Quotes about fear

The real cause I consider to be the one which was formerly most kept out of sight. The growth of the power of Athens, and the alarm which this inspired the Lacedaemon, made war inevitable.

Feeling paranoid? Good: illumination is on the other side of absolute terror. And the only terror that is truly absolute is the horror of realising that you can't believe anything you've ever been told. You have to realise fully that you are "a stranger and afraid in a world you never made," like Houseman said.

Fear and superstition always follow the unseen, the unknown, the whispered of.

Fearful people develop their religions as protective devices, ways to manipulate hostile environments, formulas for identifying and defeating their enemies. The more fearful people are, the more enemies they have, the more adversarial language they use.

She was trying to feel philosophical about dying, not managing it, trying not to be frightened, and not managing that, either.

“We have simply been too fearful to go into that place.”

“You? Fearful?” I doubted this.

“Do not mistake my arrogance for courage, my son. It is true that I am renowned for what I can do. But I am afraid of the unknown, as are most men, Gamesmen or pawns alike.”

How does one kill fear, I wonder? How do you shoot a spectre through the heart, slash off its spectral head, take it by its spectral throat?

In short, the magnifying influence of fear began to set at naught the calculations of reason, and to render those who should have remembered their manhood, the slaves of the basest passions.

Listen here, Buddy, the dead don't come back. You never have to worry about the dead hurting you. It's the living you've got to worry about in this world. (Lucy Baker, Russell Baker's mother, to Russell).

Beware:

Ignorance

Protects itself

Ignorance

Promotes suspicion.

Suspicion

Engenders fear.

Fear quails,

Irrational and blind,

Or fear looms,

Defiant and closed.

Blind, closed,

Suspicious, afraid,

Ignorance

Protects itself,

And protected,

Ignorance grows.

“I didn’t want to scare you. We don’t want to scare anyone.”

“No? Well, sometimes it’s a good thing to scare people. Sometimes fear is all that will keep them from doing stupid things.”

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.