to freedom of the mind, are concealed under the patriotic cloak, of anti-communism.”

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

Speech to the American Legion convention, New York City (27 August 1952); as quoted in "Democratic Candidate Adlai Stevenson Defines the Nature of Patriotism" in Lend Me Your Ears : Great Speeches In History (2004) by William Safire, p. 81

Communication , Freedom

“Do not fear being ridiculous in relation to the ridiculous.”

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

Diary of an Unknown (1988)

“[T]he Islamic world is a source of danger and destruction is all too conceivable. Indeed, it’s been on display, in plain sight, for years… The jihadist threat is real, and it must, obviously, be fought and defeated. But that raises another problem—not a problem with Islam, but a problem with the West. We have lost our nerve. In recent years, the attitude of Barack Obama has prevailed over the spirit of Charlie Hebdo. The claims of sensitivity have trumped the attachment to freedom. Appeasement of jihad has supplanted the war on terror. Most fundamentally—let’s be honest—fear has overwhelmed courage. And so the American president has been happy to proclaim, as he did at the United Nations in September 2012, “The future must not belong to those who slander the prophet of Islam.” He has been less willing to say that the future must not belong to those who kill in the name of the prophet of Islam… We face a crisis of Islam. We need to be clear-eyed about that. But we also face a crisis of the West. Only if we come to grips with that second crisis will this period of consequences turn out to be an occasion for renewal rather than another marker on the path to decadence.”

William Kristol (1952) American writer

2010s, 2017, The Two Crises (2017)

War , World , Courage , Problem

“At the opposite pole from the gift is tribute - that is, a grant made out of fear and under threat. A threat is a statement of the form "you do something that I want or I will do something that you do not want.”

Kenneth E. Boulding (1910–1993) British-American economist

Source: 1970s, The Economy of Love and Fear, 1973, p. 4

“And others came… Desires and Adorations,
Winged Persuasions and veiled Destinies,
Splendours, and GloOms, and glimmering Incarnations
Of hopes and fears, and twilight Phantasies;
And Sorrow, with her family of Sighs,
And Pleasure, blind with tears, led by the gleam
Of her own dying smile instead of eyes,
Came in slow pomp; — the moving pomp might seem
Like pageantry of mist on an autumnal stream.”

Percy Bysshe Shelley Adonaïs

St. XIII
Adonais (1821)

Pleasure , Family , Smile , Hope

“For, by the logic of Concord, Lexington, and Bunker Hill, and by the principles enforced by this nation in its boasted Declaration of Independence, Capt. Brown was a hero, struggling against fearful odds, not for his own advantage, but to redeem others from a horrible bondage, to be justified in all that he aimed to achieve, however lacking in sound discretion. And by the same logic and the same principles, every slave-holder has forfeited his right to live, if his destruction be necessary to enable his victims to break the yoke of bondage; and they, and all who are disposed to aid them by force and arms, are fully warranted in carrying rebellion to any extent, and securing freedom at whatever cost.”

William Lloyd Garrison (1805–1879) American journalist

No. 170 (28 October 1859)
The Liberator (1831 - 1866)

Freedom

“Never been lonely,
Never been lied to,
Never had to scuffle in fear,
Nothing to dive to,
Born at the instant,
The church bells chime,
The whole world whispering,
You're born at the right time.”

Paul Simon (1941) American musician, songwriter and producer

Born at the Right Time
Song lyrics, The Rhythm of the Saints (1990)

World , Time

“When I think about all the children Hillary Clinton has personally murdered and chopped up and raped, I have zero fear standing up against her. Yeah, you heard me right. Hillary Clinton has personally murdered children. I just can't hold back the truth anymore. Hillary Clinton is one of the most vicious serial killers the planet's ever seen.”

Alex Jones (1974) American radio host, author, conspiracy theorist and filmmaker

Said in a YouTube video posted on 4 November 2016, as quoted in "Alex Jones: ‘Hillary Clinton Has Personally Murdered And Chopped Up And Raped' Children" http://www.rightwingwatch.org/post/alex-jones-hillary-clinton-has-personally-murdered-and-chopped-up-and-raped-children/ by Brian Tashman, Right Wing Watch (8 December 2016)
2016

Children , Truth , Thinking , Personality

“At 20, reflecting on Cus D'Amato: "Cus was my father but he was more than a father. You can have a father and what does it mean?—it doesn't really mean anything. Cus was my backbone…. He did everything for my best interest…. We'd spend all our time together, talk about things that, later on, would come back to me. Like about character, and courage. Like the hero and the coward: that the hero and the coward both feel the same thing, but the hero uses his fear, projects it onto his opponent, while the coward runs. It's the same thing, fear, but it's what you do with it that matters.”

Mike Tyson (1966) American boxer

http://www.usfca.edu/~southerr/boxing/tyson.html
On his family

Feeling , Courage , Time

“Zero tolerance policies, heavy police responses to what would have once been considered empty boy boasting, and the increased fear and suspicion that they inspire only fuel more rage. The toxic school culture is only reinforced by repressive measures.”

Mark Ames (1965) American writer and journalist

Part V: More Rage. More Rage., page 177.
Going Postal: Rage, Murder, and Rebellion, From Reagan's Workplaces to Clinton's Columbine and Beyond (2005)

School , Boy , Rage

“We marched him to the turfy shack where he lived with his parents and while the youth sulked Petronius Longus put the whole moral issue in succinct terms to them: Ollia’s father was a legionary veteran who had served in Egypt and Syria for over twenty years until he left with double pay, three medals, and a diploma that made Ollia legitimate; he now ran a boxers’ training school where he was famous for his high-minded attitude and his fighters were notorious for their loyalty to him… The old fisherman was a toothless, hapless, faithless cove you would not trust too near you with a filleting knife, but whether from fear or simple cunning he co-operated eagerly. The lad agreed to marry the girl and since Silvia would never abandon Ollia here, we decided that the fisherboy had to come back with us to Rome. His relations looked impressed by this result. We accepted it as the best we could achieve.”

Lindsey Davis book Shadows in Bronze

Shadows in Bronze

Youth , School , Girl , Parent

“The iPhone vision of the mobile Internet's future omits controversy, sex, and freedom, but includes strict limits on who can know what and who can say what. It's a sterile Disney-fied walled garden surrounded by sharp-toothed lawyers. The people who create the apps serve at the landlord's pleasure and fear his anger.”

Tim Bray (1955) Canadian software developer

New Android teammate: iPhone a "Disney-fied walled garden" http://electronista.com/articles/10/03/15/web.pioneer.joins.google.to.prove.apple.wrong in Electronista (15 March 2010)

People , Pleasure , Sex , Freedom

“Power without the fear of enquiry is like pickles without salt that would degenerate into a pit of worms. The fear of enquiry is the body guard of power administration.”

D. V. Gundappa (1887–1975) Indian writer

In page=20
D.V. Gundappa,Sahitya Akademi

“The world is full of people whom no one has put in chains but who bind themselves with frozen thoughts and fears. A man whose mind conforms to the conditioned responses of his daily life is a coward and a slave. **The Rules of Chaos (1969), p 84”

Stephen Vizinczey (1933) Hungarian-Canadian writer

Life , People , World

“…. but I use the word (devotion) in a greater latitude so as to comprehend under it faith, hope, love, fear, trust, humility, submission, honour, reverence, adoration, thanksgiving in a word all that duty which we owe to God.”

John Norris (1657–1711) English theologian, philosopher and poet

Reason and Religion; or, The Grounds and Measures of Devotion. Part I, Introduction, Section VIII.

Love , God , Faith , Hope

“Wonderful baby, nothin' to fear.
Love whom you will, but doubt what you hear.
They'll whisper sweet things to make untrue.
So be good to yourself, that's all you can do.You're a wonderful baby livin' on love
The sandman says maybe he'll take you above,
Up where the girls fly on ribbons and bows,
Where babies float by, just counting their toes.”

Don McLean (1945) American Singer and songwriter

Wonderful Baby
Song lyrics, Homeless Brother (1974)

Love , Girl , Baby , Flying

“When governments fear the people, there is liberty. When the people fear the government, there is tyranny.”

Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826) 3rd President of the United States of America

First attributed to Jefferson in 1945, this does not appear in any known Jefferson document. When governments fear the people, there is liberty... http://wiki.monticello.org/mediawiki/index.php/When_governments_fear_the_people,_there_is_liberty...(Quotation), Thomas Jefferson Encyclopedia. It first appears in 1914, in [Barnhill, John Basil, John Basil Barnhill, Indictment of Socialism No. 3, Barnhill-Tichenor Debate on Socialism, http://debs.indstate.edu/b262b3_1914.pdf, PDF, 2008-10-16, 1914, National Rip-Saw Publishing, Saint Louis, Missouri, p. 34]
Misattributed
Variant: Where the people fear the government you have tyranny. Where the government fears the people you have liberty.

People

“I'm dedicating my little story to you; doubtless you will be among the very few who will ever read it. It seems war stories aren't very well received at this point. I'm told they're out-dated, untimely and as might be expected - make some unpleasant reading. And, as you have no doubt already perceived, human beings don't like to remember unpleasant things. They gird themselves with the armor of wishful thinking, protect themselves with a shield of impenetrable optimism, and, with a few exceptions, seem to accomplish their "forgetting" quite admirably. But you, my children, I don't want you to be among those who choose to forget. I want you to read my stories and a lot of others like them. I want you to fill your heads with Remarque and Tolstoy and Ernie Pyle. I want you to know what shrapnel, and "88's" and mortar shells and mustard gas mean. I want you to feel, no matter how vicariously, a semblance of the feeling of a torn limb, a burnt patch of flesh, the crippling, numbing sensation of fear, the hopeless emptiness of fatigue. All these things are complimentary to the province of war and they should be taught and demonstrated in classrooms along with the more heroic aspects of uniforms, and flags, and honor and patriotism. I have no idea what your generation will be like. In mine we were to enjoy "Peace in our time". A very well meaning gentleman waved his umbrella and shouted those very words… less than a year before the whole world went to war. But this gentleman was suffering the worldly disease of insufferable optimism. He and his fellow humans kept polishing the rose colored glasses when actually they should have taken them off. They were sacrificing reason and reality for a brief and temporal peace of mind, the same peace of mind that many of my contemporaries derive by steadfastly refraining from remembering the war that came before.”

Rod Serling (1924–1975) American screenwriter

Excerpt from a dedication to an unpublished short story, "First Squad, First Platoon"; from Serling to his as yet unborn children.
Other

War , Children , World , Disease

“Upon my enquiring as to what he feared most of the future, he answered: “Destitution. Destitution of finances, destitution of mind, destitution of love. The inability to retort. The need of possessing one’s opposite in years, sex, and texture of the skin; and the knowledge that by this need one has been made repugnant. The replacing of independence by solitude.””

Kenneth Burke (1897–1993) American philosopher

Source: Towards a Better Life (1966), p. 8

Love , Sex , Knowledge , Solitude

“The extreme moment of shock in battle presents in heightened and distorted form some of the distinctive characteristics of a whole society involved in war. These characteristics in turn represent a heightening and distortion of many of the traits of a social world cracked open by transformative politics. The threats to survival are immediate and shifting; no mode of association or activity can be held fixed if it stands as an obstacle to success. The existence of stable boundaries between passionate and calculating relationships disappears in the terror of the struggle. All settled ties and preconceptions shake or collapse under the weight of fear, violence, and surprise. What the experience of combat sharply diminishes is the sense of variety in the opportunities of self-expression and attachment, the value given to the bonds of community and to life itself, the chance for reflective withdrawal and for love. In all these ways, it is a deformed expression of the circumstance of society shaken up and restored to indefinition. Yet the features of this circumstance that the battle situation does share often suffice to make the boldest associative experiments seem acceptable in battle even if they depart sharply from the tenor of life in the surrounding society. Vanguardist warfare is the extreme case. It is the response of unprejudiced intelligence and organized collaboration to violence and contingency.”

Roberto Mangabeira Unger (1947) Brazilian philosopher and politician

Source: Plasticity Into Power: Comparative-Historical Studies on the Institutional Conditions of Economic and Military Success (1987), p. 160

Love , Life , War , World

“Our daily life is no longer cursed by fear of those pestilences, plagues, black deaths, which used to devastate Europe. The layman has abolished those plagues by using the medical expert's knowledge. The medical expert has said in effect, "There are not many things that we are agreed upon, but at least we are agreed upon this: that though we cannot cure bubonic plague or cholera, we can prevent them, for we know that they are caused by microorganisms transmitted through water and vermin. Keep sewage from your drinking water and vermin from your homes, and you will prevent these plagues." The layman has seen the point, applied appropriate measures, and these dreadful pestilences have disappeared.
Now, if our publics these last twenty years could have grasped certain social truths, not inherently more difficult to understand than the microbic theory of disease, a large part at least of the economic and political pestilences which have come upon us in our generation would not have arisen.”

Norman Angell (1872–1967) British politician

Peace and the Public Mind (1935)

Life , Death , Truth , Disease

“The character and conquest of the invincible champion are ever the same. A Lacedaemonian died while writing with his own blood on a rock — " Sparta has conquered!" But, O, there is an illustration higher and better than any derived from mere earthly annals. Jesus veiled His glory in the skies; shrouded divinity in mortality, and with godhead and humanity coalesced in His person, entered the lists with more than mortal strife against the powers of hell. He drank the bitter cup with sublimer resignation than the sages of earth ever knew; contended victoriously where finite champions must inevitably have been destroyed; fell, like the strong man, destroying His foes by His death; persevered on our behalf in all the fearful descent from the august throne of the Eternal to the stony floor of the cold and gloomy sepulchre; that Hope's sweet fountain might gush up for mankind in Golgotha, and Salvation plant her banner with immortal triumph at the portal of the conquered tomb.”

Elias Lyman Magoon (1810–1886) American minister

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 451.

Death , Hope , Hell , Strong

“In whatever state of knowledge we may conceive man to be placed, his progress towards a yet higher state need never fear a check, but must continue till the last existence of society.”

John Herschel (1792–1871) English mathematician, astronomer, chemist and photographer

Source: A Preliminary Discourse on the Study of Natural Philosophy (1831), Ch. 6 Of the Causes of the actual rapid Advance of the Physical Sciences compared with their Progress at an earlier Period

Knowledge

“I certainly do not take the view that a war between England and Germany is inevitable. I fear very gravely however unless something happens to the Nazi regime in Germany there will be a devastating war in Europe, and it may come earlier than you expect. The only chance of stopping it is to have a union of nations, all well-armed and bound to defend each other, and thus confront the Nazi aggression with over-whelming force.”

Winston S. Churchill (1874–1965) Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

Letter to Lord Londonderry (6 May 1936), quoted in Martin Gilbert, Prophet of Truth: Winston S. Churchill, 1922–1939 (London: Minerva, 1990), p. 732
The 1930s

War , Chance

“We shall banish want; we shall banish fear. The essence of National Socialism is human welfare…. National Socialism is the revolution of the common man. Rooted in a fuller life for every German from childhood to old age, National Socialism means a new day of abundance at home and a better world order abroad.”

Adolf Hitler (1889–1945) Führer and Reich Chancellor of Germany, Leader of the Nazi Party

As quoted in Men in Motion, Henry J. Taylor, Doubleday, Doran & Co., New York: NY, (1944) p. 59. Also quoted in As We Go Marching, John T. Flynn, New York: NY, Free Life Edition (1973) p. 154, first published 1944 https://mises-media.s3.amazonaws.com/As%20We%20Go%20Marching_2.pdf
Other remarks

Childhood , Life , World , Home

“I feel a conscious attempt to be more and more related to society. That's what's important to me as a person. I'm not going to let other people make all the changes; and if you do that, you can't curt yourself of... I'm only against the most obvious things, like wars and stuff like that. I don't have any particular concept about an utopian way things should be. I have a prejudice or a bias, it is that there shouldn't be any particular way. Being a complex human organ, we are capable of a variety; we can do so much. The big fear is that we don't do enough with our senses, with our activities, with our areas of consideration; and these have got to get bigger year after year.”

Robert Rauschenberg (1925–2008) American artist

1960's, I never thought of it as much of an ability,' (1968)

War , People , Way , Feeling

“It is a fearful responsibility, the exercise of influence : let our own conduct bring its own consequences — we may well meet the worst; not so when we have led another to pursue any given line of action : if they suffer, how tenfold is that suffering visited on ourselves!”

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

The Monthly Magazine

Exercises , Suffering

“You saw, with what unheard of insolence
The highest heavens they did invade of yore:
You saw, how (against reason, against sense)
They did invade the sea with sail and oar:
Actions so proud, so daring, so immense,
You saw; and we see daily more, and more:
That in few years (I fear) of heaven and sea,
Men, will be called gods; and but men, we.”

Luís de Camões (1524–1580) Portuguese poet

Vistes que, com grandíssima ousadia,
Foram já cometer o Céu supremo;
Vistes aquela insana fantasia
De tentarem o mar com vela e remo;
Vistes, e ainda vemos cada dia,
Soberbas e insolências tais, que temo
Que do Mar e do Céu, em poucos anos,
Venham Deuses a ser, e nós, humanos.
Stanza 29 (tr. Richard Fanshawe); council of the sea gods.
Epic poetry, Os Lusíadas (1572), Canto VI

Men , God , Sense , Sea

“I am afraid the remark is too honest, and comes from the same origin as the maxim of the tyrant, "If you would rule the world quietly, you must keep it amused." I notice too, that the ground on which eminent public servants urge the claims of popular education is fear: "This country is filling up with thousands and millions of voters, and you must educate them to keep them from our throats."”

Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882) American philosopher, essayist, and poet

1840s, Essays: Second Series (1844), New England Reformers

World , Education , Country

“For there is no such thing as perpetual Tranquility of mind, while we live here; because Life it selfe is but Motion, and can never be without Desire, nor without Feare, no more than without Sense.”

Thomas Hobbes book Leviathan

The First Part, Chapter 6, p. 29 (See also: Rene Girard)
Leviathan (1651)

Life , Sense

“As far as dreams were concerned—well dreams are generated by the random processes of neural oscillation during the brain’s rest phases. What dreams do is cycle and recycle images and feelings, rationalisations and fears. There’s nothing special about that. It’s not the dreams that matter (chaff, mental turbulence, the rotating metal bars moving endlessly through the transparent tub of metaphorical slushy). It is what the problem-solving circuits in the mind make of the dreams. Dreams iterate and test mental schemas, discarding the maladaptive to return the adaptive to the slush to be reworked. Dreams are emotional preparations for solving problems—that is why we have evolved them, because problem-solving abilities are highly adaptive and thus strongly evolutionarily selected. Dreams intoxicate the individual out of reliance on common sense and preconception, and tempt her into the orbit of private logic. Dreams have utility.”

Adam Roberts book Jack Glass: The Story of a Murderer

Part 2, Chapter 3, “The Utility of Dreaming” (p. 119).
Jack Glass (2012)

Dreams , Feeling , Problem , Sense

“I think hockey is a game, a child's game, played by men and to play it effectively you must have fun just like children do. I've been with too many teams in sports through the years where you weren't allowed to open your mouth, you weren't allowed to laugh, you weren't allowed to question the coach or anyone in authority … You lived in fear. My players don't live in fear. They get up in the morning, they're happy and they go to bed, they're happy. And that's the type of person I am.”

Fred Shero (1925–1990) Former ice hockey player and coach

From the 1975 Stanley Cup Finals film: "A Silver Fantasy."

Men , Children , Game , Question

“I pledge you that we will neither commit nor provoke aggression, that we shall neither flee nor invoke the threat of force, that we shall never negotiate out of fear, we shall never fear to negotiate.”

John F. Kennedy (1917–1963) 35th president of the United States of America

1961, UN speech

“With Donald Trump as the presumptive presidential nominee, we are witnessing a populist hijacking of one of the United States' great political parties… [R]ooted in ignorance, prejudice, fear and isolationism… This troubles me deeply as a Republican, but it troubles me even more as an American.”

Henry Paulson (1946) 74th United States Secretary of the Treasury

As quoted in CBS News http://www.cbsnews.com/news/donald-trump-henry-paulson-op-ed-hillary-clinton-election-2016/ (June 2016)
Choose country over party (2016)