Fear hems us in, stops us from thinking clearly, and prevents us from either challenging oppression or engaging calmly with the impersonal fates.
Interpretation
Fear limits our ability to think and act effectively.
This quote by George Monbiot expresses how fear can be a significant barrier to clear thinking and decisive action. It suggests that fear can imprison us, preventing us from confronting injustices and responding to life’s challenges with calmness and clarity.
In practice
In a motivational speech about overcoming personal challenges.
The notions that nature exists to serve us; that its value consists of the instrumental benefits we can extract; that this value can be measured in cash terms; and that what can't be measured does not matter, have proved lethal to the rest of life on Earth.
I believe that anyone who wants to stand in a national election should receive a course of psychotherapy. Completing the course should be a qualification for office. This wouldn't change the behaviour of psychopaths, but it might prevent some people who exercise power from imposing their own deep wounds on others.
I became an environmentalist because I love the living world, but I spend much of my life thinking about electricity, industrial processes and civil engineering.
Places that have become agricultural deserts, trashed by giant corporations, could be reforested, drawing carbon dioxide from the air on a vast scale. The ecosystems of land and sea could recover, not just in pockets but across great tracts of the planet.
Never underestimate the power of intrinsic values. They inspire every struggle for a better world.
Why is it so easy to save the banks - but so hard to save the biosphere?
I guess [coming out publicly] seems like a weight off my shoulders. I’ve been playing a lot better than I’ve ever played before. I think I’m just enjoying myself and I’m happy.
Sometimes, we feel like we don't want to offend people, but there are times that we need to express ourselves without fear that somebody is going to shut us down simply because we have differing opinions. That's how we grow.
Fearlessness is like a muscle. I know from my own life that the more I exercise it the more natural it becomes to not let my fears run me.
Negroes must be free in order to be equal, and they must be equal in order to be free... Men cannot win freedom unless they win equality. They cannot win equality unless they win freedom.
I showed her how I'd been making tiny cuts in my skin to let the badness and the pain leak out. They were shallow at first, and short, like claw marks made by a desperate cat that wanted to hid under the front porch. Cutting pain was a different flavor of hurt. It made it easier not to think about having my body and my family and my life stolen, made it easier not to care.
I remember my first day of chemo as if it were yesterday, hanging up my favorite summer dress like an athlete retiring a jersey. Within a few weeks, my waist had shrunk to a double zero - the size it was when I was in the sixth grade. My cheek bones jutting out. Rings under my eyes. Skin the color of chalk.
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