I thought it would be appropriate to write a little diary on the use and misuse of fear by this Misadministration. But a cursory search of the Internets reveals that much better minds than mine have already diaried this topic.
There is nothing so ingenious as fear; it is even more ingenious than hatred, especially when its concern is with the preservation of money.
- Bayle Saint John
Money? what does that have to do with Operation Iraqi Liberation?
There have been quite a few commentaries on fear, from well-known and not-so-well known people:
The slave of fear: the worst of slaveries.
- George Bernard Shaw, Misalliance
I know that oft we tremble at an empty terror, but the false phantasm brings a real misery.
[Ger., Ich weiss, dass man vor leeren Schrecken zittert;
Doch wahres Ungluck bringt der falsche Wahn.]
- Johann Christoph Friedrich von Schiller,
Piccolomini (V, 1, 105)
Fear is a disease that eats away at logic and makes man inhuman.
- Marian Anderson
Naturally, the Bard of Avon had more than a few zingers to add:
To fear the foe, since fear oppresseth strength,
Gives, in your weakness, strength unto your foe,
And so your follies fight against yourself.
- William Shakespeare,
The Tragedy of King Richard the Second
(Carlisle at III, ii)
When our actions do not,
Our fears do make us traitors.
- William Shakespeare, Macbeth
(Lady Macduff at IV, ii)
Hang those that talk of fear.
- William Shakespeare
And from the Terrible Twosome of the American Enlightenment:
We are ashamed of our fear; for we know that a righteous man would not suspect danger nor incur any. Wherever a man feels fear, there is an avenger.
- Henry David Thoreau
Fear always springs from ignorance.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson, The American Scholar
The uselessness and dysfunctionality of fear is a field oft plowed:
Nothing in life is to be feared. It is only to be understood.
- Marie Curie
How very little can be done under the spirit of fear.
- Florence Nightingale
Of all the liars in the world, sometimes the worst are your own fears.
- Rudyard Kipling
Fear is a dagger with which hypocrisy assassinates the soul.
- Robert Green Ingersoll
And finally, from the "Grandfather" of our country - or perhaps the favorite uncle:
Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.
Benjamin Franklin, Historical Review of Pennsylvania, 1759
I hoped that this Congress would have taken those last words to heart, but apparently many of our Democratic members have never heard of Ambassador Franklin.