So what oppresses and scares us? It is our own thoughts, obviously.

I am fascinated at how the things that set us free are also the same things that oppress us; you could say that the concept of the deserted island is both our greatest fantasy and our greatest fear.

What really frightens and dismays us is not external events themselves, but the way in which we think about them. It is not things that disturb us, but our interpretation of their significance.

When we oppress others, we end up oppressing ourselves.

When people are intimidated about having their own opinions, oppression is at hand.

But it is not really difference the oppressor fears so much as similarity. He fears he will discover in himself the same aches, the same longings as those of the people he has shitted on. He fears the immobilization threatened by his own own incipient guilt. He fears he will have to change his life once he has seen himself in the bodies of the people he has called different. He fears the hatred, anger, and vengeance of those he has hurt.

This movie is about the fact that personal repression gives rise to larger political oppression.… That when we're afraid of certain things in ourselves or we're afraid of change, we project those fears on to other things, and a lot of very ugly social situations can develop.

Thoughts are tyrants that return again and again to torment us.

People find particular things, however, frightening; and it's when someone is able to threaten or entice us with those that the man himself becomes frightening.

What worries you masters you.

We are what we fear in others

Keeping people neurotic and depressed and ignorant and self-doubting is oppressive.

The world still terrifies us. We're told to write what we know. We write what we're afraid of. Only then is our fear made small by what we love.

The biggest obstacle we face is the fear people have about their freedom, the fear of deciding for themselves, the fear of joining a transformative force. We are overcoming that fear.