Audre Lorde on fear

I am not free while any woman is unfree, even when her shackles are very different from my own.

Anger is an appropriate reaction to racist attitudes, as is fury when the actions arising from those attitudes do not change.

There are no new ideas, just new ways of giving those ideas we cherish breath and power in our own living.

Fear is your best friend or your worst enemy. It’s like fire. If you can control it, it can cook for you; it can heat your house. If you can’t control it, it will burn everything around you and destroy you. If you can control your fear, it makes you more alert, like a deer coming across the lawn.

Mike Tysonborn 1966

As a rule, men worry more about what they can’t see than about what they can.

Julius Caesar100–44 BC

The only thing we have to fear is fear itself⁠—nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance.

Franklin D. Roosevelt1882–1945Franklin D. Roosevelt’s First Inaugural Address (1933)