Quotes About Fear

One of the most recurrent themes in science fiction is its examination of humanity's relation to its own material constructions, sometimes to celebrate progress, sometimes in a more negative spirit of what Isaac Asimov has repeatedly described as technophobia, through fictions articulating fears of human displacement.

I fear the good because it will go away … I fear the bad because I'm too weak to withstand it.

Along with the joy of parenthood, with every child comes a piercing vulnerability. It is at once sublime and terrifying

trying to comprehend exactly what it is that I'm feeling. Parents of addicts learn to temper our hope even as we never completely lose hope. However, we are terrified of optimism, fearful that it will be punished. It is safer to shut down. But I am open again, and as a consequence I feel the pain and joy of the past and worry about and hope for the future. I know what it is I feel. Everything.

But you know, I don't think I will be so scared to die. I think it's like today: the end of a vacation when you are ready to go home.

I'm sick of not having the courage to be an absolute nobody.

But you know, I don't think I would be so scared to die. I think it's like today—the end of a vacation, when you are ready to go home.

Nic is absent, only his shell remains. I have been afraid—terrified—to lose Nic, but I have lost him. In the past, I tried to imagine the unimaginable and I tried to imagine bearing the unbearable. I imagined losing Nic by overdose or accident, but now I comprehend that I have already lost him. Today, at least, he is lost.

I have a daughter who reminds me too much of what I used to be, full of love and joy, kissing every person she meets because everyone is good and will do her no harm. And that terrifies me to the point to where I can barely function. —KURT COBAIN, in his suicide note

I well up with tears for it. For all of it. On the one hand: the uncertain future. The possibility of another hemorrhage. The chance that my children will be killed in a car accident. The chance that Nic will relapse. A million other catastrophes. On the other: compassion and love. For my parents and family. For my friends. For Karen. For my children. I may feel more fragile and vulnerable, but I experience more consciousness.

If you are not willing to look stupid, nothing great is ever going to happen to you.

Giving in to terrorism will yield more terrorism, because it works.

He had not been able to see it in himself, but looking at Hungerford, he was able at least to speculate on the possibility that fear, raw, physical fear, had a kind of gift to give, too. Who but the terrified has heard his own heart pounding, listened to his own stertorous breathing, wishing that heart and lungs would be more quiet, and yet learning in their pulsation the lessons of rhythm and metrics? (Anagrams, p. 80)

the third kind of thing we don't think about—the things the thinking of which just plain scares us. The things the thinking of which would change everything.

Paranoia—it seemed—could metastasize even easier than cancer.

In life, I regret the things I didn't do far more than the missteps I made along the way.

Protection of intellectual property is clearly not the only, or perhaps even the main reason for Monsanto's strategy in threatening to bring thousands of farmers into court. The purpose is to generate fear, and hence, compliance, in order to force the purchase of more GM seed. — E. ANN CLARK, PLANT AGRICULTURIST

I now live in a ghost world, and not everyone who was once close to me wants to venture into this shadowy place to hang out with me. Some people are clearly spooked. I remind them of their own frailty and mortality. I get it; it's understandable. But it confirms my spectral status to me.

There was always a dark shadow around the San Francisco rainbow. From the very beginning, violence, desperation, and fear stalked the streets of the Haight, side by side with the euphoria. "When I hear about the Summer of Love, I say, 'Where was that?'" remarked Lewis. "It was there, but always lurking below was this seething hatred and fear from Vietnam and the Cold War. There was always this feeling that we were going to die.

The city was still known for its enchantments, but it would soon become notorious for its terrors.

Fear is a cruel master. It is not, however, unconquerable.

It was clear that being mentally prepared to die was not quite the same as staring death in the face.

We are, for better or worse, the body of our republic. And we need to listen to it, to hear - beyond the pain and anger and fear, beyond the decrees and policies and the eddying of public sentiments and resentments, beyond the bombast and the rhetoric - the sound (faint at times, stronger at others) of a heartbeat going on.

In case of snow Drifting toward winter, Don't try to stay awake through the night, afraid of freezing-- The bottom of your mind knows all about zero; It will turn you over And shake you till you waken. -- David Wagoner