Irvin D. Yalom Quotes

Mortality applies to every aspect of life. The fear of death is the driving fear of life.

The Fear of Death often proves Mortal.

Every fear is fear of death.

Some people are paralyzed by the consciousness of death, other people live with it.... The fatwa certainly made me think about it a lot more than I ever had. I guess I know I'm going to die, but then, so are you.

Death is like thunder in two particulars; we are alarmed, at the sound of it; and it is formidable only from that which preceded it.

For them that think death's honesty won't fall upon them naturally life sometimes must get lonely.

A small fact: You are going to die....does this worry you?

And he isn't crying for her, not for his grandma, he's crying for himself: that he: too, is going to die one day. And before that his friends wil die, and the friends of his friends, and, as time passes, the children of his friends, and, if his fate is truly bitter, his own children. (58)

No society has been able to abolish human sadness, no political system can deliver us from the pain of living, from our fear of death, our thirst for the absolute. It is the human condition that directs the social condition, not vice versa.

Fear of death has been the greatest ally of tyranny past and present.

Ever since childhood, when I found out that the ultimate fate for all humans was death, sheer terror and morbid curiosity had been fighting for supremacy in my mind.

The elimination of the fear of death transforms the individual's way of being in the world.

I think old people are scary. They remind you of your own death. People don't like to tell you that.

The fear of death comes from limited awareness.

I don't like being 50 and I don't like thinking about death.

I believe that fear of life brings a greater fear of death.

I've worked very hard to become comfortable with how death works and why it happens. I now know that death isn't out to get me.

Most people come to fear not death itself, but the many terrible ways of dying.

I don't think kids have a problem with death. It's us older ones who are nearer to it, that start being frightened.

We fear death so profoundly, not because it means the end of our body, but because it means the end of our consciousness - better to be a spirit in Heaven than a zombie on Earth.

Deep down, no one really believes they have a right to live. But this death sentence generally stays tucked away, hidden beneath the difficulty of living. If that difficulty is removed from time to time, death is suddenly there, unintelligibly.

I'm always on the verge of death in my head.

My day-to-day local issues are rooted in an underlying fear of death.

Fear of death has never played a large part in my consciousness - perhaps unimaginative of me.

I have seen the moment of my greatness flicker, and I have seen the eternal Footman hold my coat, and snicker, and in short, I was afraid.