“In time we hate that which we often fear.”

The quote "In time we hate that which we often fear." is famous quote by William Shakespeare (1564–1616), English playwright and poet.

Source: Antony and Cleopatra

Last update Sept. 28, 2023. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

William Shakespeare photo
William Shakespeare 699
English playwright and poet 1564–1616

Related quotes

Cyril Connolly photo

“There is no hate without fear. Hate is crystallized fear, fear's dividend, fear objectivized. We hate what we fear and so where hate is, fear will be lurking.”

Part III: La Clé des Chants (p.103)
The Unquiet Grave (1944)
Context: There is no hate without fear. Hate is crystallized fear, fear's dividend, fear objectivized. We hate what we fear and so where hate is, fear will be lurking. Thus we hate what threatens our person, our liberty, our privacy, our income, our popularity, our vanity and our dreams and plans for ourselves. If we can isolate this element in what we hate we may be able to cease from hating. Analyse in this way the hatred of ideas or of the kind of people whom we have once loved and whose faces are preserved in Spirits of Anger. Hate is the consequence of fear; we fear something before we hate; a child who fears noises becomes the man who hates them.

Cyril Connolly photo

“Hate is the consequence of fear; we fear something before we hate; a child who fears noises becomes the man who hates them.”

Part III: La Clé des Chants (p.103)
The Unquiet Grave (1944)
Context: There is no hate without fear. Hate is crystallized fear, fear's dividend, fear objectivized. We hate what we fear and so where hate is, fear will be lurking. Thus we hate what threatens our person, our liberty, our privacy, our income, our popularity, our vanity and our dreams and plans for ourselves. If we can isolate this element in what we hate we may be able to cease from hating. Analyse in this way the hatred of ideas or of the kind of people whom we have once loved and whose faces are preserved in Spirits of Anger. Hate is the consequence of fear; we fear something before we hate; a child who fears noises becomes the man who hates them.

Don DeLillo photo

“That which we fear to touch is often the very fabric of our salvation.”

Variant: What we are reluctant to touch often seems the very fabric of our salvation.
Source: Libra

George Canning photo

“We are hated throughout Europe and that hate must be cured by fear.”

George Canning (1770–1827) British statesman and politician

Letter to George Leveson-Gower (2 October 1807), quoted in Boyd Hilton, A Mad, Bad, and Dangerous People? England. 1783-1846 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2006), p. 211.

Boris Johnson photo

“What we hate, what we fear, is being ignored.”

Boris Johnson (1964) British politician, historian and journalist

On the fears of MPs.
Source: "Labour's cleaning up on the council tax", 21 April 2005, p. 24.

Jiddu Krishnamurti photo

“We are a strange mixture of hate, fear and gentleness; we are both violence and peace.”

Jiddu Krishnamurti (1895–1986) Indian spiritual philosopher

1960s, Freedom From The Known (1969)
Context: We human beings are what we have been for millions of years — colossally greedy, envious, aggressive, jealous, anxious and despairing, with occasional flashes of joy and affection. We are a strange mixture of hate, fear and gentleness; we are both violence and peace.

John Polanyi photo

“When, as we must often do, we fear science, we really fear ourselves. Human dignity is better served by embracing knowledge.”

John Polanyi (1929) Hungarian-Canadian chemist

Nobel Prize acceptance speech http://www.utoronto.ca/jpolanyi/nobel_prize/, Nobel Banquet in Stockholm (1986)

Martin Luther King, Jr. photo

“Another reason why we must love our enemies is that hate scars the soul and distorts the personality. Mindful that hate is an evil and dangerous force, we too often think of what it does to the person hated. This is understandable, for hate bring irreparable damage to its victims.”

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

1950s, Loving Your Enemies (Christmas 1957)
Context: Another reason why we must love our enemies is that hate scars the soul and distorts the personality. Mindful that hate is an evil and dangerous force, we too often think of what it does to the person hated. This is understandable, for hate bring irreparable damage to its victims. We have seen its ugly consequences in the ignominious deaths brought to six million Jews by a hate-obsessed madman named Hitler, in the unspeakable violence inflicted upon Negroes by blood-thirsty mobs, in the dark horrors of war, and in the terrible indignities and injustices perpetrated against millions of God's children by unconscionable oppressors.
But there is another side which we must never overlook. Hate is just as injurious to the person who hates. Like an unchecked cancer, hate corrodes the personality and eats away its vital unity. Hate destroys a man's sense of values and his objectivity. It causes him to describe the beautiful as ugly and the ugly as beautiful, and to confuse the true with the false and the false with the true.

Related topics