Change scares people. Makes them dangerous.

Tradition was safety; change was danger.

Because change is terrifying. Choices are terrifying. But having a thing in your head that kills you if you make a mistake is more terrifying.

Anxiety grew, the fear that always comes when an established pattern falters.

There’s a certain comfort that comes with knowing how you fit in the world. Anything that shakes up that comfort — even if it could potentially make your life better — is inherently scary.

If you think adventure is dangerous, try routine; it is lethal.

The unpredictability of not having their needs met in a timely, judicious fashion was not only frightening, it was potentially life-threatening.

Change threatens, and its possibility creates frightened, angry people. They are found in their purest essence on the extreme right, but in all of us there is some fear of process, of change.

When change threatens to rule, then the rules are changed.

But what if all the tranquility, all the comfort, all the contentment were now to come to a horrifying end?

It was not really alarming at first, since the change was subtle, but I did notice that my surroundings took on a different tone at certain times: the shadows of nightfall seemed more somber, my mornings were less buoyant, walks in the woods became less zestful, and there was a moment during my working hours in the late afternoon when a kind of panic and anxiety overtook me, just for a few minutes, accompanied by a visceral queasiness.

People don’t fear change. They fear loss.

The loss of comfort. The loss of certainty. The loss of who they thought they were.

I'm afraid of habit patterns...It would be too much of a routine if you had to establish definite ways of getting through things. You'd get very bored.

To go from a familiar thing, however undesirable, into the unknown, is always a matter for apprehension, and I suppose that is why so many people are afraid to die.