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.

If you’re in this business and you are scared, then you better do something else.

When even one American – who has done nothing wrong – is forced by fear to shut his mind and close his mouth – then all Americans are in peril.

Life opens up opportunities to you, and you either take them or you stay afraid of taking them.

Music was my refuge. I could crawl into the space between the notes and curl my back to loneliness.

Time travel was once considered scientific heresy, and I used to avoid talking about it for fear of being labelled a ‚crank.‘

Out of suffering have emerged the strongest souls; the most massive characters are seared with scars.

I’m not that keen on the idea of being unconscious.

The key to success is to focus our conscious mind on things we desire not things we fear.

We simply attempt to be fearful when others are greedy and to be greedy only when others are fearful.

I have found it easier to identify with the characters who verge upon hysteria, who were frightened of life, who were desperate to reach out to another person. But these seemingly fragile people are the strong people really.

Human beings are the only animals of which I am thoroughly and cravenly afraid.

I don’t like being alone.

It’s not morbid to talk about death. Most people don’t worry about death, they worry about a bad death.

I’m not ashamed to say I fear something.

There are a lot of ‚chicken Christians.‘ Chickens are generally afraid of life, and they seldom fly or reach their potential in life. And when a storm comes, all they seem to do is flap around the chicken yard, stirring up dirt and running to the chicken house.

I always felt an outsider.

That man is not truly brave who is afraid either to seem or to be, when it suits him, a coward.

Just as courage is the danger of life, so is fear its safeguard.

Words can be said in bitterness and anger, and often there seems to be an element of truth in the nastiness. And words don’t go away, they just echo around.

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.

You know I vowed when I became President not to talk about the loneliest toughest job in the world and I didn’t.

Most people get a fair amount of fun out of their lives, but on balance life is suffering, and only the very young or the very foolish imagine otherwise.

If you fear making anyone mad, then you ultimately probe for the lowest common denominator of human achievement.

Dread of night. Dread of not-night.

It is far better to be alone, than to be in bad company.

We are looking for happiness and running after it in such a way that creates anger, fear and discrimination. So when you attend a retreat, you have a chance to look at the deep roots of this pollution of the collective energy that is unwholesome.

The truth is, I had always wanted to be a comedian, but I really didn’t have that kind of personality, and it’s a terrifying thing to say.

For a long time I was scared I’d find out I was like my mother.

Whosoever is delighted in solitude is either a wild beast or a god.

An oppressive government is more to be feared than a tiger.

Ritual is another word for fear, manifested in a different way.

I sometimes wish I were suffering in a good cause, or risking my life for the good of others, instead of just being a gravely endangered patient.

Part of every misery is, so to speak, the misery’s shadow or reflection: the fact that you don’t merely suffer but have to keep on thinking about the fact that you suffer. I not only live each endless day in grief, but live each day thinking about living each day in grief.

In time we hate that which we often fear.

Death obsesses me, yes it does. I can’t really understand why it doesn’t obsess everyone – I think it does really, I’m just a little more out about it.

Fear is present when we forget that we are a part of God’s divine design. Learning to experience authentic love means abandoning ego’s insistence that you have much to fear and that you are in an unfriendly world. You can make the decision to be free from fear and doubt and return to the brilliant light of love that is always with you.

If a work of art is rich and vital and complete, those who have artistic instincts will see its beauty, and those to whom ethics appeal more strongly than aesthetics will see its moral lesson. It will fill the cowardly with terror, and the unclean will see in it their own shame.

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.

Having a child, that’s always been my biggest fear. I want a child and I fear a child.

Fear is the main source of superstition, and one of the main sources of cruelty. To conquer fear is the beginning of wisdom.

So many writers don’t like to write… I like to write, and sometimes I’m afraid I like it too much, because when I get into work, I don’t want to leave it. And as a result, I’ll go for days and days and days without leaving my house.

I found that with depression, one of the most important things you could realise is that you’re not alone.

Men are swayed more by fear than by reverence.

Life is full of misery, loneliness, and suffering – and it’s all over much too soon.

In this business, by the time you realize you’re in trouble, it’s too late to save yourself. Unless you’re running scared all the time, you’re gone.

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.

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.

Fear is exciting for me.

We are doomed to cling to a life even while we find it unendurable.

I’ve written some great things. That’s a gift, but there’s consequences. Yeah, you get this great work, but you suffer. You really, really suffer.

Years ago I met Richard Burton in Port Talbot, my home town, and afterwards he passed in his car with his wife, and I thought, ‚I want to get out and become like him‘. Not because of Wales, because I love Wales, but because I was so limited as a child at school and so bereft and lonely, and I thought becoming an actor would do that.

You may be educated abroad, you may be a great scientist, politician, but you always have a sneaking fear that if you don’t go to temples or do the ordinary things that you have been told to do, something evil might happen, so you conform. What happens to the mind that conforms? Investigate it, please.

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.

To be angry is to revenge the faults of others on ourselves.

We must do everything in our power to cease the behaviour that makes children everywhere feel afraid.

War is the domain of physical exertion and suffering.

Some people will have to be afraid. Those who plunder the nation, deliver injustice, will have to feel scared of me. And I am not afraid of admitting this. Government cannot be so lenient that it forgives them.

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

Most of us experience a life full of wonderful moments and difficult moments. But for many of us, even when we are most joyful, there is fear behind our joy.

Simulated disorder postulates perfect discipline; simulated fear postulates courage; simulated weakness postulates strength.