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

Everyone knows nowadays that people ‚have complexes‘. What is not so well known, though far more important theoretically, is that complexes can have us.

If you don’t feel safe as a child, you can’t learn.

We hunger to understand, so we invent myths about how we imagine the world is constructed – and they’re, of course, based upon what we know, which is ourselves and other animals. So we make up stories about how the world was hatched from a cosmic egg or created after the mating of cosmic deities or by some fiat of a powerful being.

I’m going to stay active as long as I can politically, and with the Carter Center primarily, and if I’m able mentally and physically, will continue to be quite active.

Protect your enthusiasm from the negativity of others.

Our lifetime may be the last that will be lived out in a technological society.

I’m a super-duper over-analyzer. You mix that with self-doubt and pressure, and that’s never healthy.

The foundation of every state is the education of its youth.

The best remedy for those who are afraid, lonely or unhappy is to go outside, somewhere where they can be quiet, alone with the heavens, nature and God. Because only then does one feel that all is as it should be.

Reason is the natural order of truth; but imagination is the organ of meaning.

I don’t want to wake up and be bored. That’s probably my greatest fear is to have nothing to do. What better job is there than to play quarterback for an NFL team, and certainly one that I’ve been on for a long time and had success with? I don’t plan on giving it up any time soon.

What a terrible thing to have lost one’s mind. Or not to have a mind at all. How true that is.

I wake up in the morning and my mind starts making sentences, and I have to get rid of them fast – talk them or write them down.

There is a huge need and a huge opportunity to get everyone in the world connected, to give everyone a voice and to help transform society for the future. The scale of the technology and infrastructure that must be built is unprecedented, and we believe this is the most important problem we can focus on.

Do the thing you fear to do and keep on doing it… that is the quickest and surest way ever yet discovered to conquer fear.

Throw off your worries when you throw off your clothes at night.

I have fallen in love with the imagination. And if you fall in love with the imagination, you understand that it is a free spirit. It will go anywhere, and it can do anything.

Love is a serious mental disease.

We begin to see, therefore, the importance of selecting our environment with the greatest of care, because environment is the mental feeding ground out of which the food that goes into our minds is extracted.

Man, so long as he remains free, has no more constant and agonizing anxiety than find as quickly as possible someone to worship.

Hatred is self-punishment.

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.

Our country is now geared to an arms economy bred in an artificially induced psychosis of war hysteria and an incessant propaganda of fear.

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

In time we hate that which we often fear.

Part of the reason that our politics seems so tough right now and facts and science and argument does not seem to be winning the day all the time is because we’re hardwired not to always think clearly when we’re scared. And the country’s scared.

Meditation is difficult for many people because their thoughts are always on some distant object or place. One form of meditation is to label the thought as it appears and then choose to let it go.

There’s no present. There’s only the immediate future and the recent past.

Everything that is new or uncommon raises a pleasure in the imagination, because it fills the soul with an agreeable surprise, gratifies its curiosity, and gives it an idea of which it was not before possessed.

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.

I never played with anything like toys.

I guess there is nothing that will get your mind off everything like golf. I have never been depressed enough to take up the game, but they say you get so sore at yourself you forget to hate your enemies.

War is a poor chisel to carve out tomorrow.

When I arrived in Laos and found young Americans living there, out of free choice, I was surprised. After only a week, I began to have a sense of the appeal of the country and its people – along with despair about its future.

Scientists have to have a metaphor. All scientists start with imagination.

I am particularly drawn to the form of meditation called Japa. I know it works.

Love is the triumph of imagination over intelligence.

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.

Certainly in the next 50 years we shall see a woman president, perhaps sooner than you think. A woman can and should be able to do any political job that a man can do.

I think that’s why I put my energy into making music. That’s how I get my thoughts out, instead of being crazy all the time.

People look to time in expectation that it will eventually make them happy, but you cannot find true happiness by looking toward the future.

What can you do against the lunatic who is more intelligent than yourself, who gives your arguments a fair hearing and then simply persists in his lunacy?

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 absolute transformation of everything that we ever thought about music will take place within 10 years, and nothing is going to be able to stop it. I see absolutely no point in pretending that it’s not going to happen. I’m fully confident that copyright, for instance, will no longer exist in 10 years.

Cancer is still a word that strikes fear into people’s hearts, producing a deep sense of powerlessness. But today it is possible to find out through a blood test whether you are highly susceptible to breast and ovarian cancer, and then take action.

When things are really dismal, you can laugh, or you can cave in completely.

Absolute silence leads to sadness. It is the image of death.

In this world there is always danger for those who are afraid of it.

I’m not a complete psychopath. Am I partially? Sure. I’ll accept that. But I’m not a complete psychopath.

It will be found, in fact, that the ingenious are always fanciful, and the truly imaginative never otherwise than analytic.

I’m afraid of losing my obscurity. Genuineness only thrives in the dark. Like celery.

Melancholy, indeed, should be diverted by every means but drinking.

Meditation helps me to calm down.

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.

I believe in everything until it’s disproved. So I believe in fairies, the myths, dragons. It all exists, even if it’s in your mind. Who’s to say that dreams and nightmares aren’t as real as the here and now?

You are only afraid if you are not in harmony with yourself. People are afraid because they have never owned up to themselves.

True nobility is exempt from fear.

Meditation can help us embrace our worries, our fear, our anger; and that is very healing. We let our own natural capacity of healing do the work.

The symbolism of the climate strike is that if you adults don’t give a damn about my future, I won’t either.

Unless one is able to live fully in the present, the future is a hoax.