Fright Quotes (11 quotes)
Frighten Quotes
Frighten Quotes
~~[need primary source]~~ One of the most frightening things in the Western world and in this country in particular is the number of people who believe in things that are scientifically false. If someone tells me that the earth is less than 10000 years old in my opinion he should see a psychiatrist.
As quoted, without citation, in Joan Konner, The Atheist’s Bible: An Illustrious Collection of Irreverent Thought (2007), 46. Webmaster is dubious about authenticity, and as yet, has been unable to find a reliable primary source - can you help?
A work of genius is something like the pie in the nursery song, in which the four and twenty blackbirds are baked. When the pie is opened, the birds begin to sing. Hereupon three fourths of the company run away in a fright; and then after a time, feeling ashamed, they would fain excuse themselves by declaring, the pie stank so, they could not sit near it. Those who stay behind, the men of taste and epicures, say one to another, We came here to eat. What business have birds, after they have been baked, to be alive and singing? This will never do. We must put a stop to so dangerous an innovation: for who will send a pie to an oven, if the birds come to life there? We must stand up to defend the rights of all the ovens in England. Let us have dead birds..dead birds for our money. So each sticks his fork into a bird, and hacks and mangles it a while, and then holds it up and cries, Who will dare assert that there is any music in this bird’s song?
Co-author with his brother Augustus William Hare Guesses At Truth, By Two Brothers: Second Edition: With Large Additions (1848), Second Series, 86. (The volume is introduced as “more than three fourths new.” This quote is identified as by Julius; Augustus had died in 1833.)
But I don’t have to know an answer. I don’t feel frightened by not knowing things, by being lost in a mysterious universe without any purpose, which is the way it really is, so far as I can tell. It doesn’t frighten me.
In Richard Feynman and Jeffrey Robbins (ed.), The Pleasure of Finding Things Out: The Best Short Works of Richard Feynman (1999), 25, last sentence of Chap. 1. The chapter, with the same title as the book, is an edited transcript of an interview with Feynman made for the BBC television program Horizon (1981).
Chemically induced hallucinations, delusions and raptures may be frightening or wonderfully gratifying; in either case they are in the nature of confidence tricks played on one’s own nervous system.
In 'Return Trip to Nirvana', Sunday Telegraph (12 Mar 1961), as collected in Kaleidoscope: Essays from Drinkers of Infinity, and The Heel of Achilles and Later Pieces and Stories (1981), 80 (source cited on p.72, footnote).
I don’t use drugs, my dreams are frightening enough.
As given, without citation, in G. Kleiser, Dictionary of Proverbs (2005), 77.
On May 7, a few weeks after the accident at Three-Mile Island, I was in Washington. I was there to refute some of that propaganda that Ralph Nader, Jane Fonda and their kind are spewing to the news media in their attempt to frighten people away from nuclear power. I am 71 years old, and I was working 20 hours a day. The strain was too much. The next day, I suffered a heart attack. You might say that I was the only one whose health was affected by that reactor near Harrisburg. No, that would be wrong. It was not the reactor. It was Jane Fonda. Reactors are not dangerous.
From statement, published as a two-page advertisement, 'I Was the Only Victim of Three-Mile Island', placed by Dresser Industries in The Wall Street Journal (31 Jul 1979), U.S. Representative Larry McDonald entered the entire content of the ad, as Extensions of Remarks, into the Congressional Record: Proceedings and Debates of the Congress (18 Dec 1979), 36876. [Note: The Three Mile Island accident happened on 28 Mar 1979. —Webmaster]
Our spirit is often led astray by its own delusions; it is even frightened by its own work, believes that it sees what it fears, and in the horror of night sees at last the objects which itself has produced.
Translation of the original French, “Souvent de ses erreurs notre âme est obsedée; De son ouvrage même elle est intimidée, Croit voir ce qu’elle craint, et dans l’horreur des nuits, Voit enfin les objets qu’elle-même a produits.” From Sémiramis, Act 1, Scene 5. Accompanied with the translation in Craufurd Tait Ramage, Beautiful Thoughts from French and Italian Authors (1866), 364.
Some critics are like chimney-sweepers; they put out the fire below, or frighten the swallows from their nests above: they scrape a long time in the chimney, cover themselves with soot, and bring nothing away but a bag of cinders, and then sing from the top of the house as if they had built it.
In 'Table-Talk', The Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow: Volume 3 (1883), 1355.
Sometimes truth frightens us. And in fact we know that it is sometimes deceptive, that it is a phantom never showing itself for a moment except to ceaselessly flee, that it must be pursued further and ever further without ever being attained. … Yet truth should not be feared, for it alone is beautiful.
As translated by George Bruce Halsted, in 'The Value of Science', Popular Science Monthly (Sep 1906), 69 193.
That many very remarkable change and involuntary motions are sudden produced in the body by various affections of the mind, is undeniably evinced from a number of facts. Thus fear often causes a sudden and uncommon flow of pale urine. Looking much at one troubled with sore eyes, has sometimes affected the spectator with the same disease.—Certain sounds cause a shivering over the whole body.—The noise of a bagpipe has raised in some persons an inclination to make urine.—The sudden appearance of any frightful object, will, in delicate people, cause an uncommon palpitation of the heart.—The sight of an epileptic person agitated with convulsions, has brought on an epilepsy; and yawning is so very catching, as frequently to be propagated through whole companies.
In An Essay on the Vital and Other Involuntary Motions of Animals (1751), 253-254.
There is nothing frightening about an eternal dreamless sleep. Surely it is better than eternal torment in Hell and eternal boredom in Heaven.
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In science it often happens that scientists say, 'You know that's a really good argument; my position is mistaken,' and then they would actually change their minds and you never hear that old view from them again. They really do it. It doesn't happen as often as it should, because scientists are human and change is sometimes painful. But it happens every day. I cannot recall the last time something like that happened in politics or religion.
(1987) -- 
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