Quotes About Fear

Noel Vanstone [...] composed himself to meet the coming ordeal, with reclining head and grasping hands - in the position familiarly associated to all civilized humanity with a seat in a dentist's chair.

The fear of capitalism has compelled socialism to widen freedom, and the fear of socialism has compelled capitalism to increase equality. East is West and West is East, and soon the twain will meet.

it was fear that first made the gods"25 —fear of hidden forces in the earth, rivers, oceans, trees, winds, and sky. Religion became the propitiatory worship of these forces through offerings, sacrifice, incantation, and prayer.

Fear of death, wonder at the causes of chance events or unintelligible happenings, hope for divine aid and gratitude for good fortune, cooperated to generate religious belief.

The fear of death is strangely mingled with the longing for repose.

MAN is not willingly a political animal. The human male associates with his fellows less by desire than by habit, imitation, and the compulsion of circumstance; he does not love society so much as he fears solitude.

W]orship, if not the child, is at least the brother, of fear.

The timid weakness of individuals, the insecurity of groups, and the delusion of superiority generated perpetual fear, suspicion, dislike, and contempt of the different, the alien, and the strange.

The father gets accustomed to descend to the level of his sons and to fear them, and the son to be on a level with his father, having no shame or fear of his parents…. The teacher fears and flatters his scholars, and the scholars despise their masters and tutors…. The old do not like to be thought morose and authoritative, and therefore they imitate the young….

To hate is to acknowledge our inferiority and our fear; we do not hate a foe whom we are confident we can overcome.

fue el miedo lo que en primer lugar creó a los dioses»:1 el miedo a fuerzas ocultas en la tierra, los ríos, los océanos, los árboles, los vientos y el cielo. La religión se convirtió en el culto propiciatorio de esas fuerzas a través de ofrendas, sacrificios, conjuros y oraciones.

For when fear is overcome, curiosity and constructiveness are free, and man passes by natural impulse towards the understanding and embellishment of life.

Religions of hope and love are a luxury of security and order; the need for striking fear into a subject or rebellious people made most primitive religions cults of mystery and dread.

Felix qui potuit rerum cognoscere causas, Quique metus omnes, et inexorabile fatum, Subjecit pedibus, strepitumque Acherontis avari—

If we go back to the beginning," says Holbach, "we shall find that ignorance and fear created the gods; that fancy, enthusiasm or deceit adorned or disfigured them; that weakness worships them; that credulity preserves them; and that custom respects and tyranny supports them in order to make the blindness of men serve its own interests.

How much more suffering is caused by the thought of death than by death itself!

Many simple peoples feared the exceptional individual as a disintegrating force; there is a Chinese proverb that "the great man is a public misfortune.

45 But above all, the function of art is catharsis, purification: emotions accumulated in us under the pressure of social restraints, and liable to sudden issue in unsocial and destructive action, are touched off and sluiced away in the harmless form of theatrical excitement; so tragedy, "through pity and fear, effects the proper purgation of these emotions.

I'm a guy with a disease that eventually kills everybody who has it, and eventually it's going to kill me. I am glad it wasn't today. I hope it's not for a long, long time. But let's not kid ourselves. It's going to happen, and when it happens, I don't want Marjani or Travis or my mom or this Jennifer person who is suddenly the matriarch of this weird little family to be kicking themselves up and down over it.

Dependence leads to fear; fear leads to comparisons; comparisons lead to competition, and competition eventually destroys us by degrading us to imitation, conformity, infantilism or mediocrity.

T]he thing about someone who is escaping is this: he's more concerned about what he's leaving than what he's going to.

Life shrinks or expands in proportion to one's courage.   Anais Nin

How can the bird that is born for joy Sit in a cage and sing? How can a child, when fears annoy, But droop his tender wing, And forget his youthful spring?

In what distant deeps or skies Burnt the fire of thine eyes? On what wings dare he aspire? What the hand dare seize the fire? And what shoulder and what art Could twist the sinews of thy heart? And, when thy heart began to beat, What dread hand and what dread feet? What the hammer? what the chain? In what furnace was thy brain? What the anvil? what dread grasp Dare its deadly terrors clasp?