Only fear the Lord, and serve him in truth with all your heart: for consider how great things he hath done for you.
But if ye shall still do wickedly, ye shall be consumed, both ye and your king. I Samuel 12:24&25
But the Lord your God ye shall fear; and he shall deliver you out of the hand of all your enemies. II Kings 17:39
Wherefore now let the fear of the Lord be upon you; take heed and do it: for there is no iniquity with the Lord our God, nor respect of persons, nor taking of gifts. II Chronicles 19:7
Be not afraid of sudden fear, neither of the desolation of the wicked, when it cometh. Proverbs 3:25
I know that, whatsoever God doeth, it shall be for ever: nothing can be put to it, nor any thing taken from it: and God doeth it, that men should fear before him. Ecclesiastes 3:14
For in the multitude of dreams and many words there are also divers vanities: but fear thou God. Ecclesiastes 5:7
Let us hear the conclusion of the whole matter: Fear God, and keep his commandments: for this is the whole duty of man.
For God shall bring every work into judgment, with every secret thing, whether it be good, or whether it be evil. Ecclesiastes 12:13&14
For God hath not given us the spirit of fear; but of power, and of love, and of a sound mind. II Timothy 1:7
It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of a living God. Hebrews 10:31
They’ve exploited our anxieties to sell everything from cars to soap to the secret of eternal youth. Jacques Peretti, The Men Who Made Us Spend II, BBC 2014
This notion of soothing our fears has almost endless potential to get us to spend. ibid.
We’re obsessed with Statins and Cholesterol. ibid.
A new word has entered the lexicon – antibacterial. ibid.
If fear could be invoked to sell us flavoured water, anything seemed possible. ibid.
Fear is at the very heart of why we buy. ibid.
I have always been scared of you,
With your Luftwaffe, your gobbledygoo.
And your neat moustache
And your Aryan eye, bring blue.
Panzer-man, panzer-man O You – Sylvia Plath, Daddy 1963
Cry, the beloved country, for the unborn child that is the inheritor of our fear. Let him not love the earth too deeply. Let him not laugh too gladly when the water runs through his fingers, nor stand too silent when the setting sun makes red the veld with fire. Let him not be too moved when the birds of his land are singing, nor give too much of his heart to a mountain or a valley. For fear will rob him of all if he gives too much. Alan Paton, ‘Cry, the Beloved Country’
I’m not scared of you any more, am I? Alan Bleasdale, Play for Today: The Black Stuff starring Bernard Hill (Yosser) & Michael Angelis (Chrissie Todd) & Alan Igbon (Loggo Logmond) & Peter Kerrigan (George Malone) & Tom Georgeson (Dixie Dean) Yosser’s missus to Yosser, BBC 1980
When you’re scared, unless you’re very special, you think about yourself and yours. You think about feeding the kids and paying the rent. Alan Bleasdale, Boys from the Black Stuff: Jobs for the Boys, Chrissie in work hut, BBC 1982
You made me confess the fears that I have. But I will tell you also what I do not fear. I do not fear to be alone or to be spurned for another or to leave whatever I have to leave. And I am not afraid to make a mistake, even a great mistake, a lifelong mistake and perhaps as long as eternity too. James Joyce, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
The next day brought death and judgement, stirring his soul slowly from its listless despair. The faint glimmer of fear became a terror of spirit as the hoarse voice of the preacher blew death into his soul. He suffered its agony. He felt the death chill touch the extremities and creep onward towards the heart, the film of death veiling the eyes, the bright centres of the brain extinguished one by one like lamps, the last sweat oozing upon the skin, the powerlessness of the dying limbs, the speech thickening and wandering and failing, the heart throbbing faintly and more faintly, all but vanquished, the breath, the poor breath, the poor helpless human spirit sobbing and sighing, gurgling and rattling in the throat. ibid.
A fighter named Joe Grim, a second-rate boxer in the early part of the century whose forte was the ability to take punishment, would totter to the ropes at the end of a fight whatever his state, and call out to the crowd: ‘I am Joe Grim! I fear no man on earth!’ George Plimpton, 'The Greatest is Gone'
If you were to assume that many experts use their information to your detriment, you’d be right. Experts depend on the fact that you don’t have the information they have … Armed with information, experts can exert a gigantic, if unspoken leverage: fear. Steven D Levitt & Stephen J Dubner, Freakonomics
No one is more susceptible to an expert’s fearmongering than a parent. Fear is in fact a major component of the act of parenting. ibid.
But fear thrives in the present tense. That is why experts rely on it; in a world that is increasingly impatient with long-term processes, fear is a potent short-term play. ibid.
So why is a swimming pool less frightening than a gun? The thought of a child being shot through the chest with a neighbour’s gun is gruesome, dramatic, horrifying – in a word – outrageous. Swimming pools do not inspire outrage. ibid.
Fear presides over these memories, a perpetual fear. Of course no childhood is without its terrors, yet I wonder if I would have been a less frightened boy if Lindbergh hadn’t been president or if I hadn’t been the offspring of Jews. Philip Roth, The Plot Against America, opening paragraph
I think that most people would rather face the light of a real enemy than the darkness of their imagined fears. Max Brooks, World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War
Fear: we’re hardwired to respond … a man who has completely lost his ability … Jordy was eventually referred to a specialist and diagnosed with a rare condition … He could no longer produce adrenalin … Jordy’s entire fear response has broken down. Incredible Medicine: Dr Weston’s Casebook II, BBC 2017
The level of fear we feel in any particular situation is driven by a complex process in our brain we are only just beginning to fully understand. Phobias are an example of a fear response running out of control. The Human Body: Secrets of Your Life Revealed II: Survive, BBC 2017
Fear is a defence mechanism that tells you, You shouldn’t be here. Dying to Tell, war journalist, Netflix 2018
I get this guy-wrenching fear that won’t go away. Tommy Robinson, address Oxford Union 2014, Youtube 1.08.16
Fear is the only thing that can screw us. Gomorrah s2e10: Ghosts, Ciro to gang, Sky Atlantic 2016
Failure seldom stops you. What stops you is the fear of failure. Jack Lemmon
Not only are selves conditional but they die. Each day, we wake slightly altered, and the person we were yesterday is dead. So why, one could say, be afraid of death, when death comes all the time? John Updike, Self-Consciousness
Fear not death for the sooner we die, the longer we shall be immortal. Benjamin Franklin
Remember there is no courage without fear. Edge of Tomorrow 2014 starring Tom Cruise & Emily Blunt & Bill Paxton & Brendan Gleeson & Kick Gurry & Dragomir Mrsic & Charlotte Riley & Jonas Armstrong & Franz Darmeh & Marianne Jean-Baptiste & Masayoshi Haneda et al, director Doug Liman, Sergeant
Power does not corrupt. Fear corrupts ... perhaps the fear of a loss of power. John Steinbeck
Those of who merely face oblivion have less to fear. Professor Richard Dawkins, interview Adam Boulton Sky News 2008
Thus fear of danger is ten thousand times more terrifying than danger itself. Daniel Defoe, Robinson Crusoe
Why should I fear death? If I am, then death is not. If death is, then I am not. Epicurus
Every fundamentalist movement that I’ve studied ... is rooted in a deep fear, a profound terror of annihilation. Karen Armstrong
Let them hate, so long as they fear. Lucius Accius, Latin poet and dramatist 170-c.86 BC, cited Seneca, Dialogues bks 3-5