Fear Makes Us Fools Quotes

It's suicide," Doc Holland said, shaking his head. "Fools, all of them. This isn't any conventional war- this is madness."

The general let out a weary breath. "No, Doctor-this is fear . . . and fear makes fools of us all. ~ L.A. Banks

What is this thing that makes us human? Birth, heartbreak, a desire for safety and order? Is it anger, shame, or fear? What we desire is unattainable and although we know it, we keep striving for it. Sisyphus, the Greek god, and all that. ~ Fadia Faqir

This, then, is the human problem: there is a price to be paid for every increase in consciousness. We cannot be more sensitive to pleasure without being more sensitive to pain. By remembering the past we can plan for the future. But the ability to plan for the future is offset by the "ability" to dread pain and to fear of the unknown. Furthermore, the growth of an acute sense of the past and future gives us a corresponding dim sense of the present. In other words, we seem to reach a point where the advantages of being conscious are outweighed by its disadvantages, where extreme sensitivity makes us unadaptable. ~ Alan W. Watts

Fear is the great enemy of intimacy. Fear makes us run away from each other or cling to each other but does not create true intimacy. ~ Henri Nouwen

If you have nothing to hide, then you have nothing to fear. This is a dangerously narrow conception of the value of privacy. Privacy is an essential human need, and central to our ability to control how we relate to the world. Being stripped of privacy is fundamentally dehumanizing, and it makes no difference whether the surveillance is conducted by an undercover policeman following us around or by a computer algorithm tracking our every move. ~ Bruce Schneier

What makes us the strongest tribe on the continent is the fact that a group that opposes these values
a group that would have mankind remain in the new dark ages
is permitted to grow, permitted to exist ... and, after it becomes a violent terrorist organization, is allowed to live on it own lands, taken out of the lands of those it has attacked and continues to attack!" He had to stop speaking then
the applause was louder than even his amplified voice. "They expect that fear will drive us to become like them ... closed-minded, blind, angry. Our society will remain open and free so long as I am standing upright," he continued, once the applause died down. ~ Lia Habel

None of us makes it through this life without problems and challenges - and sometimes tragedies and misfortunes. After all, in large part we are here to learn and grow from such events in our lives. We know that there are times when we will suffer, when we will grieve, and when we will be saddened. However, we are told, "Adam fell that men might be; and men are, that they might have joy." How might we have joy in our lives, despite all that we may face? Again from the scriptures: "Wherefore, be of good cheer, and do not fear, for I the Lord am with you, and will stand by you. ~ Thomas S. Monson

If we are not taught about love when our brains and hearts are forming, we may never even recognize it when it stands in front of us. We may even run from it. We would miss out on the one thing that makes life worth living. ~ Kate McGahan

If God made all our faces, did he laugh when he made me?
Does he make the legs that cannot walk and eyes that cannot see?
Does he curl the hair upon my head 'til it rebels in wild defiance?
Does he close the ears of a deaf man to make him more reliant?
Is the way I look a coincidence or just a twist of fate?
If he made me this way, is it okay, to blame him for the things I hate?
For the flaws that seem to worsen every time I see a mirror,For the ugliness I see in me, for the loathing and the fear.
Does he sculpt us for his pleasure, for a reason I can't see?
If God makes all our faces, did he laugh when he made me? ~ Amy Harmon

The fear of taking a shot at anything in life, lives in the fact that there are no guaranteed outcomes and this notion sadly, paralyzes so many from ever taking a chance, because they can never be certain enough. It's important to understand that the fear will always be there, that's what makes us humans, and those of us that end of leading successful and fulfilled lives have just learned to better tame and dance with that fear more than others. ~ Chris Hill

How easy love makes fools of us. ~ Moliere

This witch's brew of vulnerability and fear and hope makes dawn the time when we can best hear whatever it is our ghosts are trying to tell us. But ~ Barbara Nickless

But all the while, there was one thing we most needed even from the start, and certainly will need from here on out into the New Jerusalem: the ability to take our freedom seriously and act on it, to live not in fear of mistakes but in the knowledge that no mistake can hold a candle to the love that draws us home. My repentance, accordingly, is not so much for my failings but for the two-bit attitude toward them by which I made them more sovereign than grace. Grace - the imperative to hear the music, not just listen for errors - makes all infirmities occasions of glory. ~ Robert Farrar Capon

If we're talented at music, that talent is of god. If something makes our heart sing, that's god's way of telling us its a contribution he wants us to make. Sharing our gifts is what makes us happy. We're most powerful and god's power is most apparent on the earth when we're happy. A course in miracles teaches that we are only truly happy when we're doing god's will. The only thing to be saved from is our own negativity and fear. The crux of salvation in any area is a shift in our sense of purpose. That shift is a miracle, as always we consciously ask for it: 'Dear god, please give my life some sense of purpose. use me as an instrument of your peace. Use my talents and abilities to spread love. I surrender my job to you. Help me to remember that my real job is to love the world back to health. ~ Marianne Williamson

God stirs the air and raises the winds; He makes the lightning flash and thunders out of heaven, to move the inhabitants of the earth to fear Him, and to remind them of judgement to come. He shatters their conceit and subdues their presumption by recalling to their minds that awful Day when heaven and earth will flame as He comes in the clouds with great power and majesty to judge the living and the dead. Therefore we should respond to His heavenly warnings with the fear and love we owe Him,' said Chad. 'And whenever He raises His hands in the trembling air as if to strike, yet spares us still, we should hasten to implore His mercy, examining our inmost hearts and purging the vileness of our sins, watchful over our lives lest we incur His just displeasure. ~ Bede

Flattery makes fools of the best of us. ~ Dorothy Salisbury Davis

How do I know what I love the most? By looking at my life outside of Sunday morning. What do I enjoy the most? What do I spend the most time doing? Where does my mind drift to when I don't have anything to do? What am I passionate about? What do I spend my money on? What makes me angry when I don't get it? What do I feel depressed without? What do I fear losing the most? Our answers to those questions will lead us straight to the God or gods we love and worship. ~ Bob Kauflin

What we hunger for perhaps more than anything else is to be known in our full humanness, and yet that is often just what we also fear more than anything else. It is important to tell at least from time to time the secret of who we truly and fully are ... because otherwise we run the risk of losing track of who we truly and fully are and little by little come to accept instead the highly edited version which we put forth in hope that the world will find it more acceptable than the real thing. It is important to tell our secrets too because it makes it easier ... for other people to tell us a secret or two of their own ... ~ Frederick Buechner

Mustapha Mond paused, put down the first book and, picking up the other, turned over the pages. "Take this, for example," he said, and in his deep voice once more began to read: "'A man grows old; he feels in himself that radical sense of weakness, of listlessness, of discomfort, which accompanies the advance of age; and, feeling thus, imagines himself merely sick, lulling his fears with the notion that this distressing condition is due to some particular cause, from which, as from an illness, he hopes to recover. Vain imaginings! That sickness is old age; and a horrible disease it is.
They say that it is the fear of death and of what comes after death that makes men turn to religion as they advance in years. But my own experience has given me the conviction that, quite apart from any such terrors or imaginings, the religious sentiment tends to develop as we grow older; to develop because, as the passions grow calm, as the fancy and sensibilities are less excited and less excitable, our reason becomes less troubled in its working, less obscured by the images, desires and distractions, in which it used to be absorbed; whereupon God emerges as from behind a cloud; our soul feels, sees, turns towards the source of all light; turns naturally and inevitably; for now that all that gave to the world of sensations its life and charms has begun to leak away from us, now that phenomenal existence is no more bolstered up by impressions from within or from without, we feel the need ~ Aldous Huxley

A lot can be determined by the choices we make, even if the action is initiated by self-preservation. Many ... no, most ... of our choices are driven by fear: fear of death, fear of humiliation, fear of loneliness. But it's how we respond to fear that matters. It's what defines us. What makes us who we are. So maybe in your mind you acted selfishly, but I'm alive because of the choice you made. So I'll remember it as an act of kindness and yes, even bravery. ~ Michael J. Sullivan

Fear prevents us from becoming what we suppose to be especially when we tenaciously hold unto falsehood. Fear makes us look ugly, stifled and dissipated. Guard your heart against any form of fear because fear simply means you are expecting something bad. ~ Uzoma Nnadi

Ambition is ever tempered by experience. Otherwise, fortune makes fools of us all. ~ Mark Kingwell

But that's what makes it so fun! Life is scary. So why wouldn't we enjoy and make fun of that fear? It's like life is trying to makes us fear it, and on this day we just mock its attempts and say 'no, not today, today I'm not scared of anything you throw at me'. ~ Patricia Morais

However hyped the risk of germs may be, it is at least real. Some corporations go so far as to conjure threats where there are none. A television ad for Brita, the German manufacturer of water-filtration systems, starts with a close-up of a glass of water on a kitchen table. The sound of a flushing toilet is heard. A woman opens a door, enters the kitchen, sits at the table and drinks the water. The water in your toilet and the water in your faucet "come from the same source," the commercial concludes. Sharp-eyed viewers will also see a disclaimer a the start of the ad printed in tiny white letters: MUNICIPAL WATER IS TREATED FOR CONSUMPTION. This is effectively an admission that the shared origin of the water in the glass and the toilet is irrelevant and so the commercial makes no sense--at least not on a rational level. As a pitch aimed at Gut, however, it makes perfect sense. The danger of contaminated drinking water is as old as humanity, and the worst contaminant has always been feces. Our hardwired defense against contamination is disgust, an emotion that drives us to keep our distance from the contaminant. By linking the toilet and the drinking glass, the commercial connects feces to our home's drinking water and raises an ancient fear--a fear that can be eased with the purchase of one of the company's many fine products. ~ Daniel Gardner

Demanding yet denying the human condition makes for an explosive contradiction. And explode it does, as you and I know. And we live in an age of conflagration: it only needs the rising birth rate to worsen the food shortage, it only needs the newly born to fear living a little more than dying, and for the torrent of violence to sweep away all the barriers. In Algeria and Angola, Europeans are massacred on sight. This is the age of the boomerang, the third stage of violence: it flies right back at us, it strikes us and, once again, we have no idea what hit us. ~ Frantz Fanon

Love, intensity, value, passion, rejection, hope, care, failure, joy. What life throws at us never makes sense. Thinks we're at life's dispense. How long we should try to change ourselves. The weight of death, the weight of fear. The burden of stress, the pain is here. Never to know, never to guess, never to know, how much mess. Do not show care, do not have love, do not feel joy, or you may change. ~ Esther Earl

God's sign is simplicity. God's sign is the baby. God's sign is that He makes Himself small for us. This is how He reigns. He does not come with power and outward splendor. He comes as a baby - defenseless and in need of our help. He does not want to overwhelm us with His strength. He takes away our fear of His greatness ... God made Himself small so that we could understand Him, welcome Him, and love Him. ~ Pope Benedict XVI

A best friend is someone with whom you can sit on the porch, without a word, and then walk away with the feeling that it was the best conversation that ever had in your life. I would like to see next to me was the man in whose presence my heart beat would be evenly and uniformly, the man next to whom I would be calm, because I was not afraid to be the next day to lose him. And the time would have flowed more slowly, and we could just keep quiet, knowing that to talk with us there is still a whole life. Only one thing makes a dream impossible - it is the fear of failure. ~ Paulo Coelho

In this one life, this one life that you have to live, you must embrace every moment that creeps into your existence. You must feel every possible emotion to realize you're really alive, you're really living. If you build walls and you hide behind them in fear, you're not embracing moments, you're not actually living. And if you're not living, then you're dead. Maybe not physically, but mentally and emotionally, you are non-existent. Why would you want to waste such precious time, non-existing, especially behind a crumby wall? Fear? Fear of what? Fear of something great? Fear of something amazing? Hurt? Fear of pain? Isn't pain what makes us appreciate feelings of absolute happiness and love? Who doesn't want happiness? Let me be the one to tell you that this life is short, it's damn short. So, let go of your grudges, your past, your stupid walls and feel reality. Avoidance is not life. Pain is life, happiness is life, emotion is life. Live your damn life. Stop being dead. Embrace every good feeling in your heart and soul and act on it without the fear of hurt, because undoubtedly hurt will happen, but hurt will also disappear and lead to the most valuable feelings in this world. Regret is not something you want to live with in this short, short life. So follow that tiny fist sized drum in your chest because it is honest and it is true. Take those fucking chances, take them knowing this world is full of opportunity, opportunity for great things, absolutely amazing fucking thi ~ Anonymous

What makes us afraid is our great freedom in the face of the emptiness that has still to be filled. ~ Karl Jaspers

Fear destroys intimacy. It distances us from each other; or makes us cling to each other, which is the death of freedom ... Only love can create intimacy, and freedom too, for when all hearts are one, nothing else has to be one
neither clothes nor age; neither sex nor sexual preference; race nor mind-set. ~ William Sloane Coffin

The fear of God is freedom, joy, and peace;
And makes all ills that vex us here to cease. ~ Edmund Waller

William Stillman continues his fascinating exploration of the myriad connections between autism and human personality. The Soul of Autism makes a strong case for why we should embrace rather than fear the differences between us. ~ Dean Hamer

There is nothing to fear. There is no such thing as death. Death has nothing to do with us. But you said something about being talented
that it makes one different. Now, that does have something to do with us. And talent in the highest and broadest sense means talent for life. ~ Boris Pasternak

Either the gods have power or they don't. If they don't,
why pray? If they do, then why not pray for something else
instead of for things to happen or not to happen? Pray not to
feel fear. Or desire, or grief. If the gods can do anything, they
can surely do that for us. - But those are things the gods left up to me.
Then isn't it better to do what's up to you - like a free man
- than to be passively controlled by what isn't, like a slave
or beggar? And what makes you think the gods don't care
about what's up to us?
Start praying like this and you'll see.
Not "some way to sleep with her" - but a way to stop
wanting to.
Not "some way to get rid of him" - but a way to stop
trying.
Not "some way to save my child" - but a way to lose your
fear.
Redirect your prayers like that, and watch what happens. ~ Marcus Aurelius

A true fear of God makes us respect more what God requires and commands than what our corrupt heart desires and suggests. It subdues or unruly passions, and brings them within the compass of duty. It makes us deny ourselves and our own desires, and, though through the corruption of our nature and inborn pride we are loath to submit, yet God's fear will bring down that proud mind and make us humble and gentle. It will keep those who are in authority from tyranny, cruelty, and too much severity, and it will keep those who are under subjection from giving half-truths, deceit, and conspiracies. ~ William Gouge

Accustom yourself to the belief that death is of no concern to us, since all good and evil lie in sensation and sensation ends with death. Therefore the true belief that death is nothing to us makes a mortal life happy, not by adding to it an infinite time, but by taking away the desire for immortality. For there is no reason why the man who is thoroughly assured that there is nothing to fear in death should find anything to fear in life. So, too, he is foolish who says that he fears death, not because it will be painful when it comes, but because the anticipation of it is painful; for that which is no burden when it is present gives pain to no purpose when it is anticipated. Death, the most dreaded of evils, is therefore of no concern to us; for while we exist death is not present, and when death is present we no longer exist. It is therefore nothing either to the living or to the dead since it is not present to the living, and the dead no longer are. ~ Epicurus

The Sons of the Serpent - they want you angry. At the world. They need us all to feel like victims. And it's an easy get, because times suck. Every day is a battle. We all feel like we're on the wrong end of the wrecking ball. We feel at the mercy of forces beyond our control, and that makes us scared. And that's rocket fuel for S.O.B.'s like the Serpents. They prey on us when we're frightened. They tell us our enemies are the immigrants down the street, or the food stamp family next door. They encourage us to turn our fear into rage, and we fall for it because it's 'empowering.' Except it's not. We don't become 'empowered.' We become weaponized. ~ Mark Waid

Fear-based repentance makes us hate ourselves. Joy-based repentance makes us hate the sin. ~ Timothy Keller

Zora Neale Hurston said fear is the greatest emotion and I said, 'No my dear sister.' Fear will make us move to save our own skins. Love also makes us save ourselves, but it will make us move to save others as well. ~ Sonia Sanchez

Americans have become a nation afraid." "Of?" "A shooter on a rampage in a school cafeteria. A hijacked plane toppling a high-rise building. A bomb in a train or rental van. A postal delivery carrying anthrax. The power to kill is out there for anyone willing to use it. All it takes is access to the Internet or a friendly gun shop." Ryan let me go on. "We fear terrorists, snipers, hurricanes, epidemics. And the worst part is we've lost faith in the government's ability to protect us. We feel powerless and that causes constant anxiety, makes us fear things we don't understand. ~ Kathy Reichs

This is Europe's true predicament: together with the fear of man we have also lost the love of man, reverence for man, confidence in man, indeed the will to man. Now the sight of man makes us weary. What is nihilism today if not that? ~ Friedrich Nietzsche

Communion is at the heart of the mystery of our humanity. It means accepting the presence of another inside oneself, as well as accepting the reciprocal call to enter into another. Communion, which implies the security and insecurity of trust, is a constant struggle against all the powers of fear and selfishness in us, as well as the seemingly resilient human need to control another person. To a certain extent we lose control in our own lives when we are open to others. Communion of hearts is a beautiful but also a dangerous thing. Beautiful because it is a new form of liberation; it brings a new joy because we are no longer alone. We are close even if we are far away. Dangerous because letting down our inner barriers means that we can be easily hurt. Communion makes us vulnerable. ~ Jean Vanier

We want to be women who advance. The kingdom of God is advancing, and the gates of hell will not prevail against it. Don't you want to advance along with it? Don't you want to help it to advance? And don't you want to advance into the deeper realms of the heart of God? Advance into more healing, more deliverance, more intimacy, more life? Fear makes us retreat. Love causes it to advance. ~ Stasi Eldredge

Fear of death makes us devoid both of valour and religion. For want of valour is want of religious faith. ~ Mahatma Gandhi

Come all you young rebels and list while I sing
For the love of one's country is a terrible thing
It banishes fear with the speed of a flame
And it makes us all part of their pattriot game. ~ Dominic Behan

Fear is good, for it makes us cautious and aids survival. Not so with terror. It is like slow poison, paralyzing the limbs and blurring the mind ... Never, when in danger, ask yourself, What will they do to me? Instead think, What can I do to prevent them? ~ David Gemmell