Quotes about fear (4961 quotes, page 50)

“Animals who die for your dinner table die alone, in terror, in sadness and in pain. The killing is merciless and inhumane. … Animals suffer from pain and fear just as much as you do. Most spend their last hours locked in a truck, packed into a cage with hundreds of other terrified animals and then cruelly pushed into a blood soaked death chamber. Animals which are a year old are often far more rational – and capable of logical thought – than six-week-old babies. Pigs and sheep are far more intelligent than small children.”

Vernon Coleman (1946) British doctor

"Twenty One Reasons For Being A Vegetarian" (2007), in vernoncoleman.com http://www.vernoncoleman.com/twentyoner.htm.

Baby , Intelligence , Death , Pain

“America the brave still fears what we don't know And God loves all his children it's somehow forgotten, but we paraphrase a book written 3, 500 hundred years ago.”

Macklemore (1983) American rapper from Washington

Source: Song Same Love

God , Children , Books , Love

“Emptiness is not what we thought. Neither is mindfulness or fear. Compassion—not what we thought. Love. Buddha nature. Courage.”

Pema Chödron (1936) American philosopher

When Things Fall Apart: Heart Advice for Difficult Times (1997)

Courage , Nature , Love

“Impermanence becomes vivid in the present moment; so do compassion and wonder and courage. And so does fear.”

Pema Chödron (1936) American philosopher

When Things Fall Apart: Heart Advice for Difficult Times (1997)

Courage

“Fear is a natural reaction to moving closer to the truth.”

Pema Chödron (1936) American philosopher

When Things Fall Apart: Heart Advice for Difficult Times (1997)

Truth , Nature

“Meditation is an invitation to notice when we reach our limit and to not get carried away by hope and fear.”

Pema Chödron (1936) American philosopher

When Things Fall Apart: Heart Advice for Difficult Times (1997)

Hope

“Men build all kinds of worlds in order to defeat fear and loneliness.”

Jack Cady book The Night We Buried Road Dog

Source: The Night We Buried Road Dog (1993), p. 502

Loneliness , World , Men

“God bestows perfect security on His devotees and removes all sorts of fears. He transforms the sense of insecurity and fear into one of confidence and faith. He saves him from panic and despair.”

Swami Sivananda (1887–1963) Indian philosopher

Conquest of Fear (c-1960)

Despair , God , Confidence , Faith

“Sit with closed eyes in the early morning. Meditate on courage, the opposite of fear, for half an hour. Think of the advantages of courage and the disadvantages of fear.”

Swami Sivananda (1887–1963) Indian philosopher

Conquest of Fear (c-1960)

Courage , Thinking

“If the fear is released or dispelled, he will have peace of mind.”

Swami Sivananda (1887–1963) Indian philosopher

Conquest of Fear (c-1960)

Peace

“Anxiety and worry are the effects of fear. Some sort of fear gets buried in the subconscious mind. So man worries himself. There is continued strain and tension in the mind.”

Swami Sivananda (1887–1963) Indian philosopher

Conquest of Fear (c-1960)

“Panicky fear is more contagious than typhoid or cholera. The atom bombs cause terrible panicky fear. People leave their houses and move to villages.”

Swami Sivananda (1887–1963) Indian philosopher

Conquest of Fear (c-1960)

Housing , People

“The origin of most neurotic fears can be traced to childhood. The seeds of fear may lie dormant in childhood in the subconscious mind. They sprout forth after some time during some period of crisis or stress.”

Swami Sivananda (1887–1963) Indian philosopher

Conquest of Fear (c-1960)

Childhood , Lie , Time

“Fear is of two kinds, viz., natural or rational fear, when there is a threatening situation to endanger life; and unnatural or unusual fear which has no objective reality.”

Swami Sivananda (1887–1963) Indian philosopher

Conquest of Fear (c-1960)

Life , Nature , Reality

“Fear is a great enemy of man. It is the enemy of his progress. It disturbs his peace and harmony. It sucks or saps his vitality and energy. It drains the nervous system of its reserve of energy. It produces weakness.”

Swami Sivananda (1887–1963) Indian philosopher

Conquest of Fear (c-1960)

Peace

“Imagine a permanent, shivering gloom, and never a moment without hunger, thirst and exhaustion. Imagine the constant fear of suffering illness or injury.”

Alastair Reynolds (1966) British novelist and astronomer

“You’ve just described nine-tenths of human history.”
Open and Shut (p. 265)
Short fiction, Belladonna Nights and Other Stories (2021)

Hunger , Imagination , Suffering

“The media no longer hesitate to whip up lurid anxieties in order to increase sales, in the process undermining social confidence and multiplying fears.”

A. C. Grayling (1949) English philosopher

Source: Life, Sex, and Ideas: The Good Life Without God (2002), Chapter 2, “Moral Education” (p. 7)

Confidence

“Nothing is more ridiculous than a tyrant, whose fear is gradually losing itself.”

Daniel Salamanca (1863–1935) President of Bolivia (1863-1935)

“Western culture is undergoing a process of transition from guilt-oriented, with a conscience, to shame-oriented, with a morbid fear of being found out.”

John Brunner book The Jagged Orbit

Source: The Jagged Orbit (1969), Chapter 3, “Spoolpigeon” (p. 10)

“Let those flatter who fear; it is not an American art. To give praise which is not due might be well from the venal, but would ill beseem those who are asserting the rights of human nature. They know, and will therefore say, that kings are the servants, not the proprietors of the people.”

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

1770s, A Summary View of the Rights of British America (1774)

People , Art , Nature

“We don’t want to be manipulated by right-wing elitist billionaires or by left-wing guys that don’t understand our life on the ground that is living in fear of crime, that is living as a result of inflation that is killing us in many parts of the country. We need gas to go to work.”

Al Sharpton (1954) American Baptist minister, civil rights activist, and television/radio talk show host

“Democratic Outlook for 2022 Midterms” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ea8LKGL0xXo MSNBC (April 11, 2022)

Guy , Understanding , Country , Life

“None of us want conflict. We want peace and stability. But nor do we want the very world order that underpins our freedoms to be eroded for fear of giving offence, in the vain hope that concessions will ameliorate the determination of those who seek to intimidate and coerce.”

Scott Morrison (1968) 30th Prime Minister of Australia

"An Address by Prime Minister Scott Morrison" https://www.lowyinstitute.org/publications/address-prime-minister-scott-morrison (7 March 2022)

Peace , Freedom , Hope , World

“Fear puts an end to openness of manner; fear leads to concealment; fear sows the seed of much hypocrisy, and leads to many a lie.”

J.C. Ryle (1816–1900) Anglican bishop

Source: The Upper Room (1888), Ch. XVI: "The Duties of Parents"

Lie

“It’s better to teach people than to scare them, Lauren. If you scare them and nothing happens, they lose their fear, and you lose some of your authority with them.”

Octavia E. Butler book Parable of the Sower

Source: Parable of the Sower (1993), p. 65

People

“We cannot renounce our faith and not give a reason for it to those who wish to hear us. We need not hide our faith in Jesus Christ out of fear, nor should we keep quiet when there is an opportunity to bear witness to it.”

Antonio Dorado Soto (1931–2015) Spanish bishop

Bishop tells Spanish Catholics not to fear “psychological torture” (15 June 2005), Catholic News Agency https://www.catholicnewsagency.com/news/4164/bishop-tells-spanish-catholics-not-to-fear-psychological-torture

Faith , Christ

“Zeus, the father of the Olympic Gods, turned mid-day into night, hiding the light of the dazzling Sun; and sore fear came upon men.”

Archilochus (-680–-645 BC) Ancient Greek lyric poet

Fragment 122

God , Night , Light , Sun

“Take the joy and bear the sorrow,
looking past your hopes and fears:
learn to recognize the measured
dance that orders all our years.”

Archilochus (-680–-645 BC) Ancient Greek lyric poet

Fragment 67

Past , Hope , Learning , Joy

“Ah, never fear; death could be trusted to show up. No doubt well before she wanted it.”

Kim Stanley Robinson (1952) American science fiction writer

Source: Blue Mars (1996), Chapter 12, “It Goes So Fast” (p. 603)

Death

“It’s amazing what superstitions survive in fearful minds.”

Kim Stanley Robinson (1952) American science fiction writer

Source: Blue Mars (1996), Chapter 10, “Werteswandel” (p. 462)

“I am convinced that nuclear weapons are useless and unpromising as an instrument of State policy. It is necessary to do everything possible to make sure that in the new millennium mankind gets rid once and for all of the fear of devastating nuclear disaster.”

Leonid Kuchma (1938) Second president of Ukraine

Speech at the 55th session of the United Nations General Assembly (excerpts) (2000)

“Like every people on earth, my compatriots want to live in a democratic country, without fear for their future and the life and destiny of coming generations.”

Leonid Kuchma (1938) Second president of Ukraine

Speech at the 55th session of the United Nations General Assembly (excerpts) (2000)

Life , Country , Future , People

“Can we live in a world of brotherhood and peace without disease and fear and oppression?”

Dolores Huerta (1930) American labor leader

1974 speech, in Voices of Multicultural America: Notable Speeches Delivered by African, Asian, Hispanic and Native Americans, 1790-1995 by Deborah Gillan Straub

Peace , World , Disease

“Fear is a product of a guilty mind.”

Idegu Ojonugwa Shadrach (1995)

“"Knowledge did not only took fear away from me, it also made me surpass human creatures."
-Engr. Abah Sule-”

Engr.Abah Sule

Knowledge

“Shit scared them [the Surrealists]. Shit and arseholes. Yet, what was more human and more needful of transcending! From that moment, I know I would keep on obsessing them with what they most dreaded. And when I invented Surrealist objects, I had the deep inner fulfillment of knowing, while the [Surrealist] group went into ecstasies over their operation, that these objects very exactly reproduced the contradictions of a rectal sphincter at work, so that what they were thus admiring was their own fear.”

Salvador Dalí (1904–1989) Spanish artist

as cited in The Unspeakable confessions of Salvador Dali, Parinaud, ed. W. H. Allen, London 1976, p. 113
Quotes of Salvador Dali, 1971 - 1980, Comment on deviant Dali, les aveux inavouables de Salvador Dali

“No coward soul is mine,
No trembler in the world's storm-troubled sphere:
I see Heaven's glories shine,
And Faith shines equal, arming me from Fear.

O God within my breast,
Almighty, ever-present Deity!
Life — that in me has rest,
As I — undying Life — have power in Thee!

Vain are the thousand creeds
That move men's hearts: unutterably vain;
Worthless as withered weeds,
Or idlest froth amid the boundless main...”

Emily Brontë (1818–1848) English novelist and poet

No Coward Soul Is Mine (1846)

Soul , God , World , Faith

“I wonder, by my troth, what thou and I
Did, till we loved? Were we not weaned till then?
But sucked on country pleasures, childishly?
Or snorted we in the Seven Sleepers’ den?
’Twas so; but this, all pleasures fancies be.
If ever any beauty I did see,
Which I desired, and got, ’twas but a dream of thee.

And now good-morrow to our waking souls,
Which watch not one another out of fear;
For love, all love of other sights controls,
And makes one little room an everywhere.
Let sea-discoverers to new worlds have gone,
Let maps to other, worlds on worlds have shown,
Let us possess one world, each hath one, and is one.

My face in thine eye, thine in mine appears,
And true plain hearts do in the faces rest;
Where can we find two better hemispheres,
Without sharp north, without declining west?
Whatever dies, was not mixed equally;
If our two loves be one, or, thou and I
Love so alike, that none do slacken, none can die.”

John Donne Songs and Sonnets

Songs and Sonnets (1633), The Good-Morrow

Soul , Sea , Country , Love

“One of the most important things is corporate politics. Big corporations are bureaucracies that often promote people who are best at covering their asses. Such people run scared, fearful of any suggestion they can make mistakes. And they surround themselves with others who run the same way. Don't take risks. Find out what succeeds and copy it.”

Frank Herbert (1920–1986) American writer

"Introduction", to Eye, (1987)
General sources

People , Way

“I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration.
I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain.”

Frank Herbert book Dune

Bene Gesserit Litany Against Fear
Dune (1965)

Past , Death

““To write my essay I had to read books differently, without giving myself over to either fear or adoration. ””

Tara Westover book Educated

Reading , Books

““To write my essay I had to read books differently, without giving myself over to either fear or adoration. Because Burke had defended the British monarchy, Dad would have said he was an agent of tyranny. He wouldn't have wanted the book in the house. There was a thrill in trusting myself to read the words. I felt a similar thrill in reading Madison, Hamilton and Jay, especially on those occasions when I discarded their conclusions in favor of Burke's, or when it seemed to me that their ideas were not really different in substance, only in form. There were wonderful suppositions embedded in this method of reading: that books are not tricks, and that I was not feeble””

Tara Westover book Educated

Housing , Books , Idea , Reading

“There is a big difference between feeling shame and being shamed… The feeling we call shame is a natural biological affective reaction that is occurring when we fear social consequence. To shame someone is to use the natural biological affective reaction of shame as a tool for manipulating and controlling someone to suit your own interests.”

Teal Swan (1984) American spiritual teacher

Nature , Feeling

“Been drinking 3 weeks in a row just to forget
About the pain and the tears and the shame and the fears
And I blame her for these but she ain’t really here
She walked away”

Mogimike

Source: Song A Little Too Much

Pain , Drink , Forgetting , Tear

“Being respected as a reflection of fear will only last as long as the fear remains. Conversely, being respected as a form of love will last forever.”

Titon Rahmawan

Love

“There's never anything wrong with fear, it's completely human. However, don't let it destroy you. The only way to overcome fear is to face it.”

Titon Rahmawan

Way

“Courage is when we can overcome the fear and apprehension that pervades our hearts and minds when we find no other way out except by facing danger.”

Titon Rahmawan

Courage , Heart , Way

“We have to tune ourselves into the love frequency because it's higher than fear.”

Ralph Smart

Love