quotations about fear
There is always a cause for fear. The cause may change over time, but the fear is always with us.
MICHAEL CRICHTON
State of Fear
When a man is afraid and accedes to fear, he will always find arguments to justify his own surrender.
NATAN SHARANSKY
Fear No Evil
I have no remedy for fear; there grows
No herb of help to heal a coward heart.
ALGERNON CHARLES SWINBURNE
Bothwell
Collective fear stimulates herd instinct, and tends to produce ferocity toward those who are not regarded as members of the herd.
BERTRAND RUSSELL
Unpopular Essays
There is a time when fear is good and ought to remain seated as a guardian of the heart.
AESCHYLUS
The Eumenides
Like other sets of habits, emotions had to be learned. So, fear was not an instinctive reaction to phylogenetically predetermined objects or events, but was a learned response occurring on 'signals' or conditioned stimuli.... Consequently it came as no surprise ... that children shared their mother's fears. This shared community of fear within the family was not due to inheritance of psychic mechanisms: it was learned. After all, the behaviourists pointed out, there was no direct relationship between fear and vulnerability. Indeed, the most defenceless of all human beings (the new-born child) was the least fearful of all God's creatures.
JOANNA BOURKE
Fear: A Cultural History
For as children tremble and fear everything in the blind darkness, so we in the light sometimes fear what is no more to be feared than the things children in the dark hold in terror and imagine will come true. This terror therefore and darkness of mind must be dispelled not by the rays of the sun and glittering shafts of day, but by the aspect and law of nature.
LUCRETIUS
De Rerum Natura
Fear is a distorting mirror in which anything can appear as a caricature of itself, stretched to terrible proportions; once inflamed, the imagination pursues the craziest and most unlikely possibilities. What is most absurd suddenly seems the most probable.
STEFAN ZWEIG
The Post Office Girl
The fear in my heart was like in one of those dreams where you try to run but you can't do it, you can't run because the fear is an anchor in your chest.
WALTER MOSLEY
Fear Itself
The only way to get rid of the fear of doing something is to go out ... and do it.
SUSAN J. JEFFERS
Feel the Fear and Do It Anyway
Don't be afraid of being scared. To be afraid is a sign of common sense. Only complete idiots are not afraid of anything.
CARLOS RUIZ ZAFON
The Angel's Game
Fears themselves don't have to change at all. Fear is not the problem. It is our relationship to the fear that determines the choices we make. By changing our relationship to fear, we reduce its credibility, robbing it of its power to stop us.
THOM RUTLEDGE
Embracing Fear
A thing may be dreaded as long as it has not overtaken you.
CHANAKYA
Vridda-Chanakya
I would describe a hero as a person who has no fear of life, who can face life squarely.
ALEXANDER LOWEN
Fear of Life
We must control fear or it will control us.
WALTER MATTHEWS
Human Life from Many Angles
Within a system which denies the existence of basic human rights, fear tends to be the order of the day. Fear of imprisonment, fear of torture, fear of death, fear of losing friends, family, property or means of livelihood, fear of poverty, fear of isolation, fear of failure. A most insidious form of fear is that which masquerades as common sense or even wisdom, condemning as foolish, reckless, insignificant or futile the small, daily acts of courage which help to preserve man's self-respect and inherent human dignity. It is not easy for a people conditioned by fear under the iron rule of the principle that might is right to free themselves from the enervating miasma of fear. Yet even under the most crushing state machinery courage rises up again and again, for fear is not the natural state of civilized man.
AUNG SAN SUU KYI
Freedom from Fear
All is well, tho' faith and form
Be sunder'd in the night of fear.
ALFRED
LORD TENNYSON, In Memoriam
Fear is good in small amounts, but when it is a constant companion, it cuts away at who you are and makes it hard to do what you know is right.
CHRISTOPHER PAOLINI
Inheritance
Fear is a fantastic marketing tool.
DANIEL GARDNER
The Science of Fear
Fear hath a numerous progeny.
EDWARD COUNSEL
Maxims