John Steinbeck Quotes

I have a big fear of change, or negative change, anyway. I'm basically the same person I was when I won 'Idol,' or when I was 10.

There seemed to be endless obstacles... it seemed that the root cause of them all was fear.

People are afraid of things they don't understand. They don't know how to relate. It threatens their security, their existence, their career, image.

Sureness is something like a neck brace, which we clamp around our lives, hoping to somehow protect ourselves from the frightening, constant whiplash of change. Sadly, the brace doesn't always hold.

The one permanent emotion of the inferior man is fear - fear of the unknown, the complex, the inexplicable. What he wants above everything else is safety.

Those who love to be feared fear to be loved, and they themselves are more afraid than anyone, for whereas other men fear only them, they fear everyone.

That's probably the only thing I am afraid of: time.

You wouldn't believe how many philosophers are afraid of movement.

I think you get to a time in life where by definition stuff's turning to quicksand and wherever you can get some solid footing of the familiar suddenly becomes real comforting.

I don't like change.

What if I told you that 10 years from now, your life would be exactly the same? I doubt you would be happy. So, why are you so afraid of change?

I understand that change is frightening for people, especially if there's nothing to go to. It's best to stay where you are. I understand that.

We do not have a fear of the unknown. What we fear is giving up the known.

I think that fear comes about when there's things in the world that we want to change, things we're scared or angry about, and we can't change them, and so we become fearful; we develop anxiety.

I think sometimes people are scared to change. Sometimes people are scared to do something different, especially if they've been successful at something.

Only the insecure strive for security.

I've always walked around with the sense that the world is not a safe place. I didn't get the spontaneous gene or the adventure one, really. After going through the day with its stresses, when I shut that door at night, I don't have to deal with anything but dinner, 'E.R.' and my bathrobe.

The young person isn't certain that love can be real; the middle-aged man is only discovering that it is; and the older person seems so sure of it. I was interested in the way that many of us go through the whole of our lives staying with someone just out of complacency, because leaving isn't easy.

I've always felt that if you back down from a fear, the ghost of that fear never goes away. It diminishes people.

I've gotten to the point that I don't even know what tomorrow brings. When I'm teaching, obviously I'm in town for the class every week.

The way you conquer fear is to feel it all the way, and then you'll find out that there's nothing there - it's just emotion.

It is when we all play safe that we create a world of utmost insecurity.

Pat Phoenix kept that amazing sassy look. I always wonder, was that because she was thrilled with that look, and thought it looked marvellous, or was it because she was too scared to change it? It's a double thing. Security and insecurity.

Actually, to be honest, this is a useful time to not be knowing what I'll be doing in 2013 or 2014, because really, for the last however many years, I've known what I've been doing for years and years ahead. You get into a cycle of non-reflection, and that gets a bit scary.

One reason we resist making deliberate choices is that choice equals change and most of us, feeling the world is unpredictable enough, try to minimise the trauma of change in our personal lives.