Quotes about Panic

...panic is a synonym for being; in its delays, in its swerving and rushing syntax, its frantic lists and questions, it fends off time and loss. Its opposite is oblivion: not the tranquil oblivion of sleep but the threatening oblivions of sex and death.

Panic is the sudden realization that everything around you is alive.

fear is a visceral response to imminent jeopardy, real or perceived, threatening to come crashing down on you with devastating results.

Panic: A highly underrated capacity thanks to which individuals are able to indicate clearly that something is wrong.... Given their head, most humans panic with great dignity and imagination. This can be called democratic expression or practical common sense.

Fright often occurs, caused by the unexpected.

The greatest danger is panic

said that fear is “excitement without breath.”)

Faith — what is this emotion but a desperate attempt to escape from mind-burning fear?

Fearful concatenation of circumstances.

Nothing. Heart pounding. Respiration and all somatic processes including all manner of diencephalic-controlled autonomic responses to crises: adrenalin greater heartbeat pulse rate glands pouring throat paralysed eyes staring bowels loose et al. Stomach queasy and sex instinct suppressed.

And yet nothing to see nothing for body to do. Run All in preparation for panic flight. But where to and why Mr Tagomi asked himself. No clue. Therefore impossible. Dilemma of civilized man body mobilized but danger obscure.

When in problem, or in doubt, run in cirles, scream and shout

Inside the word "emergency" is "emerge"; from an emergency new things come forth. The old certainties are crumbling fast, but danger and possibility are sisters. (p12)

The fear of freedom is strong in us. We call it chaos or anarchy, and the words are threatening. We live in a true chaos of contradicting authorities, an age of conformism without community, of proximity without communication. We could only fear chaos if we imagined that it was unknown to us, but in fact we know it very well. It is unlikely that the techniques of liberation spontaneously adopted by women will be in such fierce conflict as exists between warring self-interests and conflicting dogmas, for they will not seek to eliminate all systems but their own. However diverse they may be, they need not be utterly irreconcilable, because they will not be conquistatorial.

A fear is a reaction to a specific danger, to which the individual can make a specific adjustment. But what characterizes anxiety is the feeling of diffuseness and uncertainty and the experience of helplessness toward the threat.

Unless we are being chased by a deadly animal or deranged human, or face imminent physical harm like falling to our death, fear is just bad management of our mind.