Fear

I don’t believe in an afterlife, so I don’t have to spend my whole life fearing hell, or fearing heaven even more. For whatever the tortures of hell, I think the boredom of heaven would be even worse. ~~ Isaac Asimov

True success is overcoming the fear of being unsuccessful. ~~ Paul Sweeney

Power does not corrupt. Fear corrupts, perhaps the fear of a loss of power. ~~ John Steinbeck

Nothing in life is to be feared. It is only to be understood. ~~ Marie Curie

If you fear making anyone mad, then you ultimately probe for the lowest common denominator of human achievement. ~~ Jimmy Carter

There are two days in the week about which and upon which I never worry. Two carefree days, kept sacredly free from fear and apprehension. One of these days is Yesterday … And the other day I do not worry about is Tomorrow. ~~ Robert Jones Burdette

One will rarely err if extreme actions be ascribed to vanity, ordinary actions to habit, and mean actions to fear. ~~ Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche

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

You gain strength, courage, and confidence by every experience in which you really stop to look fear in the face. You are able to say to yourself, I lived through this horror. I can take the next thing that comes along. ~~ Anna Eleanor Roosevelt

Commit yourself to a dream … Nobody who tries to do something great but fails is a total failure. Why? Because he can always rest assured that he succeeded in life's most important battle -- he defeated the fear of trying. ~~ Robert H. Schuller

The wise man in the storm prays God, not for safety from danger, but for deliverance from fear. ~~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

Fear the goat from the front, the horse from the rear, and the man from all sides. ~~ Russian proverb

My life is spent in a perpetual alternation between two rhythms, the rhythm of attracting people for fear I may be lonely, and the rhythm of trying to get rid of them because I know that I am bored. ~~ C. E. M. Joad

I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.

I feel my fate in what I cannot fear.

I learn by going where I have to go. ~~ Theodore Roethke

Seek not happiness too greedily, and be not fearful of unhappiness. ~~ Lao-Tzu

The trouble with most people is that they think with their hopes or fears or wishes rather than with their minds. ~~ Will Durant

Perhaps the best cure for the fear of death is to reflect that life has a beginning as well as an end. There was time when we were not; this gives us no concern -- why then should it trouble us that a time will come when we shall cease to be? ~~ William Hazlitt

The fear of death is to be more dreaded than death. ~~ Publilius Syrus

He who fears he will suffer, already suffers because of his fear. ~~ Michel de Montaigne

The greatest mistake you can make in life is to be continually fearing you will make one. ~~ Elbert Hubbard

There is nothing that fear or hope does not make men believe. ~~ Vauvenargues

It's the most unhappy people who most fear change. ~~ Mignon McLaughlin

There's nothing I'm afraid of like scared people. ~~ Robert Frost

He who fears something gives it power over him. ~~ Moorish proverb

We promise according to our hopes, and perform according to our fears. ~~ Francois de La Rochefoucauld

Many fears are born of fatigue and loneliness. ~~ Max Ehrmann

Anxiety is a thin stream of fear trickling through the mind. If encouraged, it cuts a channel into which all other thoughts are drained. ~~ Arthur Somers Roche

There are very few monsters who warrant the fear we have of them. ~~ Andre Gide

Perhaps the most important thing we can undertake toward the reduction of fear is to make it easier for people to accept themselves; to like themselves. ~~ Bonaro Overstreet

Security is mostly superstition. It does not exist in nature … Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. The fearful are caught as often as the bold. ~~ Helen Keller

Question with boldness even the existence of God; because, if there be one, he must more approve of the homage of reason, than that of blindfolded fear. ~~ Thomas Jefferson

The people to fear are not those who disagree with you, but those who disagree with you and are too cowardly to let you know. ~~ Joe Moore

Four hostile newspapers are more to be feared than a thousand bayonets. ~~ Napolean I

I need not fear my enemies because the most they can do is attack me. I need not fear my friends because the most they can do is betray me. But I have much to fear from people who are indifferent. ~~ Russian proverb

He who has been bitten by a snake fears a piece of string. ~~ Persian proverb

Hatred of dishonesty generally arises from fear of being deceived. ~~ Marquis de Vauvenargues

When even one American -- who has done nothing wrong -- is forced by fear to shut his mind and close his mouth -- then all Americans are in peril. ~~ Harry S Truman

Curiosity will conquer fear even more than bravery will. ~~ James Stephens

Anger is a symptom, a way of cloaking and expressing feelings too awful to experience directly -- hurt, bitterness, grief and, most of all, fear. ~~ Joan Rivers

What a fearful object a long-neglected duty gets to be! ~~ Chauncey Wright

If you're never scared or embarrassed or hurt, it means you never take any chances. ~~ Julia Sorel

Perhaps the angels who fear to tread where fools rush in used to be fools who rushed in. ~~ Franklin P. Jones

The moment we begin to fear the opinions of others and hesitate to tell the truth that is in us, and from motives of policy are silent when we should speak, the divine floods of light and life no longer flow into our souls. ~~ Elizabeth Cady Stanton

A book is the only place in which you can examine a fragile thought without breaking it, or explore an explosive idea without fear it will go off in your face… one of the few havens remaining where a man's mind can get both provocation and privacy. ~~ Edward P. Morgan

Time is

Too slow for those who wait,

Too swift for those who fear,

Too long for those who grieve,

Too short for those who rejoice,

But for those who love

Time is not. ~~ Henry Van Dyke

The truth that many people never understand, until it is too late, is that the more you try to avoid suffering the more you suffer because smaller and more insignificant things begin to torture you in proportion to your fear of being hurt. ~~ Thomas Merton

Virtue is more to be feared than vice, because its excesses are not subject to the regulation of conscience. ~~ Albert J. Nock Have no fear of natural science--it brings us nearer to God. ~~ Albert Schweitzer

There are many who dare not kill themselves for fear of what the neighbors will say. ~~ Cyril Connolly

To defend one's self against fear is simply to ensure that one will, one day, be conquered by it; fears must be faced. ~~ James Baldwin

When you don't have any money, the problem is food.  When you have money, it's sex.  When you have both, it's health. If everything is simply jake, then you're frightened of death. ~~ J. P. Donleavy

There is only one universal passion: fear. ~~ George Bernard Shaw

If a man harbors any sort of fear, it ... makes him landlord to a ghost. ~~ Lloyd Douglas

To hate and to fear is to be psychologically ill ... it is, in fact, the consuming illness of our time. ~~ H. A. Overstreet

The fear of life is the favorite disease of the twentieth century. ~~ William Lyons Phelps

It is not death that a man should fear, but he should fear never beginning to live. ~~ Marcus Aurelius

Who is more foolish, the child afraid of the dark or the man afraid of the light? ~~ Maurice Freehill

A good scare is worth more to a man than good advice. ~~ Ed Howe

I will show you fear in a handful of dust. ~~ T. S. Eliot

He has no hope who never had a fear. ~~ William Cowper

Humans always have fear of an unknown situation -- this is normal. The important thing is what we do about it. If fear is permitted to become a paralyzing thing that interferes with proper action, then it is harmful. The best antidote to fear is to know all we can about a situation. ~~ John H. Glenn, Jr.

Let the fear of danger be a spur to prevent it; he that fears not, gives advantage to the danger. ~~ Francis Quarles

The first and great commandment is: Don't let them scare you. ~~ Elmer Davis

There are moments when everything goes well; don't be frightened, it won't last. ~~ Jules Renard

An optimist thinks this is the best of all worlds.  A pessimist fears the same may be true. ~~ Doug Larson

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

Fear not, provided you fear; but if you fear not, then fear. ~~ Blaise Pascal

The question is not whether you're frightened or not, but whether you or the fear is in control. If you say, "I won't be frightened," and then you experience fear, most likely you'll succumb to it, because you're paying attention to it. The correct thing to tell yourself is, "If I do get frightened, I will stay in command." ~~ Dr. Herbert Fensterheim

We will not be driven by fear into an age of unreason if we ... remember that we are not descended from fearful men, not from men who feared to write, to speak, to associate and to defend causes which were, for the moment, unpopular. ~~ Edward R. Murrow

Fear is static that prevents me from hearing my intuition. ~~ Hugh Prather

I, a stranger and afraid, in a world I never made. ~~ A. E. Housman

Considering how dangerous everything is, nothing is really very frightening. ~~ Gertrude Stein