My apprehensions come in crowds;
I dread the rustling of the grass;
The very shadows of the clouds
Have power to shake me as they pass. William Wordsworth, The Affliction of Margaret, 1807
Fear is the true enemy, the only enemy. Sun Tzu
The English, and the Americans following them are paralysed by fear. That is what thwarts and distorts the Anglo-Saxon existence … Nothing could be more lovely and fearless than Chaucer. But already Shakespeare is morbid with fear, fear of consequences. That is the strange phenomenon of the English Renaissance: this mystic terror of the consequences, the consequences of action. D H Lawrence, Phoenix 1936
Men! The only animal in the world to fear! D H Lawrence, Mountain Lion, 1923
Fear of something is at the root of hate for others, and hate within will eventually destroy the hater. George Washington Carver
There is only one thing that makes a dream impossible to achieve: the fear of failure. Paulo Coelho, The Alchemist
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, Dune
Fear of a name increases fear of the thing itself. J K Rowling, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone
Expose yourself to your deepest fear; after that, fear has no power, and the fear of freedom shrinks and vanishes. You are free. Jim Morrison
Men go to far greater lengths to avoid what they fear than to obtain what they desire. Dan Brown, The Da Vinci Code
He who has overcome his fears will truly be free. Aristotle
Fear is pain arising from the anticipation of evil. Aristotle
No tyrant need fear till men begin to feel confident in each other. Aristotle
It’s better to die laughing than to live each moment in fear. Michael Crichton
It’s true, I am afraid of dying. I am afraid of the world moving forward without me, of my absence going unnoticed, or worse, being some natural force propelling life on. Is it selfish? Am I such a bad person for dreaming of a world that ends when I do? I don’t mean the world ending with respect to me, but every set of eyes closing with mine. Jonathan Safran Foer, Everything is Illuminated
When you do what you fear most, then you can do anything. Stephen Richards
I think the big mistake in schools is trying to teach children anything, and by using fear as the basic motivation. Fear of getting failing grades, fear of not staying with your class etc. Interest can produce learning on a scale compared to fear as a nuclear explosion to a firecracker. Stanley Kubrick
Most hatred is based on fear, one way or another. Yeah. I wrapped myself in anger, with a dash of hate, and at the bottom of it all was an icy center of pure terror. Laurell K Hamilton, Guilty Pleasures
Is it useful to feel fear, because it prepares you for nasty events, or is it useless, because nasty events will occur whether you are frightened or not? Lemony Snicket
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, Unpopular Essays
Neither a man nor a crowd nor a nation can be trusted to act humanely or to think sanely under the influence of a great fear. ibid.
Collective fear stimulates herd instinct, and tends to produce ferocity toward those who are not regarded as members of the herd. ibid.
Religion is based, I think, primarily and mainly upon fear. Bertrand Russell, Why I Am Not a Christian, 1927
Child, it’s a very bad thing for a woman to face the worst that can happen to her, because after she’s faced the worst she can’t ever really fear anything again ... Scarlett, always save something to fear – even as you save something to love. Margaret Mitchell, Gone with the Wind
Far better it is to dare mighty things, to win glorious triumphs, even though checkered by failure, than to take rank with those poor spirits who neither enjoy much nor suffer much, because they live in the gray twilight that knows neither victory nor defeat. Theodore Roosevelt, Strenuous Life
The only thing we have to fear is fear itself. Franklin D Roosevelt, 4th March 1933
Fear is a manipulative emotion that can trick us into living a boring life. Donald Miller, A Million Miles in a Thousand Years
Fear isn’t so difficult to understand. After all, weren’t we all frightened as children? Nothing has changed since Little Red Riding Hood faced the big bad wolf. What frightens us today is exactly the same sort of thing that frightened us yesterday. It’s just a different wolf. This fright complex is rooted in every individual. Alfred Hitchcock
Fear is stronger than love, remember that. Fear is stronger than love. All that love I gave didn’t mean nothing when it came to fear. Tupac Shakur
Don’t fear failure. Not failure, but low aim, is the crime. In great attempts it is glorious even to fail. Bruce Lee, Striking Thoughts
The human race is a monotonous affair. Most people spend the greatest part of their time working in order to live, and what little freedom remains so fills them with fear that they seek out any and every means to be rid of it. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, The Sorrows of Young Werther
Fear is a part of life. It’s a warning mechanism. That’s all. It tells you when there’s danger around. Its job is to help you survive. Not cripple you into being unable to do it. Jim Butcher, Dead Beat
Find what you are afraid of, face it, and then you won’t be afraid of it any more. Marilyn Manson
To him who is in fear everything rustles. Sophocles
We must travel in the direction of our fear. John Berryman, 1914-1972
It is better to be feared that loved, if you cannot be both. Niccolo Machiavelli
What Obama and the bankers and generals and the IMF, the CIA, and CNN and BBC fear is ordinary people coming together and acting together. It’s a fear as old as democracy, fear that suddenly people convert their fear to action as they have done so often in history. John Pilger, lecture Socialism Chicago 2009, ‘Power Illusion and America’s Last Taboo’, viz also website
Fear of illness and fear of physical loss of mobility, fear of failure, yes, I’m full of fear. Gilbert Harding, interview BBC 1960
If the world should break and fall on him, its ruins would strike him unafraid. Horace, Odes
So do we discover, in the world, that our worst fears are unfulfilled; yet we must fear, in order that we may feel delight. Peter Ackroyd, English Music
Fear is a disease that eats away at logic and makes man inhuman. Marian Anderson
Fear cannot be without hope nor hope without fear. Baruch Spinoza
They are afraid of the old for their memory. They’re afraid of the young for their innocence. They’re afraid of the graves and the flowers people put on them. They’re afraid of those who aren’t in the Party. They’re afraid of singers, tennis players, Santa Claus, archives, each other. They’re afraid of truth. They’re afraid of freedom. They’re afraid of democracy. They’re afraid of Socialism. So why the hell are we afraid of them? The Plastic People of the Universe, song lyrics of banned pop group and forerunner to Charter 77
There have been those times that I actually confronted Fear. Dr Martin Luther King junior, interview BBC 1961
I always felt a sense of cosmic companionship so that the loneliness and the fear have faded away because of a greater feeling of security because of commitment to a moral idea. ibid.