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We suffer more in fear than in fact
Echoes, per a summary
The accounts on fs.blog and tim.blog report the book as saying what we fear most rarely happens and constant vigilance is needless. It credits no one; the Seneca quote alongside is the blog’s.
- c. 64 CE
“There are more things, Lucilius, likely to frighten us than there are to crush us; we suffer more often in imagination than in reality.”
Seneca, Moral Letters. Earliest we can find, about 1,930 years earlier.
- 1997
fs.blog’s account of the book: Far too many people are walking around in a constant state of vigilance, their intuition misinformed about what really poses danger. It needn’t be so.
Secondhand, from fs.blog. Gavin de Becker, The Gift of Fear (1997).
This book is still in copyright, so we read an account of it, not the book.
Sources
fs.blog: fs.blog/
tim.blog: tim.blog/