fear
Quotations
Quotations on the topic of ‘fear’ from all listed authors (click on the ‘click to view listing’ links to view each quote in full).
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“This man is freed from servile bands, Of hope to rise, or fear to fall Lord of himself, though not of lands, And leaving nothing, yet hath all.” -Lord Byron
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“Fear of a name increases fear of the thing itself.” -J. K. Rowling
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“Fear is, I believe, a most effective tool in destroying the soul of an individual – and the soul of a people.” -Anwar Sadat
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“How very little can be done under the spirit of fear.” -Florence Nightingale
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“Do not look upon this world with fear and loathing. Bravely face whatever the gods offer.” -Morihei Ueshiba
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“Stories can conquer fear, you know. They can make the heart bigger.” -Ben Okri
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“Willpower is the key to success. Successful people strive no matter what they feel by applying their will to overcome apathy, doubt or fear.” -Dan Millman
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“It is not power that corrupts but fear. Fear of losing power corrupts those who wield it and fear of the scourge of power corrupts those who are subject to it.” -Aung San Suu Kyi
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“The thirst for powerful sensations takes the upper hand both over fear and over compassion for the grief of others.” -Anton Chekhov
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“People react to fear, not love they don’t teach that in Sunday School, but it’s true.” -Richard M. Nixon
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“Realists do not fear the results of their study.” -Fyodor Dostoevsky
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“When the will defies fear, when duty throws the gauntlet down to fate, when honor scorns to compromise with death – that is heroism.” -Robert Green Ingersoll
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“As soon as men know that they can kill without fear of punishment or blame, they kill or at least they encourage killers with approving smiles.” -Simone Weil
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“All religions are founded on the fear of the many and the cleverness of the few.” -Stendhal
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“To good and true love fear is forever affixed.” -Francois Rabelais
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“Some men love truth so much that they seem to be in continual fear lest she should catch a cold on overexposure.” -Samuel Butler
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“Men fear death as children fear to go in the dark and as that natural fear in children is increased by tales, so is the other.” -Francis Bacon
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“The thing I fear most is fear.” -Michel de Montaigne
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“Don’t fear failure so much that you refuse to try new things. The saddest summary of a life contains three descriptions: could have, might have, and should have.” -Louis E. Boone
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“While we are focusing on fear, worry, or hate, it is not possible for us to be experiencing happiness, enthusiasm or love.” -Bo Bennett
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“Fear comes from uncertainty. When we are absolutely certain, whether of our worth or worthlessness, we are almost impervious to fear.” -William Congreve
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“The fate of animals is of greater importance to me than the fear of appearing ridiculous it is indissolubly connected with the fate of men.” -Emile Zola
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“The hope and change the Democrats had in mind was nothing more than a retread of the failed and discredited socialist policies that have been the enemy of freedom for centuries all over the world. I fear America is teetering towards tyranny.” -Jim DeMint
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“If I die a violent death, as some fear and a few are plotting, I know that the violence will be in the thought and the action of the assassins, not in my dying.” -Indira Gandhi
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“The voice of the intelligence is drowned out by the roar of fear. It is ignored by the voice of desire. It is contradicted by the voice of shame. It is biased by hate and extinguished by anger. Most of all it is silenced by ignorance.” -Karl A. Menninger
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“I do not fear Satan half so much as I fear those who fear him.” -Saint Teresa of Avila
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“I can’t understand people calling themselves religious and being hateful. If a preacher is preaching hate, to fear God that’s not religion, that’s not helping humanity, that’s organizing an army to defeat somebody.” -Mojo Nixon
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“To have a great man for a friend seems pleasant to those who have never tried it those who have, fear it.” -Horace
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“I’m proof against that word failure. I’ve seen behind it. The only failure a man ought to fear is failure of cleaving to the purpose he sees to be best.” -George Eliot
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“We shall never be able to remove suspicion and fear as potential causes of war until communication is permitted to flow, free and open, across international boundaries.” -Harry S. Truman
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“Our country is now geared to an arms economy bred in an artificially induced psychosis of war hysteria and an incessant propaganda of fear.” -Douglas MacArthur
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“It is not these well-fed long-haired men that I fear, but the pale and the hungry-looking.” -Julius Caesar
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“The fear really hits you. That’s what you feel first. And then it’s the anger and frustration. Part of the problem is how little we understand about the ultimate betrayal of the body when it rebels against itself.” -Charles Bronson
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“Fear not for the future, weep not for the past.” -Percy Bysshe Shelley
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“I don’t fear death because I don’t fear anything I don’t understand. When I start to think about it, I order a massage and it goes away.” -Hedy Lamarr
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“I have no fear of making changes, destroying the image, etc., because the painting has a life of its own.” -Jackson Pollock
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“The way to develop self-confidence is to do the thing you fear and get a record of successful experiences behind you.” -William Jennings Bryan
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“I fear my enthusiasm flags when real work is demanded of me.” -H. P. Lovecraft
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“Seeing that a Pilot steers the ship in which we sail, who will never allow us to perish even in the midst of shipwrecks, there is no reason why our minds should be overwhelmed with fear and overcome with weariness.” -John Calvin
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“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
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“They who have conquered doubt and fear have conquered failure.” -James Allen
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“Follow the path of the unsafe, independent thinker. Expose your ideas to the dangers of controversy. Speak your mind and fear less the label of ‘crackpot’ than the stigma of conformity. And on issues that seem important to you, stand up and be counted at any cost.” -Chauncey Depew
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“Courage consists not in hazarding without fear but being resolutely minded in a just cause.” -Plutarch
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“We fear to know the fearsome and unsavory aspects of ourselves, but we fear even more to know the godlike in ourselves.” -Abraham Maslow
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“As you know from school, it’s when you have not prepared for the test that you have the fear of failing. And if you have prepared, even if you fail, you’ve done your best.” -Alice Walker
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“Fear is not a lasting teacher of duty.” -Marcus Tullius Cicero
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“Let the fear of a danger be a spur to prevent it he that fears not, gives advantage to the danger.” -Benjamin Disraeli
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“Few women, I fear, have had such reason as I have to think the long sad years of youth were worth living for the sake of middle age.” -Dwight D. Eisenhower
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“Power does not corrupt. Fear corrupts… perhaps the fear of a loss of power.” -John Steinbeck
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“It is an open question whether any behavior based on fear of eternal punishment can be regarded as ethical or should be regarded as merely cowardly.” -Margaret Mead
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“Thinking will not overcome fear but action will.” -W. Clement Stone
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“Love can no more continue without a constant motion than fire can and when once you take hope and fear away, you take from it its very life and being.” -Francois de La Rochefoucauld
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“African women in general need to know that it’s OK for them to be the way they are – to see the way they are as a strength, and to be liberated from fear and from silence.” -Wangari Maathai
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“I fear all we have done is to awaken a sleeping giant and fill him with a terrible resolve.” -Isoroku Yamamoto
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“In order to properly understand the big picture, everyone should fear becoming mentally clouded and obsessed with one small section of truth.” -Xun Zi
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“No passion so effectually robs the mind of all its powers of acting and reasoning as fear.” -Edmund Burke
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“Do not fear death so much but rather the inadequate life.” -Bertolt Brecht
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“He whose head is in heaven need not fear to put his feet into the grave.” -Matthew Henry
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“Comedy is defiance. It’s a snort of contempt in the face of fear and anxiety. And it’s the laughter that allows hope to creep back on the inhale.” -Will Durst
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“The constant assertion of belief is an indication of fear.” -Jiddu Krishnamurti
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“There is none made so great, but he may both need the help and service, and stand in fear of the power and unkindness, even of the meanest of mortals.” -Lucius Annaeus Seneca
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“Fear? If I have gained anything by damning myself, it is that I no longer have anything to fear.” -Jean-Paul Sartre
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“You feel sometimes when you hear analysts and knowledgeable people talking about Iran that they fear so much about the survival of the regime, because deep down it’s not a legitimate regime, it doesn’t represent the will of the people, it’s kind of morphed into kind of a military theocracy.” -Hillary Clinton
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“It is better for you to be free of fear lying upon a pallet, than to have a golden couch and a rich table and be full of trouble.” -Epicurus
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“Our party must continue to strike fear in the heart of the white man, our real enemy!” -Robert Mugabe
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“It is not death or pain that is to be dreaded, but the fear of pain or death.” -Epictetus
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“Just as courage imperils life, fear protects it.” -Leonardo da Vinci
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“Fear may come true that which one is afraid of.” -Viktor E. Frankl
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“In itself, homosexuality is as limiting as heterosexuality: the ideal should be to be capable of loving a woman or a man either, a human being, without feeling fear, restraint, or obligation.” -Simone de Beauvoir
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“Our society must make it right and possible for old people not to fear the young or be deserted by them, for the test of a civilization is the way that it cares for its helpless members.” -Pearl S. Buck
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“In a World where people are surrounded by darkness, ignorance and fear, it is a sign of hope to be celebrating Islam’s message of peace and light, and the last great Messenger, born and chosen to deliver them to all mankind.” -Cat Stevens
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“Live your life that the fear of death can never enter your heart.” -Tecumseh
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“None but a coward dares to boast that he has never known fear.” -Bertrand Russell
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“There are only two forces that unite men – fear and interest.” -Napoleon Bonaparte
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“Men shrink less from offending one who inspires love than one who inspires fear.” -Niccolo Machiavelli
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“I write for those women who do not speak, for those who do not have a voice because they were so terrified, because we are taught to respect fear more than ourselves. We’ve been taught that silence would save us, but it won’t.” -Audre Lorde
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“My friends, love is better than anger. Hope is better than fear. Optimism is better than despair. So let us be loving, hopeful and optimistic. And we’ll change the world.” -Jack Layton
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“Unless India stands up to the world, no one will respect us. In this world, fear has no place. Only strength respects strength.” -Abdul Kalam
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“Those who own much have much to fear.” -Rabindranath Tagore
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“Religion. A daughter of Hope and Fear, explaining to Ignorance the nature of the Unknowable.” -Ambrose Bierce
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“The weeds keep multiplying in our garden, which is our mind ruled by fear. Rip them out and call them by name.” -Sylvia Browne
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“Fear is not in the habit of speaking truth when perfect sincerity is expected, perfect freedom must be allowed nor has anyone who is apt to be angry when he hears the truth any cause to wonder that he does not hear it.” -Tacitus
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“The strength and power of despotism consists wholly in the fear of resistance.” -Thomas Paine
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“There is a time to take counsel of your fears, and there is a time to never listen to any fear.” -George S. Patton
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“Puritanism. The haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy.” -H. L. Mencken
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“I more fear what is within me than what comes from without.” -Martin Luther
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“Listen to what you know instead of what you fear.” -Richard Bach
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“It’s an interesting combination: Having a great fear of being alone, and having a desperate need for solitude and the solitary experience. That’s always been a tug of war for me.” -Jodie Foster
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“Where there is charity and wisdom, there is neither fear nor ignorance.” -Francis of Assisi
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“Whether you like it or not, you’re forced to come to the realisation that death is out there. But I don’t fear death, I’m a fatalist. I believe when it’s your time, that’s it. It’s the hand you’re dealt.” -Clint Eastwood
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“Look not mournfully into the past, it comes not back again. Wisely improve the present, it is thine. Go forth to meet the shadowy future without fear and with a manly heart.” -Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
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“The greatest mistake we make is living in constant fear that we will make one.” -John C. Maxwell
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“The Cuban people still live in constant fear of a brutal totalitarian regime that has demonstrated time and again its utter disregard for basic human dignity. The fight for a free Cuba has gone on for far too long.” -Mitt Romney
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“I do not fear computers. I fear the lack of them.” -Isaac Asimov
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“It is almost universally felt that when we call a country democratic we are praising it consequently, the defenders of every kind of regime claim that it is a democracy, and fear that they might have to stop using the word if it were tied down to any one meaning.” -George Orwell
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“Fear not those who argue but those who dodge.” -Dale Carnegie
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“Never let the fear of striking out get in your way.” -Babe Ruth
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“The thing you fear most has no power. Your fear of it is what has the power. Facing the truth really will set you free.” -Oprah Winfrey
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“Know one knows whether death, which people fear to be the greatest evil, may not be the greatest good.” -Plato
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“Fear of death increases in exact proportion to increase in wealth.” -Ernest Hemingway
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“Fear of something is at the root of hate for others, and hate within will eventually destroy the hater.” -George Washington Carver
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“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
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“The beauty, the poetry of the fear in their eyes. I didn’t mind going to jail for, what, five, six hours? It was absolutely worth it.” -Johnny Depp
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“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.” -Earl Nightingale
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“Americans are in a cycle of fear which leads to people not wanting to spend and not wanting to make investments, and that leads to more fear. We’ll break out of it. It takes time.” -Warren Buffett
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“As we let our light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence actually liberates others.” -Marianne Williamson
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“We need to teach the next generation of children from day one that they are responsible for their lives. Mankind’s greatest gift, also its greatest curse, is that we have free choice. We can make our choices built from love or from fear.” -Elisabeth Kubler-Ross
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“The world is full of a lot of fear and a lot of negativity, and a lot of judgment. I just think people need to start shifting into joy and happiness. As corny as it sounds, we need to make a shift.” -Ellen DeGeneres
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“What I needed most was to love and to be loved, eager to be caught. Happily I wrapped those painful bonds around me and sure enough, I would be lashed with the red-hot pokers or jealousy, by suspicions and fear, by burst of anger and quarrels.” -Saint Augustine
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“Writing is a form of therapy sometimes I wonder how all those who do not write, compose or paint can manage to escape the madness, melancholia, the panic and fear which is inherent in a human situation.” -Graham Greene
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“The key to success is to focus our conscious mind on things we desire not things we fear.” -Brian Tracy
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“As soon as the fear approaches near, attack and destroy it.” -Chanakya
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“There is nothing I fear more than waking up without a program that will help me bring a little happiness to those with no resources, those who are poor, illiterate, and ridden with terminal disease.” -Nelson Mandela
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“So much of what is best in us is bound up in our love of family, that it remains the measure of our stability because it measures our sense of loyalty. All other pacts of love or fear derive from it and are modeled upon it.” -Haniel Long
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“The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.” -Franklin D. Roosevelt
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“I never dared to be radical when young for fear it would make me conservative when old.” -Robert Frost
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“The components of anxiety, stress, fear, and anger do not exist independently of you in the world. They simply do not exist in the physical world, even though we talk about them as if they do.” -Wayne Dyer
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“The world we see that seems so insane is the result of a belief system that is not working. To perceive the world differently, we must be willing to change our belief system, let the past slip away, expand our sense of now, and dissolve the fear in our minds.” -William James
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“Love takes off masks that we fear we cannot live without and know we cannot live within.” -James A. Baldwin
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“Where there is reverence there is fear, but there is not reverence everywhere that there is fear, because fear presumably has a wider extension than reverence.” -Socrates
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“You are going to let the fear of poverty govern you life and your reward will be that you will eat, but you will not live.” -George Bernard Shaw
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“No work or love will flourish out of guilt, fear, or hollowness of heart, just as no valid plans for the future can be made by those who have no capacity for living now.” -Alan Watts
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“It’s the most unhappy people who most fear change.” -Mignon McLaughlin
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“People always fear change. People feared electricity when it was invented, didn’t they? People feared coal, they feared gas-powered engines… There will always be ignorance, and ignorance leads to fear. But with time, people will come to accept their silicon masters.” -Bill Gates
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“The appeal of cinema lies in the fear of death.” -Jim Morrison
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“Do the thing we fear, and death of fear is certain.” -Ralph Waldo Emerson
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“When I hear music, I fear no danger. I am invulnerable. I see no foe. I am related to the earliest times, and to the latest.” -Henry David Thoreau
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“Have no fear of perfection – you’ll never reach it.” -Salvador Dali
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“It is not death that a man should fear, but he should fear never beginning to live.” -Marcus Aurelius
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“Fear is the mother of morality.” -Friedrich Nietzsche
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“Nothing is more despicable than respect based on fear.” -Albert Camus
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“Limits, like fear, is often an illusion.” -Michael Jordan
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“Let us never negotiate out of fear. But let us never fear to negotiate.” -John F. Kennedy
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“My only fear is that I may live too long. This would be a subject of dread to me.” -Thomas Jefferson
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“Only he can take great resolves who has indomitable faith in God and has fear of God.” -Mahatma Gandhi
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“Advance, and never halt, for advancing is perfection. Advance and do not fear the thorns in the path, for they draw only corrupt blood.” -Khalil Gibran
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“If you know the enemy and know yourself you need not fear the results of a hundred battles.” -Sun Tzu
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“The reserve of modern assertions is sometimes pushed to extremes, in which the fear of being contradicted leads the writer to strip himself of almost all sense and meaning.” -Winston Churchill
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“Nothing in life is to be feared, it is only to be understood. Now is the time to understand more, so that we may fear less.” -Marie Curie
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“Things done well and with a care, exempt themselves from fear.” -William Shakespeare
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“Tell your heart that the fear of suffering is worse than the suffering itself. And no heart has ever suffered when it goes in search of its dream.” -Paulo Coelho
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“Have no fear of moving into the unknown. Simply step out fearlessly knowing that I am with you, therefore no harm can befall you all is very, very well. Do this in complete faith and confidence.” -Pope John Paul II
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“I believe that anyone can conquer fear by doing the things he fears to do, provided he keeps doing them until he gets a record of successful experience behind him.” -Eleanor Roosevelt
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“Do the thing you fear most and the death of fear is certain.” -Mark Twain
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“Remembering that I’ll be dead soon is the most important tool I’ve ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything – all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure – these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important.”…
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“Do not fear mistakes. You will know failure. Continue to reach out.” -Benjamin Franklin
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“All religion, my friend, is simply evolved out of fraud, fear, greed, imagination, and poetry.” -Edgar Allan Poe
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“If fear is cultivated it will become stronger, if faith is cultivated it will achieve mastery.” -John Paul Jones
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“Action is a great restorer and builder of confidence. Inaction is not only the result, but the cause, of fear. Perhaps the action you take will be successful perhaps different action or adjustments will have to follow. But any action is better than no action at all.” -Norman Vincent Peale
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“If you look into your own heart, and you find nothing wrong there, what is there to worry about? What is there to fear?” -Confucius
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“No one ever told me that grief felt so like fear.” -C. S. Lewis
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“I don’t have no fear of death. My only fear is coming back reincarnated.” -Tupac Shakur
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“I am convinced that it is not the fear of death, of our lives ending that haunts our sleep so much as the fear… that as far as the world is concerned, we might as well never have lived.” -Harold Kushner
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“When we are afraid we ought not to occupy ourselves with endeavoring to prove that there is no danger, but in strengthening ourselves to go on in spite of the danger.” -Hale White
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“In order to succeed, your desire for success should be greater than your fear of failure.” -Bill Cosby
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“When one has the feeling of dislike for evil, when one feels tranquil, one finds pleasure in listening to good teachings when one has these feelings and appreciates them, one is free of fear.” -Buddha
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“It was the experience of mystery – even if mixed with fear – that engendered religion.” -Albert Einstein
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“I fear not the man who has practiced 10,000 kicks once, but I fear the man who has practiced one kick 10,000 times.” -Bruce Lee
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“We must build dikes of courage to hold back the flood of fear.” -Martin Luther King, Jr.
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“Faith activates God – Fear activates the Enemy.” -Joel Osteen
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“To fight fear, act. To increase fear – wait, put off postpone.” -David Joseph Schwartz
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“Courage is never to let your actions be influenced by your fears.” -Arthur Koestler
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“We should not be afraid to go into a new era, to leave the old beyond.” -Zack Wamp
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“Only when we are no longer afraid do we begin to live.” -Dorothy Thompson
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“Don’t be afraid to give up the good for the great.” -Kenny Rogers
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