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67 Observations on fear
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Published Thursday, October 16, 2014 @ 7:11 PM EDT
Oct 16 2014

I don't want to see the Republican Party ride to political victory on the Four Horsemen of Calumny- Fear, Ignorance, Bigotry, and Smear.
-Margaret Chase Smith

A fool without fear is sometimes wiser than an angel with fear.
-Nancy Astor

A man that flies from his fear may find that he has only taken a short cut to meet it.
-J.R.R. Tolkien

Action is a great restorer and builder of confidence. Inaction is not only the result, but the cause, of fear.
-Norman Vincent Peale

Almost all propaganda is designed to create fear. Heads of governments and their officials know that a frightened people is easier to govern, will forfeit rights it would otherwise defend, is less likely to demand a better life, and will agree to millions and millions being spend on 'Defense.'
-John Boynton Priestley

Americans are apocalyptic by nature. The reason why is that we've always had so much, so we live in deadly fear that people are going to take it away from us.
-Stephen King

An utterly fearless man is a far more dangerous comrade than a coward.
-Herman Melville

Authority has every reason to fear the skeptic, for authority can rarely survive in the face of doubt.
-Robert Lindner

Behind every bad law, a deep fear.
-Sarah Vowell

Being terrified but going ahead and doing what must be done- that's courage. The one who feels no fear is a fool, and the one who lets fear rule him is a coward.
-Piers Anthony

Between the black of yesterday and the white of tomorrow is the great gray of today, filled with nostalgia and fear of the future.
-Roger Zelazny

Beware; for I am fearless, and therefore powerful.
-Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

But I have noticed this about ambitious men, or men in power, that they fear even the slightest and least likely threat to it.
-Mary Stewart

But this principle of race is unfortunately one of the reasons why I fear war may always exist; because race implies difference, difference implies superiority, and superiority leads to predominance.
-Benjamin Disraeli

But what is all this fear of and opposition to oblivion? What is the matter with the soft darkness, the dreamless sleep?
-James Thurber

By writing my fears down on paper I will see that not only am I afraid of everything but that I also have really bad penmanship.
-Dan Goodman

Congress acknowledged that society's accumulated myths and fears about disability and disease are as handicapping as are the physical limitations that flow from actual impairment.
-William J. Brennan, Jr.

Death will come in any case, and there is a long afterwards if the priests are right and nothing to fear if they are wrong.
-Graham Greene

Disturbances in society are never more fearful than when those who are stirring up the trouble can use the pretext of religion to mask their true designs.
-Denis Diderot

Do not look back in anger, or forward in fear, but around in awareness.
-James Thurber

Don't fear your mortality, because it is this very mortality that gives meaning and depth and poignancy to all the days that will be granted to you.
-Paul Tsongas

Every fear hides a wish.
-David Mamet

Every man, through fear, mugs his aspirations a dozen times a day.
-Brendan Behan

Every thinking person fears nuclear war and every technological nation plans for it. Everyone knows it's madness, and every country has an excuse.
-Carl Sagan

Everyone believes very easily whatever they fear or desire.
-Jean de la Fontaine

Everything we do in life is based on fear, especially love.
-Mel Brooks

Everything worth doing starts with fear.
-Art Garfunkel

Faster, faster, faster, until the thrill of speed overcomes the fear of death.
-Hunter S. Thompson

Fear best lends itself to the creation of Nature-defying illusions.
-H.P. Lovecraft

Fear cannot be without hope nor hope without fear.
-Benedict Spinoza

Fear doesn't exist anywhere except in the mind.
-Dale Carnegie

Fear feeds the imagination.
-Joseph Joubert

Fear is always with us, but we just don't have time for it.
-Hillary Rodham Clinton

Fear is like the microwavable version of respect. It doesn't taste as good, but it's much easier to make.
-Jack Collins

Fear is sharp-sighted, and can see things underground, and much more in the skies.
-Miguel de Cervantes

Fear is something to be moved through, not something to be turned from.
-Peter McWilliams

Fear is strange soil. Mainly it grows obedience like corn, which grows in rows and makes weeding easy. But sometimes it grows the potatoes of defiance, which flourish underground.
-Terry Pratchett

Fear is the antidote to boredom: the remedy must be stronger than the disease.
-Emile Cioran

Fear is the brother of hate.
-Larry Niven

Fear is the enemy of logic. There is no more debilitating, crushing, self-defeating, sickening thing in the world- to an individual or to a nation.
-Frank Sinatra

Fear is the foundation of most governments; but it is so sordid and brutal a passion, and renders men in whose breasts it predominates so stupid and miserable, that Americans will not be likely to approve of any political institution which is founded on it.
-John Adams

Fear is the main source of superstition, and one of the main sources of cruelty. To conquer fear is the beginning of wisdom.
-Bertrand Russell

Fear is when you're stuck in traffic and you realize you've had two cups of coffee and a bran muffin.
-John Mendoza

Fear makes us feel our humanity.
-Benjamin Disraeli

Fear not for the future, weep not for the past.
-Percy Bysshe Shelley

Fear of death increases in exact proportion to increase in wealth.
-Ernest Hemingway

Fears are educated into us and can, if we wish, be educated out.
-Karl Menninger

Feel the fear and do it anyway.
-Susan Jeffers

Follow the path of the unsafe, independent thinker. Expose your ideas to the danger of controversy. Speak your mind and fear less the label of 'crackpot' than the stigma of conformity.
-Thomas J. Watson

From New England's Puritans we inherited the idea that America is blessed and ordained by God above all nations, but lost the fear of wrath and retribution.
-Sarah Vowell

God uses lust to impel men to marriage, ambition to office, avarice to earning, and fear to faith.
-Martin Luther

Government is not reason; it is not eloquence; it is force! Like fire, it is a dangerous servant and a fearful master.
-George Washington

Government, which does not and did not grant us our rights, must not now seek to deny them by using fear as its justification.
-Malcolm Wallop

Hate is the consequence of fear; we fear something before we hate; a child who fears noises becomes the man who hates them.
-Cyril Connolly

He who strikes terror into others is himself in continual fear.
-Claudian

History is full of people who out of fear or ignorance or the lust for power have destroyed treasures of immeasurable value which truly belong to all of us. We must not let it happen again.
-Carl Sagan

I am a member of a party of one, and I live in an age of fear.
-E.B. White

I can dodge folly without backing into fear.
-Rex Stout

I cannot help fearing that men may reach a point where they look on every new theory as a danger, every innovation as a toilsome trouble, every social advance as a first step toward revolution, and that they may absolutely refuse to move at all.
-Alexis de Tocqueville

I do not fear an army of lions, if they are led by a lamb. I do fear an army of sheep, if they are led by a lion.
-Alexander the Great

I fear that the consumer who buys a Confederate flag coffee cup, which she will then put on her American flag place mat, is the sort of sophisticated thinker who is open-minded enough that she is capable of hating blacks and Arabs at the same time.
-Sarah Vowell

I have this fear that one day there's going to be a fire in the Senate and there are only going to be 57 Senators there and they'll all die because they won't have the 60 votes to allow themselves to leave the building.
-Barney Frank

I learned that courage was not the absence of fear, but the triumph over it. The brave man is not he who does not feel afraid, but he who conquers that fear.
-Nelson Mandela

I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain.
-Frank Herbert

I understand that fear is my friend, but not always. Never turn your back on fear. It should always be in front of you, like a thing that might have to be killed.
-Hunter S. Thompson

If you reject the food, ignore the customs, fear the religion and avoid the people, you should just stay home.
-James A. Michener

If your heart is full of fear, you won't seek truth; you'll seek security.
-William Sloane Coffin, Jr.

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(October 17 is the birthday of Arthur Miller and Jimmy Breslin.)


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