As a specialist in learning disabilities, I have found that the most dangerous disability is […] fear. Fear shifts us into survival mode and thus prevents fluid learning and nuanced understanding. Certainly, if a real tiger is about to attack you, survival is the mode you want to be in. But if you’re trying to deal intelligently with a subtle task, survival mode is highly unpleasant and counterproductive.
And for this you must have quiet and solitude. But society does not allow you to have them. You must be with people, outwardly active at all costs. If you are alone you are considered antisocial or peculiar, or you are afraid of your own loneliness.
Book: The Collected Works of J. Krishnamurti, Volume III, page 216
A hug can turn your day around. It’s like an emotional Heimlich when someone puts their arms around you, and they give you a squeeze, and all your fear and anxiety comes shooting out your mouth in a big wet wad and you can breathe again.
TV: Pushing Daisies
“You know, there’s nothing to fear, but fear itself.” Yeah, that’s called recursion and that would lead to infinite fear, so thank you.
Don’t let the fear of the time it will take to accomplish something stand in the way of your doing it. The time will pass anyway; we might just as well put that passing time to the best possible use.
…the truth is that I already know as much about my fate as I need to know. The day will come when I will die. So the only matter of consequence before me is what I will do with my allotted time. I can remain on shore, paralyzed with fear, or I can raise my sails and dip and soar in the breeze.
Book: First You Have to Row a Little Boat : Reflections on Life & Living
Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness, that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented and fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small doesn’t serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so other people won’t feel insecure around you. We are born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It’s not just in some of us; it’s in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we un-consciously give other people permission to do the same. As we feel liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.
Speech: 1994 Inaugural Speech, written by Marianne Williamson
I can’t understand why people are frightened of new ideas. I’m frightened of the old ones.
It’s not so much that we’re afraid of change or so in love with the old ways, but it’s that place in between that we fear… It’s like being between trapezes. It’s Linus when his blanket is in the dryer. There’s nothing to hold on to.
Though my soul may set in darkness, it will rise in perfect light;
I have loved the stars too fondly to be fearful of the night.
I have loved the stars too fondly to be fearful of the night.
Poem: The Old Astronomer to His Pupil
Sometimes we don’t do things we want to do so that others will not know we want to do them.
Movie: The Village
When kindness has left people, even for a few moments, we become afraid of them, as if their reason had left them.
The really odd thing about America is the kind of Puritan tendency that still exists for people to jump on one side of the fence or the other when it comes not only to social issues but little things as well, such as proclamation of what kind of music one is ‘into’.
The memory management on the PowerPC can be used to frighten small children.
I must not ph34r. Ph34r is t3h brain-fragger. Ph34r is teh little-death that brings total 0wn4ge.
I was trying to explain to someone recently the difference between the intoxication of infatuation, and the happiness of a long-time love. It’s hard to explain, really. Infatuation has energy and excitement. It’s a high. It’s like the first drop on the roller coaster—exhilarating and terrifying all at once. Long-term love is sweet and slow and solid and secure. It’s knowing that someone knows you—knows all about you, knows what you like, knows how you think. Infatuation takes your breath away; love takes your fears away.
The trouble with wanting something is the fear of losing it.
Video game: Max Payne 2: The Fall of Max Payne
Death is inevitable. Our fear of it makes us play safe, blocks out emotion.
it’s a losing game, without passion you are already dead. It’s all a matter of perspective, tied to time and place, love and friendship, life and death.
it’s a losing game, without passion you are already dead. It’s all a matter of perspective, tied to time and place, love and friendship, life and death.
Video game: Max Payne 2: The Fall of Max Payne
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 allow my fear to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone I will turn my inner eye to see its path. And where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain.
Book: Dune novels, 1965
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 have lived through this horror. I can take the next thing that comes along.” … You must do the thing you think you cannot do.
If we listened to our intellect, we’d never have a love affair. We’d never have a friendship. We’d never go into business, because we’d be cynical. Well, that’s nonsense. You’ve got to jump off cliffs all the time and build your wings on the way down.
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.
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.
The free man is he who does not fear to go to the end of his thought.