This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
"Are you afraid to find a loss of self in finding God?" - Helen Schucman, born Helen Cohn
"He who is too much afraid of being duped has lost the power of being magnanimous." - Henri Frédéric Amiel
"Be not afraid of life. Believe that life is worth living, and your belief will help create the fact." - Henry James
"Our civilization has fallen out of touch with night. With lights, we drive the holiness and beauty of night back to the forests and the sea; the little villages, the crossroads even, will have none of it. Are modern folk, perhaps, afraid of night? Do they fear that vast serenity, the mystery of infinite space, the austerity of stars?" - Henry Beston, born Henry Beston Sheahan
"Don't be afraid to cry. it will free your mind of sorrowful thoughts." - Hopi Proverbs
"A man who is not afraid is not aggressive, a man who has no sense of fear of any kind is really a free, a peaceful man. " - Jiddu Krishnamurti
"What is fear? Fear can exist only in relation to something, not in isolation. How can I be afraid of death, how can I be afraid of something I do not know? I can be afraid only of what I know. When I say I am afraid of death, am I really afraid of the unknown, which is death, or am I afraid of losing what I have known? My fear is not of death but of losing my association with things belonging to me. My fear is always in relation to the known, not to the unknown. " - Jiddu Krishnamurti
"I am afraid of anyone who disturbs them. Thus my fear is of the known, I am afraid of the accumulations, physical or psychological, that I have gathered as a means of warding off pain or preventing sorrow. Knowledge also helps to prevent pain. As medical knowledge helps to prevent physical pain, so beliefs help to prevent psychological pain, and that is why I am afraid of losing my beliefs, though I have no perfect knowledge or concrete proof of the reality of such beliefs." - Jiddu Krishnamurti
"If you have fear, you are bound by tradition, you follow some leader or guru. When you are bound by tradition, when you are afraid of your husband or your wife, you lose your dignity as an individual human being." - Jiddu Krishnamurti
"Nobody who is afraid of laughing, and heartily too at his friend, can be said to have a true and thorough love for him; and, on the other hand, it would portray a sorry want of faith to distrust a friend because he laughs at you. Few men, I believe, are much worth loving in whom there is not something well worth laughing at." - J. C. Hare (1795-1855) and A. W. Hare
"We are all afraid for our confidence, for the future, for the world. That is the nature of the human imagination. Yet every man, every civilization, has gone forward because of its engagement with what it has set itself to do. " - Jacob Bronowski
"Be not afraid of life. Believe that life IS worth living and your belief will help create the fact. " - James Truslow Adams
"Ignorance is always afraid of change. " - Jawaharlal Nehru
"All of us have a secret desire to be seen as saints, heroes, martyrs. We are afraid to be children, to be ourselves." - Jean Vanier
"People are afraid of themselves, of their own reality; their feelings most of all. People talk about how great love is, but that’s bullshit. Love hurts. Feelings are disturbing. People are taught that pain is evil and dangerous. How can they deal with love if they’re afraid to feel? Pain is meant to wake us up. People try to hide their pain. But they’re wrong. Pain is something to carry, like a radio. You feel your strength in the experience of pain. It’s all in how you carry it. That’s what matters. Pain is a feeling. Your feelings are a part of you. Your own reality. If you feel ashamed of them, and hide them, you’re letting society destroy your reality. You should stand up for your right to feel your pain" - Jim Morrison
"A child only pours herself into a little funnel or into a little box when she’s afraid of the world—when she’s been defeated. But when a child is doing something she’s passionately interested in, she grows like a tree—in all directions. This is how children learn, how children grow. They send down a taproot like a tree in dry soil. The tree may be stunted, but it sends out these roots, and suddenly one of these little taproots goes down and strikes a source of water. And the whole tree grows." - John Holt, fully John Caldwell Holt
"Don't be afraid of showing affection. Be warm and tender, thoughtful and affectionate. Men are more helped by sympathy than by service. Love is more than money, and a kind word will give more pleasure than a present." - John Lubbock, 1st Baron Avebury, 4th Baronet, Sir John Lubbock
"People who are most afraid of their dreams convince themselves they don't dream at all." - John Steinbeck, fully John Ernst Steinbeck
"The man who is afraid to risk failure seldom has to face success." - John Wooden, fully John Robert Wooden
"Men's actions depend to a great extent upon fear. We do things either because we enjoy doing them or because we are afraid not to do them." - John F. Milburn
"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. " - John F. Kennedy, fully John Fitzgerald "Jack" Kennedy
"I have never yet heard of a murderer who was not afraid of a ghost." - John Philpot Curran
"Resolved, never to do anything which I should be afraid to do if it were the last hour of my life." - Jonathan Edwards
"When we grow afraid of life and death, let us have the sense of the trustworthiness of the universe, of its encompassing embrace and its sustaining care." - Joshua L. Liebman, fully Joshua Loth Liebman
"The truth is that life is hard and dangerous; that he who seeks his own happiness does not find it; that he who is weak must suffer; that he who demands love will be disappointed; that he who is greedy will not be fed; that he who seeks peace will find strife; that truth is only for the brave; that joy is only for him who does not fear to be alone; that life is only for the one who is not afraid to die." - Joyce Cary
"If you are afraid of being lonely, don't try to be right." - Jules Renard, aka Pierre-Jules Renard
"Let us stop being afraid. Of our own thoughts, our own minds. Of madness, our own or others'. Stop being afraid of the mind itself, its astonishing functions and fandangos, its complications and simplifications, the wonderful operation of its machinery—more wonderful because it is not machinery at all or predictable." - Kate Millet, Katherine Murray Millett
"When we can begin to take our failures seriously, it means we are ceasing to be afraid of them. It is of immense importance to learn to laugh at ourselves." - Katherine Mansfield, pseudonymn of Kathleen Beauchamp, Mrs. J. M. Murry
"When we begin to take our failures non-seriously, it means we are ceasing to be afraid of them." - Katherine Mansfield, pseudonymn of Kathleen Beauchamp, Mrs. J. M. Murry
"Just fully being skillful involves total lack of inhibition. We are not afraid to be. We are not afraid to live. We must accept ourselves as being warriors. If we acknowledge ourselves as warriors, then there is a way in, because a warrior dares to be, like a tiger in the jungle." - Chögyam Trungpa, fully Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche
"If you realize that all things change, there is nothing you will hold onto. If you aren't afraid of dying, there is nothing you can't achieve. Trying to control the future is like trying to take the master carpenter's place. When you handle the master carpenter's tools chances are that you'll cut your hands. " - Lao Tzu, ne Li Urh, also Laotse, Lao Tse, Lao Tse, Lao Zi, Laozi, Lao Zi, La-tsze
"The most unfortunate thing that happens to a person who fears failure is that he limits himself by becoming afraid to try anything new. " - Leo Busacaglia
"Responsibility of any kind can seem intimidating and for this reason man may often be afraid of truly deep relationships with other human beings. A relationship suggests to him the most extreme of responsibilities. It implies a burden, a restriction of freedom, seldom the converse. A student in love class, for instance, commented, “I’ve always been afraid of deep relationship because of the responsibility it seemed to impose. I was afraid of the demands it would make of me and I worried I wouldn’t be able to meet those demands. I was amazed to find that when I did get the courage to form a relationship, I actually became stronger. I acquired two minds instead of one, four hands, four arms, four legs, and another’s world. In joining forces with someone, I got twice the strength to grow, with twice as many alternatives. Now it’s easier for me to love others. I am stronger and I am less afraid.” He had discovered an important insight." - Leo Busacaglia
"America is a nation fundamentally ambivalent about its children, often afraid of its children, and frequently punitive toward its children." - Letty Cottin Pogrebin
"Today we are afraid of simple words like goodness and mercy and kindness. We don't believe in the good old words because we don't believe in good old values anymore. And that's why the world is sick. " - Lin Yutang
"Everyone experiences fear. Yet it would take very little right thinking to realize why fear occurs. Few appreciate the real power of the mind, and no one remains fully aware of it all the time. However, if you hope to spare yourself from fear there are some things you must realize, and realize fully. The mind is very powerful, and never loses its creative force. It never sleeps. Every instant it is creating. It is hard to recognize that thought and belief combine into a power surge that can literally move mountains. It appears at first glance that to believe such power about yourself is arrogant, but that is not the real reason you do not believe it. You prefer to believe that your thoughts cannot exert real influence because you are actually afraid of them. This may allay awareness of the guilt, but at the cost of perceiving the mind as impotent. If you believe that what you think is ineffectual you may cease to be afraid of it, but you are hardly likely to respect it. There are no idle thoughts. All thinking produces form at some level." - A Course In Miracles, aka ACIM
"If you attack error in another, you will hurt yourself. You cannot know your brother when you attack him. Attack is always made upon a stranger. You are making him a stranger by misperceiving him, and so you cannot know him. It is because you have made him a stranger that you are afraid of him. Perceive him correctly so that you can know him. " - A Course In Miracles, aka ACIM
"So many times people are afraid of competition, when it should bring out the best in us. We all have talents and abilities, so why be intimidated by other people's skills?" - Lou Holtz, fully Louis Leo "Lou" Holtz
"To philosophize is only another way of being afraid and leads hardly anywhere but to cowardly make-believe." - Louis-Ferdinand Céline, pen name Louis-Ferdinand Destouches
"I am not afraid of storms, for I am learning how to sail my ship." - Louisa May Alcott
"In every adult human there still lives a helpless child who is afraid of aloneness.... This would be so even if there were a possibility for perfect babies and perfect mothers. " - Louise J. Kaplan
"Luck? I don't know anything about luck. I've never banked on it, and I'm afraid of people who do. Luck to me is something else: Hard work -- and realizing what is opportunity and what isn't." - Lucille Ball, fully Lucille Désirée Ball
"I'm afraid to speak or move for fear that all this wonderful beauty will just vanish... like a broken silence." - Lucy Maud Montgomery, aka Maud or L.M. Montgomery
"People all over the world are now discussing whether a third world war will break out. On this question, too, we must be mentally prepared and do some analysis. We stand firmly for peace and against war. However, if the imperialists insist on unleashing another war, we should not be afraid of it. Our attitude on this question is the same as our attitude towards any disturbance: first, we are against it; second, we are not afraid of it. The First World War was followed by the birth of the Soviet Union with a population of 200 million. The Second World War was followed by the emergence of the socialist camp with a combined population of 900 million. If the imperialists insist on launching a third world war, it is certain that several hundred million more will turn to socialism, and then there will not be much room left on earth for the imperialists; it is also likely that the whole structure of imperialism will utterly collapse." - Mao Tse-tung, alternatively Zedong, Ze dong, aka Chairman Mao
"Men are afraid that women will laugh at them. Women are afraid that men will kill them." - Margaret Atwood, fully Margaret Eleanor Atwood
"Fear is a question: What are you afraid of and why? Just as the seed of health is in illness, because illness contains information, our fears are a treasure house of self-knowledge if we explore them." - Marilyn Ferguson
"When we are afraid we ought not to occupy ourselves with endeavoring to prove that there is no danger, but in strengthening ourselves to go on in spite of the danger." - Mark Rutherford, pseudonymn for William Hale White
"Each man is afraid of his neighbor's disapproval - a thing which, to the general run of the human race, is more dreaded than wolves and death." - Mark Twain, pen name of Samuel Langhorne Clemens
"It is painful to be consciously of two worlds. The Wandering Jew in me seeks forgetfulness. I am not afraid to live on and on, if only I do not have to remember too much. A long past vividly remembered is like a heavy garment that clings to your limbs when you would run." - Mary Antin, fully Mary Antin Grabau