Fear Quotes

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A degree of culture, and assuredly a very high one, is attained when man rises above superstitions and religious notions and fears, and, for instance, no longer believes in guardian angels or in original sin, and has also ceased to talk of the salvation of his soul.

Friedrich Nietzsche

Our alliance is born, not of fear, but of hope. It is an alliance that advances what we are for, as well as opposes what we are against.

John F. Kennedy

Is it not a strange fate that we should suffer so much fear and doubt for so small a thing? So small a thing! And I have seen it only for an instant in the house of Elrond! Could I not have a sight of it again?" Frodo looked up. His heart went suddenly cold. He caught the strange gleam in Boromir's eyes, yet his face was still kind and friendly. "It is best that it should lie hidden," he answered. "As you wish. I care not." said Boromir.

J. R. R. Tolkien

He shall spurn fate, scorn death, and bear His hopes 'bove wisdom, grace and fear: And you all know, security Is mortals' chiefest enemy.

William Shakespeare

Bursts as a wave that from the clouds impends, And swell'd with tempests on the ship descends; White are the decks with foam; the winds aloud Howl o'er the masts, and sing through every shroud: Pale, trembling, tir'd, the sailors freeze with fears; And instant death on every wave appears.

Tragedy is thus an imitation of an action that is worth serious attention, complete in itself and of some amplitude…by means of pity and fear bringing about the purgation of such emotions.

The art o' th' court,
As hard to leave as keep, whose top to climb
Is certain falling, or so slipp'ry that
The fear's as bad as falling.

William Shakespeare

I am not among those who fear the people. They, and not the rich, are our dependence for continued freedom.

Thomas Jefferson

Fear is in almost all cases a wretched instrument of government, and ought in particular never to be employed against any order of men who have the smallest pretensions to independency.

For night's swift dragons cut the clouds full fast, And yonder shines Aurora's harbinger; At whose approach ghosts wandring here and there Troop home to church-yards.... For fear lest day should look their shames upon, They willfully exile themselves from light, And must for aye consort with black brow'd night.

William Shakespeare

It is a great mistake to suppose that thrift is caused only by fear; it springs from hope as well as from fear; where there is no hope, be sure there will be no thrift.

Winston Churchill

I have not yet learned to live, that I can see, and I fear that I shall not very soon. I find, however, that in the long run things correspond to my original idea,--that they correspond to nothing else so much; and thus a man may really be a true prophet without any great exertion. The day is never so dark, nor the night even, but that the laws at least of light still prevail, and so may make it light in our minds if they are open to the truth.

Henry David Thoreau

Let us all hope that the dark clouds of racial prejudice will soon pass away and the deep fog of misunderstanding will be lifted from our fear-drenched communities, and in some not too distant tomorrow the radiant stars of love and brotherhood will shine over our great nation with all their scintillating beauty.

Martin Luther King, Jr.

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

Surely, in the light of history, it is more intelligent to hope rather than to fear, to try rather than not to try. For one thing we know beyond all doubt: nothing has ever been achieved by the person who says: it can't be done.

Eleanor Roosevelt

You anticipate what I would say, though you cannot know how earnestly I say it, how earnestly I feel it, without knowing my secret heart, and the hopes and fears and anxieties with which it has long been laden. Dear Doctor Manette, I love your daughter fondly, dearly, disinterestedly, devotedly. If ever there were love in the world, I love her.

Charles Dickens

Fear, O Achilles, the wrath of heaven; think on your own father and have compassion upon me, who am the more pitiable

And I've always believed in what Martin Luther King, Jr. called the fierce urgency of now — we should not fear change, we should embrace it.

Suspicion always haunts the guilty mind;
The thief doth fear each bush an officer.

William Shakespeare

He thought with a kind of astonishment of the biological uselessness of pain and fear, the treachery of the human body which always freezes into inertia at exactly the moment when a special effort is needed.

How all the other passions fleet to air,
As doubtful thoughts, and rash-embrac'd despair, And shuddering fear, and green-ey'd jealousy.

William Shakespeare

What fear has once made me will, I am bound still to will when without fear.

Michel de Montaigne

Consider the flea! Incomparably the bravest of all the creatures of God, if ignorance of fear were courage.

Don't shortchange the future, because of fear in the present.

Fortunately I have never learned to take the good advice I give myself nor the counsel of my fears.

Ernest Hemingway