Quotes About Fear

Anyone who has worked in a hierarchical organisation must have noticed that bravery is rarely on display when a superior enters the room.

In Britain today friends of mine live like dissidents in a dictatorship. They meet in secret. They vet new arrivals to ensure they are not spies. They are ex-Muslims living in a supposedly free country who fear their enemies will damn them as apostates and kill them. How extraordinary that they must hide their true beliefs from all but intimate friends for fear of the consequences. And how shameful that they have no anti-fascist Left worthy of the name to defend them.

Beyond the worries about direct threats lay the fear that religious groups, bureaucrats, left-wing politicians and newspapers would accuse critics of insensitivity or racism, and that racist groups or websites would confirm the accusation by repeating their critiques.

Compared to the millions killed in wars and genocides in the years that followed the fatwa, the pain the enemies of the novel inflicted was small. But it was sufficient. The threats against Rushdie produced a fear that suffused Western culture and paralysed its best instincts.

After Rushdie, the fear of a knife in the ribs or a bomb at the office meant that liberals who stuck by liberalism were in the wrong. They knew the consequences now. If someone killed them, they were guilty of provoking their own murder. In the eyes of most politicians and most of the journalists, broadcasters, academics and intellectuals whose livelihoods depended on the freedom to debate and criticise, the targets of religious violence had no one to blame but themselves.

In the democracies, the fear spread by religious violence is closer to the fear of excessive punishments for inconsequential slights that modern dictatorships generate.

Legitimate criticism of terrorist murder and the oppression of women was turned into something it was not, in this instance a prejudiced hatred of all Muslims. The threat of violent punishment hung in the air. Critics learned that the safe course was to say nothing, because they did not know where fanatics would draw their lines.

Writers write badly when they have something to hide.

When is a horror one horror too many? When have you had enough?

Perhaps it is our fear, that in the silence between stories, in the moment of falling, the fear that we will never find the one story which will save us, and so we lunge for another, and we feel safe again, if only for as long as we are telling it.

What you fear your whole life comes to pass. You end up living toward it, you spend your life running from it but your foot is nailed to the sidewalk. You circle around it until you wear yourself own.

By the time I'm nine I know the world is a dangerous place.  I've heard whispers about razorblades in apples, about Charlie Manson and his family.  But no one is offering any clear information.

I've committed to nothing...and that's just suicide...by tiny, tiny increments.

Radio football is football reduced to its lowest common denominator. Shorn of the game's aesthetic pleasures, or the comfort of a crowd that feels the same way as you, or the sense of security that you get when you see that your defenders and goalkeeper are more or less where they should be, all that is left is naked fear.

I've committed to nothing...and that's just suicide...by tiny, tiny increments.

As a result, Brian's competitive side took a particularly vicious hammering and the whole experience seemed to have left him more paranoid than ever before.

Show me a motherfucker who's relaxed and I'll show you a motherfucker that's afraid of success.

You scrape away your face and step into the dark...

After all, fear is the passionate enthusiasm for the same.

I got this idea about being afraid to let go of something and being afraid of sinking into a state of almost anesthesia, where you have to trust other people. Just the paranoia of it all. And it seemed to suit the frenetic track. So I just wrote it out and, you know, said it.

We fear the monster's capacity for evil because we recognize it in human hearts.

Thought I found a snake in my garage. Turns out it was a bunch of spiders in a snake costume going to a party. Thank god. Hate real snakes.

When the danger came from within, the risk was always highest.

I write how sorry I am for not contacting her sooner, but I was afraid, a coward, and I am trying to be braver now. I try and try and try every day, all day long.