The one permanent emotion of the inferior man is fear – fear of the unknown, the complex, the inexplicable. What he wants above everything else is safety.

If you can feel that Mother Earth is in you, and you are Mother Earth, then you are not any longer afraid to die because the earth is not dying. Like a wave appears and disappears and appears again.

Faith activates God – Fear activates the Enemy.

Our government has kept us in a perpetual state of fear – kept us in a continuous stampede of patriotic fervor – with the cry of grave national emergency.

Do I wear a helmet? Ugh. I do when I’m riding through a precarious part of town, meaning Midtown traffic. But when I’m riding on secure protected lanes or on the paths that run along the Hudson or through Central Park – no, I don’t wear the dreaded helmet then.

Courage is fear holding on a minute longer.

Educators take something simple and make it complicated. Communicators take something complicated and make it simple.

I played a lot of tough clubs in my time. Once a guy in one of those clubs wanted to bet me $10 that I was dead. I was afraid to bet.

I don’t think that you can be prescriptive about anything, I mean, life is too complicated. Maybe there are novels where the author has not in the least thought about it in terms of film, which can be turned into good films.

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.

I love the name of honor, more than I fear death.

Fear? If I have gained anything by damning myself, it is that I no longer have anything to fear.

The fundament upon which all our knowledge and learning rests is the inexplicable.

Fear of a name increases fear of the thing itself.

Fear is the thought of admitted inferiority.

One of the things I definitely think of as a driver of me is fear. And it’s fear of failure, fear of being overtaken.

Fear is not a lasting teacher of duty.

I believe the American people have a genuine and justifiable fear of government intrusion in what they instinctively know is going to be an ever more intrusive world.

If someone attacks me, and they want to punch or kick me, I can just run away. They’re not holding onto me. I can get away from them.

We fear that this moment will end, that we won’t get what we need, that we will lose what we love, or that we will not be safe. Often, our biggest fear is the knowledge that one day our bodies will cease functioning. So even when we are surrounded by all the conditions for happiness, our joy is not complete.

We can fear things into existence. Fear looks into the future and imagines the worst that can happen.

I think what’s important is for us to decipher what is honest and what is dishonest and be accepting of those things and not operating from fear.

Nothing is more despicable than respect based on fear.

Anybody can be specific and obvious. That’s always been the easy way. It’s not that it’s so difficult to be unspecific and less obvious; it’s just that there’s nothing, absolutely nothing, to be specific and obvious about.

I’ve always hated the danger part of climbing, and it’s great to come down again because it’s safe.

Fear is stupid. So are regrets.

I’m sure the feeling of fear, as long as you can take advantage of it and not be rendered useless by it, can make you extend yourself beyond what you would regard as your capacity. If you’re afraid, the blood seems to flow freely through the veins, and you really do feel a sense of stimulation.

The realities are that, you know, as a black man, you know, Barack can get shot going to the gas station, you know.

No one ever told me that grief felt so like fear.

Love takes off masks that we fear we cannot live without and know we cannot live within.

Courage is a mean with regard to fear and confidence.

Too much self-centered attitude, you see, brings, you see, isolation. Result: loneliness, fear, anger. The extreme self-centered attitude is the source of suffering.

They say the world has become too complex for simple answers. They are wrong.

Things done well and with a care, exempt themselves from fear.

For most of us, relationship with another is based on dependence, either economic or psychological. This dependence creates fear, breeds in us possessiveness, results in friction, suspicion, frustration.

Realists do not fear the results of their study.

ISIS is not an existential threat to something happening to someone in the United States of America. It’s a serious problem overseas, but it’s confusing and frightening.

Science never solves a problem without creating ten more.

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.

There are things which a man is afraid to tell even to himself, and every decent man has a number of such things stored away in his mind.

If you don’t trust the pilot, don’t go.

Real art is basic emotion. If a scene is handled with simplicity – and I don’t mean simple – it’ll be good, and the public will know it.

We can easily forgive a child who is afraid of the dark; the real tragedy of life is when men are afraid of the light.

Where an excess of power prevails, property of no sort is duly respected. No man is safe in his opinions, his person, his faculties, or his possessions.

I still get very scared when I step in front of a live audience.

The British constitution has always been puzzling and always will be.

A good many things go around in the dark besides Santa Claus.

Most damage that others do us is out of fear, humiliation and pain. Those feelings occur in all of us, not just in those of us who profess a certain religious or racial devotion.

Before I do a stunt, I have to make sure it is safe.

I more fear what is within me than what comes from without.

And no, we don’t know where it will lead. We just know there’s something much bigger than any of us here.

We live in a bewildering world.

We make up horrors to help us cope with the real ones.

I was scared many times on Everest, but this is all part of the challenge. When I fell down a crevasse, it was pretty scary.

There is nothing so strong or safe in an emergency of life as the simple truth.

The terrorists are fighting freedom with all their cunning and cruelty because freedom is their greatest fear – and they should be afraid, because freedom is on the march.

For an author, the nice characters aren’t much fun. What you want are the screwed up characters. You know, the characters that are constantly wondering if what they are doing is the right thing, characters that are not only screwed up but are self-tapping screws. They’re doing it for themselves.

There is a time to take counsel of your fears, and there is a time to never listen to any fear.

The complexity of things – the things within things – just seems to be endless. I mean nothing is easy, nothing is simple.

Overcoming fear is the first step to success for entrepreneurs. The winners all exemplify that, and the hard work and commitment they have shown underlines what is needed to set up a business.

Both old and young alike ought to seek wisdom: the former in order that, as age comes over him, he may be young in good things because of the grace of what has been, and the latter in order that, while he is young, he may at the same time be old, because he has no fear of the things which are to come.