“Fear prophets, Adso, and those prepared to die for the truth, for as a rule they make many others die with them, often before them, at times instead of them. Jorge did a diabolical thing because he loved truth so lewdly that he dared anything in order to destroy falsehood. Jorge feared the second book of Aristotle because it perhaps really did teach how to distort the face of everything truth so that we would not become the slaves of our ghosts. Perhaps the mission of those who love mankind is to make people laugh at the truth, to make truth laugh, because the only truth lies in learning to free ourselves from the insane passion for truth.”

— Umberto Eco, “The Name of the Rose”

“Underneath all the wanting and grasping, underneath the need to understand is what we have called ‘the body of fear.’ At the root of suffering is a small heart, frightened to be here, afraid to trust the river of change, to let go in this changing world.”

— Jack Kornfield, “After the Ecstasy, the Laundry”

“The only rule that ever made sense to me I learned from a history, not an economics, professor at Wharton. ‘Fear’ he used to say, ‘fear is the most valuable commodity in the universe.’ That blew me away. ‘Turn on the TV,’ he’d say. ‘What are you seeing? People selling their products? No. People selling the fear of you having to live without their products.’ Fuckin’ A, was he right. Fear of aging, fear of loneliness, fear of poverty, fear of failure. Fear is the most basic emotion we have. Fear is primal. Fear sells.”

— Max Brooks, “World War Z”

“To be hopeful in bad times is not just foolishly romantic. It is based on the fact that human history is a history not only of cruelty, but also of compassion, sacrifice, courage, kindness.

What we choose to emphasize in this complex history will determine our lives. If we see only the worst, it destroys our capacity to do something. If we remember those times and places — and there are so many — where people have behaved magnificently, this gives us the energy to act, and at least the possibility of sending this spinning top of a world in a different direction.

And if we do act, in however small a way, we don’t have to wait for some grand utopian future. The future is an infinite succession of presents, and to live now as we think human beings should live, in defiance of all that is bad around us, is itself a marvelous victory.”

— Howard Zinn, “A Power Governments Cannot Suppress”

“So what I think we could aim for in the way of human civilization and culture would be a system in which we are all highly aware of our existing interconnection and unity with the whole domain of nature, and therefore do not have to go to all sorts of wild extremes to find that union. In other words, look at the number of people we know who are terrified of silence, and who have to have something going all the time, some noise streaming into their ears. They’re doing that because of their intense sense of loneliness. And so when they feel silent, they feel lonely and they want to escape from it. Or people who just want to get together. As we say, they want to escape from themselves. More people spend more time running away from themselves. Isn’t that wretched? What a definition. What an experience of self if it’s something you’ve always got to be running away from and forgetting. Say you read a mystery story. Why? So you forget yourself. You join a religion. Why? To forget yourself. You get absorbed in a political movement. Why? To forget yourself. Well it must be a pretty miserable kind of self if you have to forget it like that. Now for a person who doesn’t have an isolated sense of self, he has no need to run away from it, because he knows.”

— Alan Watts

“Mind is like the wood or stone from which a person carves an image. If he carves a dragon or a tiger, and seeing it fears it, he is like a stupid person creating a picture of hell and then afraid to face it. If he does not fear it, then his unnecessary thoughts will vanish.”

— Bodhidharma, “”

“Sitting quietly, let the mind involve itself in the stories that flow through consciousness. Notice the dynamic that powers each story: the concerns and desires, worries and distractions. As you become more familiar with these patterns, look for second-level stories that support the stories on the surface; for instance, stories about who you are and what you stand for, or stories that make sense of longstanding patterns or conditions. Notice which stories refer more to the past and which to the future. How does the ‘objective’ time that measures out events and sequences figure in the stories you tell? Is it a minor character? Does it have a role to play at all? (…)

As you become familiar with the stories you typically tell, you will notice how many of them express a characteristic negativity. There are stories that explain inaction or justify distraction, that feed daydreams of escape, excuse failures, and calm fears. There are other stories that fuel anxiety and intensify concern. Pay close attention to the patterns of the stories that you typically tell, looking for those that consistently repeat themselves. Can you touch the energy bound up in those stories? Can you release it?”

— Tarthang Tulku, “Dynamics of Time & Space: Transcending Linits on Knowledge”

“I can live with doubt and uncertainty and not knowing. I think it’s much more interesting to live not knowing than to have answers which might be wrong. I have approximate answers, and possible beliefs, and different degrees of certainty about different things, but I’m not absolutely sure of anything, and there are many things that I don’t know anything about. But I don’t have to know an answer, I don’t feel frightened by not knowing things, by being lost in the mysterious universe without having any purpose, which is the way it really is, as far as I can tell possible — it doesn’t frighten me.”

— Richard Feynman, “The Feynman Series - Beauty”

“Mystery will control you, knowledge will make you the controller. Mystery will possess you. You cannot possess the mysterious; it is so vast and your hands are so small. It is so infinite, you cannot possess it, you will have to be possessed by it — and that is the fear.

Knowledge you can possess, it is so trivial; knowledge you can control. This temptation of the mind to reduce every wonder, every mystery, to a question, is basically fear-oriented. We are afraid, afraid of the tremendousness of life, of this incredible existence. We are afraid.

Out of fear we create some small knowledge around ourselves as a protection, as an armor, as a defense.”

— Osho

“The conquest of the fear of death is the recovery of life’s joy. One can experience an unconditional affirmation of life only when one has accepted death, not as contrary to life, but as an aspect of life. Life in its becoming is always shedding death, and on the point of death. The conquest of fear yields the courage of life.”

— Joseph Campbell, “The Power of Myth”