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Quotes About Fear

It's better to teach people than to scare them, Lauren. If you scare them and nothing happens, they lose their fear, and you lose some of your authority with them. It's harder to scare them a second time, harder to teach them, harder to win back their trust. Best to begin by teaching.
~ Octavia E. Butler
These things frighten people. It's best not to talk about them." "But, Dad, that's like … like ignoring a fire in the living room because we're all in the kitchen, and, besides, house fires are too scary to talk about.
~ Octavia E. Butler
It's better to teach people than to scare them, Lauren. If you scare them and nothing happens, they lose their fear, and you lose some of your authority with them. It's harder to scare them a second time, harder to teach them, harder to win back their trust. Best to begin by teaching.
~ Octavia E. Butler
She learned quickly that it was not good to be too different. Great differences caused envy, suspicion, fear, charges of witchcraft.
~ Octavia E. Butler
Such leaders knew that they could depend on fear, suspicion, hatred, need, and greed to arouse patriotic support for war.
~ Octavia E. Butler
There must be good marriages somewhere, but to me, marriage had the feel of people tolerating each other, enduring each other because they were afraid to be alone or because each was a habit that the other couldn't quite break.
~ Octavia E. Butler
It scares me how many things I've got to learn. How will I learn them?
~ Octavia E. Butler
Choose your leaders with wisdom and forethought. To be led by a coward is to be controlled by all that the coward fears.
~ Octavia E. Butler
Human beings fear difference," Lilith had told him once. "Oankali crave difference. Humans persecute their different ones, yet they need them to give themselves definition and status. Oankali seek difference and collect it. They need it to keep themselves from stagnation and overspecialization
~ Octavia E. Butler
These things frighten people. It's best not to talk about them." "But, Dad, that's like … like ignoring a fire in the living room because we're all in the kitchen, and, besides, house fires are too scary to talk about." "Don't warn Joanne or any of your other friends
~ Octavia E. Butler
Habits were difficult to break. The habit of living, the habit of fear … even the habit of love.
~ Octavia E. Butler
God is Change, And in the end, God prevails. But meanwhile… Kindness eases Change. Love quiets fear. And a sweet and powerful Positive obsession Blunts pain, Diverts rage, And engages each of us In the greatest, The most intense Of our chosen struggles
~ Octavia E. Butler
Do you think our world is coming to an end?" Dad asked, and with no warning at all, I almost started crying. I had all I could do to hold it back. What I thought was, "No, I think your world is coming to an end, and maybe you with it.
~ Octavia E. Butler
Remembering wasn't safe. You could lose your mind, remembering.
~ Octavia E. Butler
We dull your natural fear of strangers and of difference. We keep you from injuring or killing us or yourselves.
~ Octavia E. Butler
A leader Most will follow, Or a tyrant Most fear.
~ Octavia E. Butler
The police," my father told them, "may be able to avenge you, but they can't protect you.
~ Octavia E. Butler
Your teachers Are all around you. All that you perceive, All that you experience, All that is given to you or taken from you, All that you love or hate, need or fear Will teach you— If you will learn. God is your first and your last teacher. God is your harshest teacher: subtle, demanding. Learn or die.
~ Octavia E. Butler
They're both afraid. They look at their children--Alan has four kids, too--and they're afraid and ashamed of their fear, ashamed of their powerlessness. And they're tired. There are millions of people like them--people who are frightened and just plain tired of all the chaos. They want someone to do something. Fix things. Now!
~ Octavia E. Butler
But those dedicated to other religions, and those who are not religious at all sneer at Jarret and call him a hypocrite. They sneer, they hate him, but they also fear him. They see him for the tyrant that he is. And the thugs see him as one of them. They envy him. He is the bigger, the more successful thief, murderer, and slaver.
~ Octavia E. Butler
Then … Rufus's fear of death calls me to him, and my own fear of death sends me home.
~ Octavia E. Butler
On the street, people are expected to fear and hate everyone but their own kind, but with all of us armed and watchful, people stared, but they let us alone. Our neighborhood is too small for us to play those kinds of games.
~ Octavia E. Butler
one way to make people afraid of you is to have a crazy side—a side of yourself or your organization that's dangerous and unpredictable—willing to do any damned thing.
~ Octavia E. Butler
Sharing is a weakness, a shameful secret. A person who knows what I am can hurt me, betray me, disable me with little effort.
~ Octavia E. Butler