I'm afraid of Americans.

And yet I am afraid, afraid of what my words will do to me, to my refuge, yet again.... If I could speak and yet say nothing, really nothing? Then I might escape being gnawed to death.

We are turning into a nation of whimpering slaves to Fear — fear of war, fear of poverty, fear of random terrorism, fear of getting down-sized or fired because of the plunging economy, fear of getting evicted for bad debts or suddenly getting locked up in a military detention camp on vague charges of being a Terrorist sympathizer.

"Once a government is committed to the principle of silencing the voice of opposition, it has only one way to go, and that is down the path of increasingly repressive measures, until it becomes a source of terror to all its citizens and creates a country where everyone lives in fear."

[<i>Special Message to the Congress on the Internal Security of the United States</i>, August 8, 1950]

Anyone in the United States today who isn't paranoid must be crazy.

There is always danger for those who are afraid.

"Restriction of free thought and free speech is the most dangerous of all subversions. It is the one un-American act that could most easily defeat us."

[<i>The One Un-American Act</i>, Speech to the Author's Guild Council in New York, on receiving the 1951 Lauterbach Award (December 3, 1952)]

He of whom many are afraid ought to fear many.

Everyone is afraid of something. The enemy must be, too. The more powerful they are, the more they have to lose to their fears.

in every organization everyone rises to the level at which they become paralyzed with fear.

No one can terrorize a whole nation, unless we are all his accomplices.

That, to me, is the quintessential experience of living in the United States: constantly worrying whether or not the country is about to fall apart.

When we're afraid, we lose all sense of analysis and reflection. Our fear paralyzes us. Besides, fear has always been the driving force behind all dictators' repression.

Any person with any imagination is bound to be afraid.