Great Throughts Treasury

This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.

Related Quotes

Copthorne Macdonald

The concept of a life experiment can help us get past the fear of failure. The only real failure is not to experiment.

Experiment | Failure | Fear | Life | Life | Past | Failure |

Dale Carnegie, originally spelled Dale Carnegey

Do the thing you fear to do and keep on doing it, that is the quickest and surest way ever yet discovered to conquer fear.

Fear |

Dan Millman, born Daniel Jay Millman

Whatever gave you the idea that fear was some kind of reason not to do something?... The only time you have a chance to show courage is when you're afraid.

Chance | Courage | Fear | Reason | Time |

Dale Carnegie, originally spelled Dale Carnegey

I know men and women can banish worry, fear and various kinds of illnesses, and can transform their lives by changing their thoughts. I know! I know! I know! I have seen such incredible transformations performed hundreds of times. I have seen them so often that I no longer wonder at them.

Fear | Men | Wonder | Worry |

Dale Carnegie, originally spelled Dale Carnegey

If you want to develop courage, do the thing you fear to do and keep on doing it until you get a record of successful experiences behind you. That is the quickest and surest way ever yet discovered to conquer fear.

Courage | Fear |

Dale Carnegie, originally spelled Dale Carnegey

Do you remember the things you worried about a year ago? How did they work out? Didn't you waste a lot of fruitless energy on account of most of them? Didn't most of them turn out all right after all?

Energy | Right | Waste | Work |

Denis E. Waitley

Procrastination is the fear of success. People procrastinate because they are afraid of the success that they know will result if they move ahead now. Because success is heavy, carries a responsibility with it, it is much easier to procrastinate and live on the 'someday I'll’ philosophy.

Fear | People | Philosophy | Procrastination | Responsibility | Success | Will | Afraid |

Dennis Genpo Merzel, aka Genpo Merzel Roshi

In the absence of discriminating thoughts, the mind as we know it ceases to exist. Our suffering - our feeling of discomfort, alienation, loneliness - arises because we create a dualistic way of perceiving everything that separates us from the external. When we view the so-called external phenomenal world as distinct from ourselves, then fear arises, fear that we will lose our lives, that we may not continue to exist. Out of that fear come anger, jealousy, greed, hatred, aversion, attachment - all kinds of clinging. All our problems arise out of seeing ourselves as separate entities. We cling to what we perceive as me; my physical body and my ideas, my mind, my thoughts, my understanding, my beliefs, my concepts, my opinions.

Absence | Alienation | Anger | Body | Fear | Greed | Ideas | Jealousy | Loneliness | Mind | Problems | Suffering | Understanding | Will | World |

Dale Carnegie, originally spelled Dale Carnegey

If you want to be happy, set yourself a goal that commands your thoughts, liberates your energy and inspires your hopes. Happiness is within you. It comes from doing some certain thing into which you can put all your thought and energy. If you want to be happy, get enthusiastic about something.

Energy | Happy | Thought | Happiness | Thought |

Edmund Burke

If a great change is to be made in human affairs, the minds of men will be fitted to it; the general opinions and feelings will draw that way. Every fear and hope will forward it; and they who persist in opposing this mighty current will appear rather to resist the decrees of Providence itself, than the mere designs of men. They will not be so much resolute and firm as perverse and obstinate.

Change | Fear | Feelings | Hope | Men | Providence | Will |

François de La Rochefoucauld, François VI, Duc de La Rochefoucauld, Prince de Marcillac, Francois A. F. Rochefoucauld-Liancourt

Our repentance is not so much regret for the evil we have done as fear of what may happen to us because of it.

Evil | Fear | Regret | Repentance |

François de La Rochefoucauld, François VI, Duc de La Rochefoucauld, Prince de Marcillac, Francois A. F. Rochefoucauld-Liancourt

The love of glory, the fear of disgrace, the incentive to succeed, the desire to live in comfort, and the instinct to humiliate others are often the cause of that courage so renowned among men.

Cause | Comfort | Courage | Desire | Disgrace | Fear | Glory | Instinct | Love | Men |

Edward Gibbon

Most of the crimes which disturb the internal peace of society are produced by the restraints which the necessary, but unequal, laws of property have imposed on the appetites of mankind, by confining to a few the possession of those objects that are coveted by many. Of all our passions and appetites, the love of power is of the most imperious and unsociable nature, since the pride of one man requires the submission of the multitude. In the tumult of civil discord, the laws of society lose their force, and their place is seldom supplied by those of humanity. The ardor of contention, the pride of victory, the despair of success, the memory of past injuries, and the fear of future dangers, all contribute to inflame the mind, and to silence the voice of pity. From such motives almost every page of history has been stained with civil blood.

Contention | Despair | Fear | Force | Future | History | Humanity | Love | Man | Mankind | Memory | Mind | Motives | Nature | Past | Peace | Pity | Power | Pride | Property | Silence | Society | Submission | Success | Society |

Epictetus "the Stoic" NULL

No one... who lives in error is free. Do you wish to live in fear? Do you wish to live in sorrow? Do you wish to live in perturbation? “By no means.” No one... who is in a state of fear or sorrow or perturbation is free; but whoever is delivered from sorrows and fears and perturbations, he is at the same time also delivered from servitude.

Error | Fear | Means | Servitude | Sorrow | Time |

Epictetus "the Stoic" NULL

If a man should transfer caution to those things in which the will may be exercised and the acts of the will, he will immediately, by willing to be cautious, have also the power of avoiding what he chooses: but if he transfer it to the things which are not in his power and will, and attempt to avoid the things which are in the power of others, he will of necessity fear, he will be unstable, he will be disturbed. For death or pain is not formidable, but the fear of pain or death.

Caution | Death | Fear | Man | Necessity | Pain | Power | Will |

Elisabeth Kübler-Ross

Love… is the only truly real and lasting experience in life. It is the opposite of fear, the essence of relationships, the core of creativity, the grace of power, an intricate part of who we are. It is the source of happiness, the energy that connects us and that lives within us… It is elusive... We are afraid that we will never have it, that if we find it, we will lose it or take it for granted, fearing it will not last.

Creativity | Energy | Experience | Fear | Grace | Life | Life | Love | Power | Will | Afraid |

English Proverbs

Fools rush in where angels fear to tread.

Angels | Fear |

Elisabeth Kübler-Ross

One of the greatest obstacles to giving unconditional love is our fear that the love may not be returned… When you feel unloved, it is not because you are not receiving love; it is because you are withholding love.

Fear | Giving | Love |