Quotes About Fear

dreaming about being captured by

John Adams said it: fear is the foundation of government. And I'll add to that: once the citizens lose that fear, a government cannot enforce its laws. If you doubt that, look at what's happening in this country today." Matt

On hearing this remark, my heart jumped clear up in my throat.. I thought surely it was going to hop right out on the depot platform. I looked up and tried to tell him who I was, but something went wrong. When the words finally came out they sounded like the squeaky old pulley on our well when Mama drew up a bucket of water.

Il terrorismo fondamentalista, di cui ormai abbiamo esperienza da vari anni, cerca di trascinarci nel suo baratro medievale. Aver permesso loro di trascinarci laggiù e di fronteggiarci sul LORO terreno, significa aver già perso la battaglia. Hanno vinto semplicemente facendoci accettare la loro regola: la PAURA. L'inclinazione ad aver paura implica la disposizione a trasmetterla agli altri.

The reserve of modern assertions is sometimes pushed to extremes in which the fear of being contradicted leads the writer to strip himself of almost all sense and meaning.

You cannot tell from appearances how things will go. Sometimes imagination makes things out far worse than they are; yet without imagination not much can be done. Those people who are imaginative see many more dangers than perhaps exist; certainly many more than will happen; but then they must also pray to be given that extra courage to carry this far-reaching imagination.

They said it was only a ground shark; but I was not wholly reassured. It is as bad to be eaten by a ground shark as by any other.

Nothing in life is so exhilarating as to be shot at without result

You must not face it. Because it is a – certainty it has to be forgotten. One cannot – must not – fear a certainty. All we know is this moment, and this moment, Ross, we are alive! We are. We are. The past is over, gone. What is to come doesn't exist yet. That's tomorrow! It's only now that can ever be, at any one moment. And at this moment, now, we are alive – and together. We can't ask more. There isn't any more to ask.

Of course there has to be an end,' she said. 'Of course. For that is what everyone has faced since the world began. And that is – what do you call it? – intolerable. It's intolerable! So you must not think of it. You must not face it. Because it is a – certainty it has to be forgotten. One cannot – must not – fear a certainty.

The only security was death. So long as one wanted to go on living one had to accept the risks.

You see people every day who take a chance and damn the consequences. Many of them suffer for it, but I do not think they come off worst. The people who come off worst are the people who draw back at the last moment and spend the rest of their lives regretting it.

But fear and fascination are yokefellows, oxen out of step but pulling in the same direction

like a pall. One wonders how Wesley dared to go there.

But was any future, anyone's future, unfraught by hazards of some sort? The only security was death. So long as one wanted to go on living on had to accept the risks. Well, she accepted them...

One ought never to turn one's back on a threatened danger and try to run away from it. If you do that, you will double the danger. But if you meet it promptly and without flinching, you will reduce the danger by half.

You see these dictators on their pedestals, surrounded by the bayonets of their soldiers and the truncheons of their police ... yet in their hearts there is unspoken fear. They are afraid of words and thoughts: words spoken abroad, thoughts stirring at home -- all the more powerful because forbidden -- terrify them. A little mouse of thought appears in the room, and even the mightiest potentates are thrown into panic.

The ugly truth is revealed that fear is the foundation of obedience.

While time is young, while prospects are favourable, while prizes inestimable may be gained, caution, hesitancy, half measures rule and fetter action.

they meant to test the ground; and in so doing they were prepared to go to the very edge of the precipice. It is so easy to lose one's balance there: a touch, a gust of wind, a momentary dizziness, and all is precipitated into the abyss.

Nothing…is so exhilarating as to be shot at without result.

Enmities which are unspoken and hidden are more to be feared than those which are outspoken and open.' —CICERO.

I feared the wish was father to the thought.

It is not every councillor who, like the Bastard in 'King John,' will say to his sovereign: 'But if you be afeared to hear the worst, Then let the worst unheard fall on your head.