If we take the generally accepted definition of bravery as a quality which knows no fear, I have never seen a brave man. All men are frightened. The more intelligent they are, the more they are frightened.

Although modesty is natural to man, it is not natural to children. Modesty only begins with the knowledge of evil.

As human beings we have the most extraordinary capacity for evil. We can perpetrate some of the most horrendous atrocities.

True nobility is exempt from fear.

A lot of people ask me when I do a stunt, ‚Jackie, are you scared?‘ Of course I’m scared. I’m not Superman.

From such crooked wood as that which man is made of, nothing straight can be fashioned.

If you’re going to wake up early all the time, and you’re working hard, and you’re working out, sometimes you’re going to get tired. It’s OK. It’s acceptable – somewhat. We’re all human, unfortunately.

Look, the American people are smart.

There are three kinds of intelligence: one kind understands things for itself, the other appreciates what others can understand, the third understands neither for itself nor through others. This first kind is excellent, the second good, and the third kind useless.

Unless a reviewer has the courage to give you unqualified praise, I say ignore the bastard.

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

Courage is the price that life exacts for granting peace.

All the evidence that we have indicates that it is reasonable to assume in practically every human being, and certainly in almost every newborn baby, that there is an active will toward health, an impulse towards growth, or towards the actualization.

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.

I am not a victim of emotional conflicts. I am human.

It’s not going to do any good to land on Mars if we’re stupid.

Nothing scares me more than people with some doll collection.

I think I’m pretty smart. I think I’m pretty clever. But there’s a lot that you hone in on when you finish your education.

Courtesy is as much a mark of a gentleman as courage.

Men shrink less from offending one who inspires love than one who inspires fear.

The worst part of success is, to me, adapting to it. It’s scary.

The Christian ideal has not been tried and found wanting; it has been found difficult and left untried.

I am fearless.

Ah! yes, I know: those who see me rarely trust my word: I must look too intelligent to keep it.

No man really knows about other human beings. The best he can do is to suppose that they are like himself.

Mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed.

God gave you a brain. Do the best you can with it. And you don’t have to be Einstein, but Einstein was mentally tough. He believed what he believed. And he worked out things. And he argued with people who disagreed with him. But I’m sure he didn’t call everybody jerks.

If there were in the world today any large number of people who desired their own happiness more than they desired the unhappiness of others, we could have a paradise in a few years.

History shows us that in times of people feeling like they are in need of some sort of rebellion or protests, the artists rise because the poetry we create about pain and its relationship to culture in the world begins to soothe and heal people who are feeling confused or afraid.

Bravery never goes out of fashion.

I don’t believe in an outside agent that creates the world, then walks away. But I feel very strongly there is an intelligence at work in every flower, in every blade of grass, in every cell of my body. And it is that intelligence that, I wouldn’t say created the universe. It is creating the universe. It’s an ongoing process.

Friendships, in general, are suddenly contracted; and therefore it is no wonder they are easily dissolved.

All intelligent thoughts have already been thought; what is necessary is only to try to think them again.

If we accept being talked to any kind of a way, then we are telling ourselves we are not quite worth the best. And if we have the effrontery to talk to anybody with less than courtesy, we tell ourselves and the world we are not very intelligent.

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.

Fortune befriends the bold.

You may be able to read Bernard Shaw’s plays, you may be able to quote Shakespeare or Voltaire or some new philosopher; but if you in yourself are not intelligent, if you are not creative, what is the point of this education?

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.

Man can believe the impossible, but man can never believe the improbable.

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.

To do all that one is able to do, is to be a man; to do all that one would like to do, is to be a god.

Just as courage imperils life, fear protects it.

I have a hat. It is graceful and feminine and give me a certain dignity, as if I were attending a state funeral or something. Someday I may get up enough courage to wear it, instead of carrying it.

I can well conceive a man without hands, feet, head. But I cannot conceive man without thought; he would be a stone or a brute.

I never cut class. I loved getting A’s, I liked being smart. I liked being on time. I thought being smart is cooler than anything in the world.

Fear seems to have many causes. Fear of loss, fear of failure, fear of being hurt, and so on, but ultimately all fear is the ego’s fear of death, of annihilation. To the ego, death is always just around the corner. In this mind-identified state, fear of death affects every aspect of your life.

Talent and intelligence never yet inoculated anyone against the caprice of the fates.

It is much more secure to be feared than to be loved.

Courage, above all things, is the first quality of a warrior.

All of us have moments in our lives that test our courage. Taking children into a house with a white carpet is one of them.

You must be afraid, my son. That is how one becomes an honest citizen.

You have to accept whatever comes and the only important thing is that you meet it with courage and with the best that you have to give.

The ultimate tendency of civilization is towards barbarism.

Humanity I love you because when you’re hard up you pawn your intelligence to buy a drink.

I regard the brain as a computer which will stop working when its components fail. There is no heaven or afterlife for broken down computers; that is a fairy story for people afraid of the dark.

One has children in the expectation of dying before them. In fact, you want to make damn sure you die before them, just as you plant a tree or build a house knowing, hoping that it will outlive you. That’s how the human species has done as well as it has.

O‘ What may man within him hide, though angel on the outward side!

Out of timber so crooked as that from which man is made nothing entirely straight can be carved.

Timidity makes a person modest. It makes him or her say, ‚I’m not worthy of being written up in the record of deeds in heaven or on earth.‘ Timidity keeps people from their good. They are afraid to say, ‚Yes, I deserve it.‘

Man’s true nature being lost, everything becomes his nature; as, his true good being lost, everything becomes his good.

I never dared to be radical when young for fear it would make me conservative when old.