“Fear is good. In the right degree it prevents us from making fools of ourselves. But in the wrong measure it prevents us from fully living. Fear is our boon companion but never our master.”

As a romantic, I have always resented this: I like to sink into myself. The problems and anxieties of living make it difficult. Well, now I had an anxiety that referred to something inside of me, and it reminded me that my inner world was just as real and important as the world around me.
Source: The Mind Parasites (1967), p. 39

As quoted in "Master Race," Partisan Review 50th Anniversary Edition (1985), edited by William Phillips

letter to Bill Vogt, 21 January 1946, quoted in Curt Meine, Aldo Leopold: His Life and Work, p. 478.
1940s

Source: A Field Guide to Getting Lost

Speech to the Society of Professional Journalists (11 September 2004)
Context: This "zeal for secrecy" I am talking about — and I have barely touched the surface — adds up to a victory for the terrorists. When they plunged those hijacked planes into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon three years ago this morning, they were out to hijack our Gross National Psychology. If they could fill our psyche with fear — as if the imagination of each one of us were Afghanistan and they were the Taliban — they could deprive us of the trust and confidence required for a free society to work. They could prevent us from ever again believing in a safe, decent or just world and from working to bring it about. By pillaging and plundering our peace of mind they could panic us into abandoning those unique freedoms — freedom of speech, freedom of the press — that constitute the ability of democracy to self-correct and turn the ship of state before it hits the iceberg.

Source: Bangkok Tattoo

Harvard Graduation Speech (2017)

Source: Give Me Liberty! (1998), Ch. 14 : The Magical Weapon : Withholding Permission to Be Defeated, p. 163