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

We always overestimate the change that will occur in the next two years and underestimate the change that will occur in the next ten. Don’t let yourself be lulled into inaction.

Since everything is in our heads, we had better not lose them.

When you’re young, you’re not afraid of what comes next. You’re excited by it.

To me, the black black woman is our essential mother, the blacker she is the more us she is and to see the hatred that is turned on her is enough to make me despair, almost entirely, of our future as a people.

My dream is of a place and a time where America will once again be seen as the last best hope of earth.

A lot of times, people have something that they’re afraid of. They’ve got a client that’s mad at them. They’ve got a project that’s due. And they let that stress hang over their head. I don’t let that happen.

I hesitate to use a pathologizing label, but underneath the so-called narcissistic personality is definitely shame and the paralyzing fear of being ordinary.

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

But if I have a lot of imagination, I could tell myself whatever I wanted, you know. I handle myself quite well. I’m kind of fascist with myself, you know. There’s no discussion. There is an order. You follow it.

We are not afraid to entrust the American people with unpleasant facts, foreign ideas, alien philosophies, and competitive values. For a nation that is afraid to let its people judge the truth and falsehood in an open market is a nation that is afraid of its people.

An asylum for the sane would be empty in America.

Chefs are nutters. They’re all self-obsessed, delicate, dainty, insecure little souls and absolute psychopaths. Every last one of them.

Courage is fear holding on a minute longer.

Pound’s crazy. All poets are. They have to be. You don’t put a poet like Pound in the loony bin.

It’s very inexpensive to give a compliment.

Who will take responsibility for raising the next generation?

We are not angry with people we fear or respect, as long as we fear or respect them; you cannot be afraid of a person and also at the same time angry with him.

My head’s never really quiet. The only time I can get it to turn off is if I watch ‚CSI‘ or ‚Law & Order,‘ where I have to follow the crime. If I can’t turn my head off during that, I know I’ve really got a problem.

Monsters are real, and ghosts are real too. They live inside us, and sometimes, they win.

I’ve often said there’s nothing better for the inside of a man than the outside of a horse.

We must restore hope to young people, help the old, be open to the future, spread love. Be poor among the poor. We need to include the excluded and preach peace.

Logic will get you from A to B. Imagination will take you everywhere.

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.

The power of imagination makes us infinite.

Happiness is the cessation of suffering.

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.

We’ve gotta become the Martians. I’m a Martian – I tell you to become Martians. And we’ve gotta go to Mars and civilize Mars and build a whole civilization on Mars and then move out, 300 years from now into the universe. And when we do that, we have a chance of living forever.

Men are moved by two levers only: fear and self interest.

Myth and fairy-story must, as all art, reflect and contain in solution elements of moral and religious truth (or error), but not explicit, not in the known form of the primary ‚real‘ world.

One ought to hold on to one’s heart; for if one lets it go, one soon loses control of the head too.

It is usually the imagination that is wounded first, rather than the heart; it being much more sensitive.

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

We may define therapy as a search for value.

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

There are only two forces that unite men – fear and interest.

For many people who are so lost in their minds, so much involved in their thought processes, the only moments they have when they are not trapped in that is when they are relating to their animal, their pet.

Only he can take great resolves who has indomitable faith in God and has fear of God.

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

For me, there have been times when an action movie, even a ‚Tomb Raider,‘ has helped me get out of myself and be physical again. It’s like therapy.

Sleep is the best meditation.

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.

It’s a question of whether we’re going to go forward into the future, or past to the back.

Humanity has the stars in its future, and that future is too important to be lost under the burden of juvenile folly and ignorant superstition.

The mind that is anxious about the future is miserable.

There are many events in the womb of time, which will be delivered.

Fear is stupid. So are regrets.

Just what is it that academics have to fear if they stand up for common decency, instead of letting campus barbarians run amok?

Most people dream a dream when they are asleep. But to be a writer, you have to dream while you are awake, intentionally. So I get up early in the morning, 4 o’clock, and I sit at my desk and what I do is just dream. After three or four hours, that’s enough. In the afternoon, I run. The next day, the dream will continue.

The empires of the future are the empires of the mind.

What a waste it is to lose one’s mind. Or not to have a mind is being very wasteful. How true that is.

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.

Total relaxation is the secret to enjoying sitting meditation. I sit with my spine upright, but not rigid; and I relax all the muscles in my body.

Become slower in your journey through life. Practice yoga and meditation if you suffer from ‚hurry sickness.‘ Become more introspective by visiting quiet places such as churches, museums, mountains and lakes. Give yourself permission to read at least one novel a month for pleasure.

Whenever the speech is corrupted so is the mind.

We can, for example, be fairly confident that either there will be a world without war or there won’t be a world – at least, a world inhabited by creatures other than bacteria and beetles, with some scattering of others.

We are the miracle of force and matter making itself over into imagination and will. Incredible. The Life Force experimenting with forms. You for one. Me for another. The Universe has shouted itself alive. We are one of the shouts.

If you believe that feeling bad or worrying long enough will change a past or future event, then you are residing on another planet with a different reality system.

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

Marriage is scary to me, man.

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