Edmund Burke on fear

All that is required for evil to prevail is for good men to do nothing.

No passion so effectually robs the mind of all its powers of acting and reasoning as fear.

The people never give up their liberties but under some delusion.

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)