A person’s fears are lighter when the danger is at hand.

I spent more time on dark ships in danger zones than any other woman in the world.

Telling us to obey instinct is like telling us to obey ‚people.‘ People say different things: so do instincts. Our instincts are at war… Each instinct, if you listen to it, will claim to be gratified at the expense of the rest.

There is only one way… to get anybody to do anything. And that is by making the other person want to do it.

If you do not wish a man to do a thing, you had better get him to talk about it; for the more men talk, the more likely they are to do nothing else.

Primate and elephant and even pig societies show considerable evidence of care for others, parent-child bonding, solidarity in the face of danger, and so on.

The human being is a strange mixture of blind instinct, on one hand, and conscience, on the other.

If the structures of the human mind remain unchanged, we will always end up re-creating the same world, the same evils, the same dysfunction.

Meanwhile, fears of universal disaster sank to an all time low over the world.

My mum passing away wasn’t funny, but that funeral and what I went through, the things that happened, looking back at it, there were funny moments. You have to be strong enough to look back at it, to sit and assess the situation.

Men are nearly always willing to believe what they wish.

Fears are nothing more than a state of mind.

Dread, which is closely related to fear, steals the ability to enjoy ordinary life and makes people anxious about the future. It keeps them from looking forward to the next day, the next month, or the next decade.

I think Buddhism should open the door of psychology and healing to penetrate more easily into the Western world.

The only difference between the sane and the insane is that the sane have the power to lock up the insane.

The Iranian government is undoubtedly a severe danger to its own population, but not beyond that.

Aggression unopposed becomes a contagious disease.

I’ve always seen first responders as unsung heroes and very special people because, when everyone else is running away from danger, they run into it.

All emotion is involuntary when genuine.

There is a sort of jealousy which needs very little fire; it is hardly a passion, but a blight bred in the cloudy, damp despondency of uneasy egoism.

Worry is a cycle of inefficient thoughts whirling around a center of fear.

Fear makes us feel our humanity.

Hatred is inveterate anger.

Worry is the interest paid by those who borrow trouble.

To a profound pessimist about life, being in danger is not depressing.

If you do not understand a man you cannot crush him. And if you do understand him, very probably you will not.

I’m on record that it didn’t really traumatize me to do away with some people.

People are just afraid of things too much. Afraid of things that don’t necessarily merit fear.

I’ve suffered through depression and anxiety my entire life.

My focus is to forget the pain of life. Forget the pain, mock the pain, reduce it. And laugh.

Where the mind goes, the man follows.

Nothing becomes so offensive so quickly as grief. When fresh it finds someone to console it, but when it becomes chronic, it is ridiculed, and rightly.

Why are women… so much more interesting to men than men are to women?

I love reading people. I really enjoy watching, observing, and being able to figure out a person, the reason they wore that dress, the reason they smell the way they do.

Politics is almost as exciting as war, and quite as dangerous. In war you can only be killed once, but in politics many times.

It is wise to persuade people to do things and make them think it was their own idea.

People love conspiracy theories.

A hustler has to deal with danger and risk. It’s part of the game. You cannot control it all, nor would you want to. Chaos, unknown factors are not something to be anxious about.

Security is mostly a superstition. It does not exist in nature, nor do the children of men as a whole experience it. Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. Life is either a daring adventure, or nothing.

When Clark Gable died, I cried for 2 days straight. I couldn’t eat or sleep.

The ego is nothing other than the focus of conscious attention.

I’m addicted to placebos.

All these primary impulses, not easily described in words, are the springs of man’s actions.

Worry – a God, invisible but omnipotent. It steals the bloom from the cheek and lightness from the pulse; it takes away the appetite, and turns the hair gray.

What I call my ‚self‘ now is hardly a person at all. It’s mainly a meeting place for various natural forces, desires, and fears, etcetera, some of which come from my ancestors, and some from my education, some perhaps from devils. The self you were really intended to be is something that lives not from nature but from God.

I wouldn’t say I have a lack of fear. In fact, I’d like my fear emotion to be less because it’s very distracting and fries my nervous system.

The young think that failure is the Siberian end of the line, banishment from all the living, and tend to do what I then did – which was to hide.

Over the years I’ve seen people lose a spouse and then withdraw and lose interest in life, and I believe we need to resist that.

The wise man does not expose himself needlessly to danger, since there are few things for which he cares sufficiently; but he is willing, in great crises, to give even his life – knowing that under certain conditions it is not worthwhile to live.

Some men have a necessity to be mean, as if they were exercising a faculty which they had to partially neglect since early childhood.

Some people feel affronted when something they thought to be true doesn’t happen. If that’s the case, then your sense of risk is much higher, and that leads to risk aversion. You need to be able to be comfortable in uncertainty.

Everybody, to some extent, manipulates. Even children learn to cry when they want something. There are all kinds of subtle things we do to get others to follow our lead, not bother us, and so on.

Suspicion is not less an enemy to virtue than to happiness; he that is already corrupt is naturally suspicious, and he that becomes suspicious will quickly be corrupt.

I imagine one of the reasons people cling to their hates so stubbornly is because they sense, once hate is gone, they will be forced to deal with pain.

The first and simplest emotion which we discover in the human mind, is curiosity.

Little things console us because little things afflict us.

If you like a person you say ‚let’s go into business together.‘ Man is a social animal after all, but such partnerships are fraught with danger.

It’s not just human nature to associate in tribes. It’s deeper than that.

A fanatic is a man who consciously over compensates a secret doubt.

Do not be anxious about tomorrow, for tomorrow will be anxious for itself. Let the day’s own trouble be sufficient for the day.

For in the end, freedom is a personal and lonely battle; and one faces down fears of today so that those of tomorrow might be engaged.