Quotes About Fear

Deep down, our single greatest fear is to live a life of insignificance, to come to the end of our life and feel like we never really did anything that mattered. That is our greatest fear.

In Babel, the people 's greatest fear is the very thing God desires: To be scattered over the face of the earth.

Carl von Clausewitz warned that "it is to no purpose, it is even against one's better interest, to turn away from the consideration of the affair because the horror of its elements excites repugnance.

probability of loss of life after a traumatic event can be greater than loss of life during the event.

The fight-or-flight dichotomy is the appropriate set of choices for any creature faced with danger other than that which comes from its own species.

And in that state of nature, no arts; no letters; no society; and which is worst of all, continual fear and danger of violent death; and the life of man, solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short. —Thomas Hobbes

Brasidas of Sparta said that, "Fear makes men forget, and skill that cannot fight is useless.

The Gift of Fear, which

The Gift of Fear)

When a man is frightened, he literally stops thinking with his forebrain (that is, with the mind of a human being) and begins to think with the midbrain (that is, with the portion of his brain that is essentially indistinguishable from that of an animal), and in the mind of an animal it is the one who makes the loudest noise or puffs himself up the largest who will win.

when soldiers were left to their own devices, the vast majority of them, on all sides, could not kill.

What battles have in common is the human: the behavior of men struggling to reconcile their instinct of self-preservation, their sense of honor and the achievement of some aim over which other men are ready to kill them. The study of battle is therefore always a study of fear and usually of courage, usually also of faith and sometimes vision. —Sir Herbert Butterfield Man On His Past

I fear that our true motivation is about oil and our own flailing economy about the failure to destroy Al Qaeda and about revenge.

Everybody's a bird, locked up in a pretty cage. Sometimes you fly to a slightly bigger one, but you never quite have the courage to abandon captivity completely.

Siamo tutti uccellini, ciascuno nella sua deliziosa gabbietta. A volte voliamo fino a un'altra gabbia un po' più grande ma non abbiamo mai il coraggio di abbandonare completamente la nostra prigionia".

To avoid criticism say nothing, do nothing, and be nothing.

Change is painful. Few people have the courage to seek out change. Most people won't change until the pain of where they are exceeds the pain of change.

Kierkegaard's analysis of this "fear of freedom" is an intriguing one, pursued and expanded on by philosophers as different as Jean-Paul Sartre and Erich Fromm (1900–80). It can make individuals and whole societies "inauthentic". People, as individuals or en masse, are too often happy to "escape" this fear by retreating into an obedience to ideologies dictated by others.

Epicurus (341–270 B.C.) suggested that the individual just needed tranquillity and peace of mind to be happy. As a follower of Democritus, he maintained that death was nothing to fear – it was simply the inevitable melting of our souls and bodies into atoms.

For a moment he considered making a break for it – but in the end it is physically impossible for something the size and shape of a human to go up a spiral staircase over a certain speed. Besides, he had no idea what might be at the top – and he could instantly think of seven thousand, four hundred and thirty-two things that might be simply and instantly lethal.

Take cover!' the Doctor shouted frantically. He looked wildly about himself, realised that there was nothing in the Chamber of Souls actually to take cover under or behind, and shouted again: 'Get out! Get out!' Fitz

You can't be afraid of failure and you can't be afraid of success, because either one gets in the way of your work.

Worry predictions aren't based on what's likely to happen. They're based on what would be terrible if it did happen. They're not based on probability—they're based on fear.

If you or I have a doubt that really bothers us, though, we're likely to respond very differently. We're likely to treat that doubt as if it were a sign of danger, rather than the usual discomfort we can feel about uncertainty. When you get tricked into treating the discomfort of doubt as if it were danger, this leads you to struggle against the doubt, trying to remove the unwanted thoughts from your mind.