#fear

It is better to be respected by few than to be feared by all ↗

— mng

#lesson #respect #respect

Je dois dire un mot sur la peur. C'est le seul adversaire réel de la vie. Il n'y a que la peur qui puisse vaincre la vie. C'est une ennemie habile et perfide, et je le sais bien. Elle n'a aucune décence, ne respecte ni lois ni conventions, ne manifeste aucune clémence. Elle attaque votre point le plus faible, qu'elle trouve avec une facilité déconcertante. Elle naît d'abord et invariablement dans votre esprit. Un moment vous vous sentez calme, en plein contrôle, heureux. Puis la peur, déguisée en léger doute, s'immisce dans votre pensée comme un espion. Ce léger doute rencontre l'incrédulité et celle-ci tente de le repousser. Mais l'incrédulité est un simple fantassin. Le doute s'en débarrasse sans se donner de mal. Vous devenez inquiet. La raison vient à votre rescousse. Vous êtes rassuré. La raison dispose de tous les instruments de pointe de la technologie moderne. Mais, à votre surprise et malgré des tactiques supérieures et un nombre impressionnant de victoires, la raison est mise K.- O. Vous sentez que vous vous affaiblissez, que vous hésitez. Votre inquiétude devient frayeur. ↗

— Yann Martel

#life

It's more useful to have someone fear you than respect you. ↗

— J. Cornell Michel

#apocalyptic #fear #fearful #important #respect

The potential, for anything, was overwhelming to a degree that bothered him. It wasn’t, he thought, the idea of power. It certainly wasn’t that nervous feeling T.C. would get in the pit of his stomach when he knew he had an incredible opportunity in front of him, that amazing brief pause before an act of creation. This was something else. Something to fear and respect. ↗

— Adam P. Knave

#fear #opportunity #potential #power #respect

["The Devil in the Dark"] impressed me because it presented the idea, unusual in science fiction then and now, that something weird, and even dangerous, need not be malevolent. That is a lesson that many of today's politicians have yet to learn. ↗

— Arthur C. Clarke

#fear #politicians #politics #science-fiction #star-trek

So one must be resigned to being a clock that measures the passage of time, now out of order, now repaired, and whose mechanism generates despair and love as soon as its maker sets it going? Are we to grow used to the idea that every man relives ancient torments, which are all the more profound because they grow comic with repetition? That human existence should repeat itself, well and good, but that it should repeat itself like a hackneyed tune, or a record a drunkard keeps playing as he feeds coins into the jukebox... ↗

— Stanisław Lem

#cycles #despair #emotion #fear #free-will

All space is relative. There is no such thing as size. The telescope and the microscope have produced a deadly leveling of great and small, far and near. The only little thing is sin, the only great thing is fear! ("The Jelly-Fish") ↗

— David H. Keller

#fear #relativity #scale #science #size

Cancer. The word meant the same to me as tsunami or piranha. I had never seen them; I wasn't even quite sure what they were, but I knew they were bad and I knew in many cases they were deadly. ↗

— Natalie Palmer

#fear #second-kiss #cancer

... there's fear that keeps you safe, and fear that warns you, and then there's fear of another sort. The kind that makes you turn on your friends, that irises the world down to one frightened person. ↗

— Margaret Ronald

#urban-fantasy #urban-fantasy

Human spirit is the ability to face the uncertainty of the future with curiosity and optimism. It is the belief that problems can be solved, differences resolved. It is a type of confidence. And it is fragile. It can be blackened by fear, and superstition. By the year 2050, when the conflict began, the world had fallen upon fearful, superstitious times. ↗

— Bernard Beckett

#curiosity #fear #fragile #optimism #spirit