Terror Management Quotes

The concept of progress acts as a protective mechanism to shield us from the terrors of the future.

The biggest straitjacket is all the prejudices that we carry around, and all the fears. But what if we just surrender to the fear? There are things greater than fear. The great, wonderful quality of human beings is that we can overcome even absolute terror, and we do.

The most exquisite pleasure in the practice of medicine comes from nudging a layman in the direction of terror, then bringing him back to safety again.

If a man is terrified, it's up to me to dispel that terror.

Let there be wicked kings and beheadings, battles and dungeons, giants and dragons, and let the villans be soundly killed at the end of the book. I think it is possible that by confining your child to the blameless stories of life in which nothing at all alarming ever happens, you would fail to banish the terrors, and would succeed in banishing all that can ennoble them or make them endurable.

Modern tyrants are terror managers. Do not allow your shock to be turned against your freedom.

I am pretty fearless, and you know why? Because I don't handle fear very well; I'm not a good terrified person.

We don't have to learn to live with terror, but we must be prepared and accept the reality it is here.

Focusing on one mildly disturbing, semi-controllable issue allows the mind to stuff much greater terrors in relatively tidy packages.

The demons are innumerable, appear at the most inconvenient times, and create panic and terror. But I have learnt that if I can master the negative forces and harness them to my chariot, then they can work to my advantage.

I stay on terra firma: the more firm, the less terror.

All that humans create serves solely to lessen the terror of existence.

Being scared by a movie offers a safe catharsis, because the terror is confined to the screen. It's an adrenalin spike, and when I come back down, I feel a bit more leveled.

That's how children deal with terror, they fall asleep.

Courage does not mean not fearing or not grieving. It does mean recognizing and resisting terror management right away, from the moment of the attack, precisely when it seems most difficult to do so.

The direst foe of courage is the fear itself, not the object of it; and the man who can overcome his own terror is a hero and more.

The ignorant frighten children with ghosts, and the better educated assure them there is no such thing. Our understanding may believe the latter, but our instincts believe the former; so that, out of this education, we retain the terror, and just believe enough to make it very troublesome whenever we are placed in circumstances that awaken it.