“Neither a man nor a crowd nor a nation can be trusted to act humanely or to think sanely under the influence of a great fear.”
More from Bertrand Russell on Fear
“Those who fear life are already three parts dead.”
“Men fear thought as they fear nothing else on earth -- more than ruin, more even than death.”
“Fear is the main source of superstition, and one of the main sources of cruelty. To conquer fear is the beginning of wisdom.”
“Collective fear stimulates herd instinct, and tends to produce ferocity toward those who are not regarded as members of the herd.”
Others on Fear
Dale Carnegie
8 quotes“Don't be afraid of enemies who attack you. Be afraid of the friends who flatter you.”
Veronica Roth
6 quotes“Killing you is not the worst thing they can do to you," I say. "Controlling you is.”
Taylor Swift
6 quotes“I’m intimidated by the fear of being average.”
Michel de Montaigne
5 quotes“He who fears he shall suffer, already suffers what he fears.”
George R.R. Martin
5 quotes“Laughter is poison to fear.”
Kafka
5 quotes“My 'fear' is my substance, and probably the best part of me.”
Laurell K. Hamilton
5 quotes“People are supposed to fear the unknown, but ignorance is bliss when knowledge is so damn frightening.”
Seneca
4 quotes“There are more things, Lucilius, likely to frighten us than there are to crush us; we suffer more often in imagination t...”
Edmund Burke
4 quotes“No power so effectually robs the mind of all its powers of acting and reasoning as fear.”
Sylvia Plath
4 quotes“The tongues of hell are dull.”
Ray Bradbury
4 quotes“You're afraid of making mistakes. Don't be. Mistakes can be profited by.”
Frank Herbert
4 quotes“Fear is the mind-killer.”