Quotes & Sayings About Social Anxiety

Exile from society allows person to disengage from meaningless activities and develop conscious awareness. A person's courageous struggle to eliminate the trepidation of social exile produces insights into what it means to be human. We can displace emotional disquiet by living a heightened state of existence. How a person's resolves the tremendous anxiety and dizziness that impetus comes from contemplating the inevitability of death, human freedom of choice, the moral responsibilities attendant to living in a selected manner, existential isolation, and the possibility of nothingness establishes a governing philosophical framework. A person must not rue ouster from society because release from moral and societal constraints spurs learning and advanced consciousness. — Kilroy J. Oldster

There is, then, the feeling that we live in a time of unusual insecurity. In the past hundred years so many long-established traditions have broken down - traditions of family and social life, of government, of the economic order, and of religious belief. As the years go by, there seem to be fewer and fewer rocks to which we can hold, fewer things which we can regard as absolutely right and true, and fixed for all time. To some this is a welcome release from the restraints of moral, social, and spiritual dogma. To others it is a dangerous and terrifying breach with reason and sanity, tending to plunge human life into hopeless chaos. To most, perhaps, the immediate sense of release has given a brief exhilaration, to be followed by the deepest anxiety. For if all is relative, if life is a torrent without form or goal in whose flood absolutely nothing save change itself can last, it seems to be something in which there is "no future" and thus no hope. — Alan W. Watts

All I wanted was to be left alone. They abhor a vacuum, other people. You find a quiet corner where you can hunker down in peace, and the next minute there they are, crowding around you in their party hats, tooting their paper whistles in your face and insisting you get up and join in the knees-up. — John Banville

Wasn't she a good person? She felt a dim awareness of something almost shameful about the way she'd lived her life. Wasn't there something closed off, even small-minded and mean, about the way she cut herself off from people, ducking down behind the convenient wall of her shyness, her social anxiety? When she sensed the overtures of friendship, she took too long to respond to phone calls and e-mails, and eventually people gave up, and Tess was always relieved. — Liane Moriarty

It exasperated her to think that the dungeon in which she had languished for so many unhappy years had been unlocked all the time, and that the impulses she had so carefully struggled with and stifled for the sake of keeping well with society, were precisely those by which alone she could have come into any sort of sincere human contact. — George Bernard Shaw

Hideous psychic fallout they'd all endured both in active marijuana-dependency and then in marijuana-detox: the social isolation, anxious lassitude, and the hyperself-consciousness that then reinforced the withdrawal and anxiety - the increasing emotional abstraction, poverty of affect, and then total emotional catalepsy - the obsessive analyzing, finally the paralytic stasis that results from obsessive analysis of all possible implications of both getting up from the couch and not getting up from the couch ... — David Foster Wallace

INTROVERTS are especially vulnerable to challenges like marital tension, a parent's death, or abuse. They're more likely than their peers to react to these events with depression, anxiety, and shyness. Indeed, about a quarter of Kagan's high-reactive kids suffer from some degree of the condition known as "social anxiety disorder," a chronic and disabling form of shyness. — Susan Cain

Patriotism, currently, is nothing but the deadly evolution of narrow minded politics which has distorted language. — Nilantha Ilangamuwa

I'm wearying to escape into that glorious world, and to be always there: not seeing it dimly through tears, and yearning for it through the walls of an aching heart: but really with it, and in it. — Emily Bronte

I'm sure I'm one of those undiagnosed people with social anxiety. — Junot Diaz

I have social anxiety. It's easier up on stage because there's security in being there. When I'm off stage I'm trying not to be a manic freak. I'm quite shy. — Sia Furler

What makes me deeply vulnerable? Probably the thing I suffer most from and have the most uncontrollable reactions from is still social anxiety. — Alex Ebert

Really living like Christ will not mean reward, social recognition, and an assured income, but difficulties, discrimination, solitude, anxiety. Here, too, the basic experience of the cross applies: the wider we open our hearts to others, the more audibly we intervene against the injustice that rules over us, the more difficult our lives in the rich unjust society will become. — Dorothee Solle

Chronically awkward people can feel like everyone else received a secret instruction manual at birth titled "How to be Socially Competent." For the awkward person, this dreamy manual would provide easy-to-understand, step-by-step instructions on how to gracefully navigate social life, avoid embarrassing faux pas, and rid oneself of the persistent anxiety that comes with being awkward. — Ty Tashiro

The moment of crisis had come, and I must face it. My old fears, my diffidence, my shyness, my hopeless sense of inferiority, must be conquered now and thrust aside. If I failed now I should fail forever. — Daphne Du Maurier

It's not all bad. Heightened self-consciousness, apartness, an inability to join in, physical shame and self-loathing - they are not all bad. Those devils have been my angels. Without them I would never have disappeared into language, literature, the mind, laughter and all the mad intensities that made and unmade me. — Stephen Fry

Empowered Women 101: Real women don't tell the world or elude to it on Pinterest, Facebook or any other social media platform that they are in an awful relationship. It is disrespectful to the person you say you love. Plus, it is self abusive to yourself. Ask yourself these questions: What if everyone you knew read it? Would your significant other be upset or humiliated? Why are you posting it (pity, anxiety, fear, desperateness, inmaturity)? And why do you want people to know? — Shannon L. Alder

I'd read an enormous amount but had spent so much time in my own head that I didn't have extensive social skills. Suddenly I was in this world where I was surrounded by these incredibly polished and wealthy kids who had gone to prep schools, and I felt daunted by them. I don't think people were aware of how full of anxiety I was ... For a long time I felt like I was living in a place where I shouldn't have been. — Dan Chaon

I swear that I will never cause trouble for anybody, as long as I live!! So please! Nobody cause any trouble for me, either!! — Minoru Furuya

You are not weak. People like us, we're brave. We're the ones who get up and face our worst fears every day. We keep fighting. — Jen Wilde

Just like the body responds with sore muscles when we add mileage, the initial discomfort felt when we listen to the Voice Inside reflects growth. The good news: anxiety initially triggered by listening to our inner dialogue is short-term vs. the unnamed, interminable dread that piggybacks suppression. Even better, we can manage it with self-talk, deep breathing (inherent to running), the Tribe and social support. — Gina Greenlee

A man will be imprisoned in a room with a door that's unlocked and opens inwards; as long as it does not occur to him to pull rather than push. — Ludwig Wittgenstein

I'd never been great at meeting people. I wasn't shy or anything, It was only that sometimes, with new people, I didn't know how exactly to start a conversation. I liked to listen first. You could learn a lot about someone that way. — Robin Talley

Females with ASDs often develop 'coping mechanisms' that can cover up the intrinsic difficulties they experience. They may mimic their peers, watch from the sidelines, use their intellect to figure out the best ways to remain undetected, and they will study, practice, and learn appropriate approaches to social situations. Sounds easy enough, but in fact these strategies take a lot of work and can more often than not lead to exhaustion, withdrawal, anxiety, selective mutism, and depression. -Dr. Shana Nichols — Liane Holliday Willey

For someone like myself in whom the ability to trust others is so cracked and broken that I am wretchedly timid and am forever trying to read the expression on people's faces. — Osamu Dazai

I think Vaughn has Social Anxiety Disorder but he's too much of a control freak to give in to it. — Sarra Manning

When social software becomes a component of formal education, students and teachers interact with one another in more meaningful ways, creating a variety of positive results. Ted Panitz (1997) details over 67 benefits from engaging in collective learning, arguing that collaborating reduces anxiety, builds self-esteem, enhances student satisfaction, and fosters positive relationships between students and faculty. — Jon Dron

I have packed myself into silence so deeply and for so long that I can never unpack myself using words. When I speak, I only pack myself a little differently. — Herta Muller

To change people most profoundly, we must change what we worship. Thinking, arguments, and beliefs are crucial as means of moving the heart, but ultimately we are what we adore. We are what captures our imagination, what leads us to praise and to compel others to praise it. Our inordinate anger, anxiety, and discouragement result from disordered loves. Our relational problems result from disordered loves, and our social and cultural problems as well. What can re-engineer our very inner being, the structure of our personality? What can create healthy human community? Worship and adoration of God. We must love God supremely, and that can be cultivated only through praise and adoration. — Timothy Keller

Well, I have severe OCD and social anxiety disorder. I was diagnosed when I was fifteen and every year I get worse. I don't like people, I don't like outdoors, and I don't like trying new things. I have a routine and when my routine is interrupted, like you seem to enjoy doing, I get extremely stressed and it becomes difficult for me to focus for hours afterwards. — Nash Summers

The government of Pakistan is yet to understand that the insurgency is not the disease but the symptoms of the disease. If the government really needs to cure the crisis in the area, then it must engage in genuine treatment procedure rather than engage in ad hoc solutions that go under the motto: picked up, killed, and dumped. Kidnapping the target and dumping his or her bullet riddled and tortured corpse in a public place to scare the people in the area is a military strategy which aims to provide a lesson to those who still retain seeds of resistance. If this is the only solution that the government is capable of then it will have to commit genocide against the people of Balochistan so that it can continue to steal their natural resources and have total control of the province. — Nilantha Ilangamuwa

I do think economic and social anxiety is the number one issue. And I'm pretty confident Hillary Clinton will be really riding that train pretty hard. — David Brooks

Penology ... has become torture and foolishness, a waste of money and a cause of crime ... a blotting out of sight and heightening of social anxiety. — Paul Goodman

... adults with SM are significantly more likely than the general population to develop other mood- and anxiety-related conditions, most notably depression, generalised anxiety, panic disorder, social anxiety and PTSD. For some, chronic mental health conditions are a factor in their lives. Most indicated that they felt their long-term mental health conditions could have been avoided with appropriate support at the appropriate time in childhood. — Carl Sutton

Vaccination was, and is, thoroughly infused with our politics, our social values, and our cultural norms. By acknowledging and understanding the divergent reasons why we've vaccinated in the past, however, we just may ensure the continued success of vaccination in the future. — Elena Conis

If you didn't suspect you had social anxiety, you wouldn't bother doing the quiz; you'd be too busy chatting with the receptionist. — Liane Moriarty

Sometimes I don't have enough energy to be social. I need time alone to recover from the last time I went out. — Tina J. Richardson

Trains induce such terrible anxiety. They image the possibility of total and irrevocable failure. They are also dirty, rackety, packed with strangers, an object lesson in the foul contingency of life: the talkative fellow-traveller, the possibility of children. — Iris Murdoch

The words kept coming and he could not stop them, not while Callie was standing there so indecipherably, and so he was going to keep talking until he used up all the words there were and then no one would be able to talk to anyone else anymore and then all anyone would have left were one another's unintelligible faces, and maybe some weird gesturing, too, and it would be all Oscar's fault. — Anne Ursu

I see at intervals the glance of a curious sort of bird through the close set bars of a cage: a vivid, restless, resolute captive is there; were it but free, it would soar cloud-high. — Charlotte Bronte

In other people's company I felt I was dull, gloomy, unwelcome, at once bored and boring ... — Andre Gide

When all by myself, I can think of all kinds of clever remarks, quick comebacks to what no one said, and flashes of witty sociability with nobody. But all of this vanishes when I face someone in the flesh: I lose my intelligence, I can no longer speak, and after half an hour I just feel tired. Talking to people makes me feel like sleeping. Only my ghostly and imaginary friends, only the conversations I have in my dreams, are genuinely real and substantial. — Fernando Pessoa

In our hearts ... there must abide some pity for those people who have always felt themselves to be separate from even their most familiar surroundings, those people who either are foreigners or who suffer a singular point of view that makes them feel as if they're foreigners - even in their native lands. In our hearts ... there also abides a certain suspicion that such people need to feel set apart from their society. But people who initiate loneliness are no less lonely than those who are suddenly surprised by loneliness, nor are they undeserving of our pity. — John Irving

The media no longer hesitate to whip up lurid anxieties in order to increase sales, in the process undermining social confidence and multiplying fears. — A.C. Grayling

Most important of all: in our anxiety to "improve" the world and insure "progress" we have permitted our schools to become laboratories for social and economic change according to the predilections of the professional educators. We have forgotten that the proper function of the school is to transmit the cultural heritage of one generation to the next generation, and to so train the minds of the new generation as to make them capable of absorbing ancient learning and applying it to the problem of its own day. The — Barry M. Goldwater

Harsh discipline doesn't benefit a student, but social problem solving does. Are strict rules and harsh discipline the keys to successful education? No, they aren't. In fact, harsh discipline is counterproductive to learning. Discipline can make a student focus, but it also gives him anxiety and low self-esteem. Rousseah Mieze, a APR graduate who later became a teacher, said the strict environment of APR shaped his negative self-image. When he was in college, he'd still imagine his former teachers saying things like, You don't work hard enough. You don't belong here. — Anonymous

In the democratic, egalitarian spirit of our day, we hold in suspicion positions of social authority, yet we submit to the power of peers. Social anxiety, peer group pressure, and competition all dictate our lives. Many are more afraid of offending their friends than they are of offending figures of authority. We have moved from a culture based upon hierarchy to a peerarchy. Ironically we flee from relational distinctions and boundaries, yet without these traditions and boundaries we become mired in codependency. — Mark Sayers

Social rejection - or fearing it - is one of the most common causes of anxiety. Feelings of inclusion depend not so much on having frequent social contacts or numerous relationships as on how accepted we feel, even in just a few key relationships.20 Small wonder that we have a hardwired system that is alert to the threat of abandonment, separation, or rejection: these were once actual threats to life itself, though they are only symbolically so today. Still, when we hope to be a You, being treated like an It, as though we do not matter, carries a particularly harsh sting. — Daniel Goleman

Well, unless you've suffered from panic attacks and social anxiety disorders, which is what I was diagnosed as having, it's hard to explain it. But you go on stage knowing you're actually physically going to die. You will keel over and die. — Donny Osmond

Learn to pay attention to your body with the relaxed attitude of gratitude, trust, curiosity and unconditional love rather than being pushed around by habit, fear, anxiety, social customs, other people's schedules and other people's ideas about what is good for you. — Wallace D. Wattles

Many animals experience pain, anxiety and suffering, physically and psychologically, when they are held in captivity or subjected to starvation, social isolation, physical restraint, or painful situations from which they cannot escape. Even if it is not the same experience of pain, anxiety, or suffering undergone by humans- or even other animals, including members of the same species- an individual's pain, suffering, and anxiety matter. — Marc Bekoff

Society cares about the individual only in so far as he is profitable. The young know this. Their anxiety as they enter in upon social life matches the anguish of the old as they are excluded from it. — Simone De Beauvoir

Humankind devotes much of its collective energy to managing personal and institutional anxiety and dealing with unsuccessful efforts of its civilians to cope with the tides of shifting social and economic conditions. Every city corridor houses downtrodden citizens whom have given up on life, the dopers, smoke hounds, crack heads, and unrepentant drunkards whom spend their days pushing shopping carts and their nights sleeping in gutters. In marked contrast to these filthy and wretched souls whom inhabit the skid row of every city's streets, all animals display an admirable state of hygiene and a zest for life. Except for poor critters sentenced to live confined in a zoo and domestic animals held captives in deplorable harvesting pens, all animals live a carefree existence that is preferable to living off stress sandwiches of modern humankind. — Kilroy J. Oldster

Popular religion is a coping mechanism for the anxieties of a dysfunctional social and economic environment. — Gregory S. Paul

The body, I started to learn, was not a secondary entity. The mind contained very few truths that the body withheld. There was little of import in an encounter between two bodies that would fail to be revealed rather quickly. The epistolary run up to the date only rarely revealed the truth of a man's good humor or introversion, his anxiety or social grace. Until the bodies were introduced, seduction was only provisional. — Emily Witt

Even now it comes as a shock if by chance I notice in the street a face resembling someone I know however slightly, and I am at once seized by a shivering violent enough to make me dizzy. — Osamu Dazai

I certainly have not the talent which some people possess," said Darcy, "of conversing easily with those I have never seen before. I cannot catch their tone of conversation, or appear interested in their concerns, as I often see done. — Jane Austen

All it takes is common sense to understand that the Rajapaksa administration has vandalised every layer of the country's resources to get rid of political obstacles while minimising the space available to facilitate the sharing of authentic political dissent. At the same time the opposition appears to be caged. — Nilantha Ilangamuwa

I realised I really was shy. And once I was in it, I couldn't escape. I'd go to talk and find my face was made of cement. Nothing would come out. On winter days, I'd feel myself turning grey at the edges and fading into the walls.

Was this defensive strategy? It was paralysing. And it went on for years. — Janet E. Cameron

He could only consider me as the living corpse of a would-be suicide, a person dead to shame, an idiot ghost. — Osamu Dazai

Introversion and shyness are not synonymous. Introversion is a natural personality trait where we go inside ourselves to process our experiences. Shyness, on the other hand, is a condition marked by fear or extreme anxiety in social situations. — Adam S. McHugh

Fear of Trying New Things
High school is a time to figure out your interests. There are many clubs and groups that cover a wide variety of subjects. If you have social anxiety, however, you may be afraid of trying new things.
As we read earlier, many people with social anxiety are perfectionists. When you try something new, there is always a possibility that you won't be good at it. It is much safer to stick with what you know and avoid the possibility that you might fail or embarrass yourself in front of others.
In the future, however, you may regret not taking part in more activities. You may be upset that you did not take advantage of opportunities. Avoiding new activities now creates a pattern of avoidance that can be difficult to break. — Heather Moehn

[ ... ] I was afraid to board a streetcar because of the conductor; I was afraid to enter the Kabuki Theater for fear of the usherettes standing along the sides of the red-carpeted staircase at the main entrance; I was afraid to go into a restaurant because I was intimidated by the waiters furtively hovering behind me waiting for my plate to be emptied. — Osamu Dazai

The sexual freedom of today for most people is really only a convention, an obligation, a social duty, a social anxiety, a necessary feature of the consumer's way of life. — Pier Paolo Pasolini

Attention Deficit Disorder, Seasonal Affect Disorder, Social Anxiety Disorder. These aren't diseases, they're marketing ploys. Doctors didn't discover them, copywriters did. Marketing departments did. Drug companies did. — Steven Pressfield

It's been my experience that people always assume that generalized anxiety disorder is preferable to social anxiety disorder, because it sounds more vague and unthreatening, but those people are totally wrong. For me, having generalized anxiety disorder is basically like having all of the other anxiety disorders smooshed into one. Even the ones that aren't recognized by modern science. Things like birds-will-probably-smother-me-in-my-sleep anxiety disorder and I-keep-crackers-in-my-pocket-in-case-I-get-trapped-in-an-elevator anxiety disorder. Basically I'm just generally anxious about f***ing everything. In fact, I suspect that's how they came up with the name. — Jenny Lawson

I wondered how many people there were in the world who suffered, and continued to suffer, because they could not break out from their own web of shyness and reserve, and in their blindness and folly built up a great distorted wall in front of them that hid the truth. — Daphne Du Maurier

I had very low self-esteem. Books saved me. I found friends in stories like The Chronicles of Narnia and A Tree Grows in Brooklyn. During lunch hour at school I'd avoid social interactions by sitting on the bathroom sink and reading. My mother worked in my school cafeteria. When my anxiety got really bad, I'd put a coat on, grab my book and a flashlight, and hide in the freezer with the mac and cheese. — Jenny Lawson

I used to feel so alone in the city. All those gazillions of people and then me, on the outside. Because how do you meet a new person? I was very stunned by this for many years. And then I realized, you just say, "Hi." They may ignore you. Or you may marry them. And that possibility is worth that one word. — Augusten Burroughs

I had blundered again, obscurely, and rather than go on worrying over my behavior, I decided to just give in and dislike Alice. — Michael Cunningham

Many Christians take their time and have leisure enough in their social life (no hurry here). They are leisurely, too, in their professionally activities, at table and recreation (no hurry here either). But isn't it strange how those same Christians find themselves in such a rush and want to hurry the priest, in their anxiety to shorten the time devoted to the most holy sacrifice of the altar? — Josemaria Escriva

Fear has become normal and is covered by the idea of "patriotism". — Nilantha Ilangamuwa

We should be worrying about if you live in the city you're more likely to have anxiety or mood disorders and to be schizophrenic. More than the problems people have from social media. — Nick Harkaway

That the military have the power to manipulate personal liberties while cocking a snook at justice and freedom in Balochistan is a fact. — Nilantha Ilangamuwa

What unified the Balochis in their quest to regain self-determination, which resulted in the 'existing state'? On the one hand, authoritarianism, militarization, and conquest has robbed them of their history and put them into the do or die situation. On the other hand, natural resources which would allow the citizens at large to achieve a respectable existence have been controlled by the military or political elites, well connected to feudal political elites in Pakistan. — Nilantha Ilangamuwa

I've spent most of my life and most of my friendships holding my breath and hoping that when people get close enough they won't leave, and fearing that it's a matter of time before they figure me out and go. — Shauna Niequist

Social systems are neither a consumer product that we can buy or rent from the market nor a material that we can import from another country. It is not a creation of the almighty gifted from the heavens. A social system is a creation of mankind. That is a reflection of our responsibilities. In other words, the social system is the result of our behavior and the decisions we take in our way of life. — Nilantha Ilangamuwa

And I was incapable of living all by myself in those lodgings where I didn't know a soul. It terrified me to sit by myself quietly in my room. I felt frightened, as if I might be set upon or struck by someone at any moment. — Osamu Dazai

Darks drifts covered the horizon. A strange shadow approaching nearer and nearer, was spreading little by little over men, over things, over ideas; a shadow which came from indignations and from systems. All that had been hurriedly stifled was stirring and fermenting. Sometimes the conscious of the honest man caught its breath, there was so much confusion in that air in which sophisms were mingled with truths. Minds trembled in the social anxiety like leaves at the approach of the storm. The electric tension was so great that at certain moments any chance-comer, thought unknown, flashed out. Then the twilight darkness fell again. At intervals, deep and sullen mutterings enabled men to judge of the amount of lightning in the cloud. — Victor Hugo

Social anxiety results from being around people who are resolutely opposed to who you are. — Stefan Molyneux

When he heard laughter, before he could think or feel anything, his heart would already be beating like he'd sprinted twenty yards. As the beating slowly normalized he'd think of how his heart, unlike him, was safely contained, away from the world, behind bone and inside skin, held by muscles and arteries in its place, carefully off-center, as if to artfully assert itself as source and creator, having grown the chest to hide in and to muffle and absorb - and, later, after innovating the brain and face and limbs, to convert into productive behavior - its uncontrollable, indefensible, unexplainable, embarrassing squeezing of itself. — Tao Lin

Suddenly he saw himself as others in the crowd must surely see him; a silent, solitary figure, standing apart from the rest. He looked out at the hoardes of singing, laughing people and felt more alone than he'd ever felt in his life. Was this how it was going to be then? Was this who he was? A man apart from his fellows, making the journey through life alone? — Mary Lawson

Now that I have conquered social anxiety disorder, I find pleasure in fans approaching me. — Ricky Williams

Society expects man to be a passive social animal who believes like the People of the Field in "Jurgen" that "to do what you always have done" and "what is expected of you" are the twin rules of life. This, is course, is not true. The wanton crucifixion of impulses, the unnecessary blocking and frustration of the drives and urges, are an evil that reflects itself in sophistication, ennui and boredom, dissatisfaction, melancholy, fatigue, anxiety and neurosis. — Abraham Myerson

Here are three separate but similar things: shyness, introversion and social anxiety. You can have one, two or all three of these things simultaneously. A lot of the time people thing they're all the same thing, but that's just not true. Extroverts can be shy, introverts can be bold, and a condition like anxiety can strike whatever kind of social animal you are.

Lots of people are shy. Shy is normal. A bit of anxiety is normal. Throw the two together, add some brain-signal error - a NO ENTRY sign on the neural highway from my brain to my mouth perhaps, though no one really knows - and you have me. — Sara Barnard

For most of my life, I was a worrier and an over-thinker. I had pretty bad social anxiety. — Rob Corddry

When anxiety about the course of a new cultural movement or political controversy arose, the average American did not have far to go to find a handy historical parallel to express quickly and completely the nature of his fears. If the concern threatened his sense of himself as part of a new nation that was moving forward, the metaphor of Salem witchcraft functioned well as a universally familiar shorthand for the social and political costs of sliding backward into a colonial world of irrationality, tyranny, and superstition. — Gretchen A. Adams

According to National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH), the following anxiety disorders exist within adults with Asperger's: 1. Panic Disorder 2. Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD) 3. Social Anxiety Disorder / Social Phobia 4. Generalized Anxiety Disorder (GAD) — Leslie Burby

Into the dark night
Resignedly I go,
I am not so afraid of the dark night
As the friends I do not know,
I do not fear the night above
As I fear the friends below. — Stevie Smith

We do not have to dig deep into history to understand the reality. The examples of Saddam Hussain, who was executed after a sham trial and the case of Muammar Gaddafi, who killed after surrendering in broad daylight, have given enough factual reality to understand the painful truth. — Nilantha Ilangamuwa

The "mood of the nation," in 1972, was so overwhelmingly vengeful, greedy, bigoted, and blindly reactionary that no presidential candidate who even faintly reminded "typical voters" of the fear & anxiety they'd felt during the constant "social upheavals" of the 1960s had any chance at all of beating Nixon last year--not even Ted Kennedy--because the pendulum "effect" that began with Nixon's slim victory in '68 was totally irreversible by 1972. After a decade of left-bent chaos, the Silent Majority was so deep in a behavorial sink that their only feeling for politics was a powerful sense of revulsion. All they wanted in the White House was a man who would leave them alone and do anything necessary to bring calmness back into their lives — Hunter S. Thompson

Pain
Waves are the sea's white daughters,
And raindrops the children of rain,
But why for my shimmering body
Have I a mother like Pain?
Night is the mother of stars,
And wind the mother of foam
The world is brimming with beauty,
But I must stay at home. — Sara Teasdale

What is society but an individual? [ ... ] The ocean is not society; it is individuals. This was how I managed to gain a modicum of freedom from my terror at the illusion of the ocean called the world. — Osamu Dazai

- If it helps, I used to have a hard time knowing what to do around other people so I watched them and learned to mimic them. If you don't have to be on point, I would interact the minimal amount. If you don't interact at all, people notice and you stand out, and if you're socially awkward and interact too much, people notice too much, people notice that too. But if you speak up now and then in a conversation, of infrequently agree to hang out, poeple will lose interest. It might be harder for you, but that's one thing that works for me."
"- Lfe was easier when I was just expected to shoot people. — Santino Hassell

Make no mistake. The greatest destroyer of ecology. The greatest source of waste, depletion and pollution. The greatest purveyor of violence, war, crime, poverty, animal abuse and inhumanity. The greatest generator of personal and social neurosis, mental disorders, depression, anxiety. Not to mention the greatest source of social paralysis, stopping us from moving into new methodologies for personal health, global sustainability and progress on this planet, is not some corrupt government or legislation.
Not some rogue corporation or banking cartel.
Not some flaw of human nature and not some secret cabal that controls the world.
It is the socioeconomic system itself at its very foundation. — Peter Joseph

And because his narrator was characterized above all by his anxiety regarding the disconnect between his internal experience and his social self-presentation, — Ben Lerner

Put aside any notion you might have that low-income people live lives of ease and pleasure and that it is high-income people who suffer angst and anxiety. Studies of happiness show that people who experience less power on a daily basis, or who are in low-power positions within a social group, or who live in poorer neighborhoods, are less happy than those with more power. These findings are true of adults as well as of children. — Dacher Keltner

Show me what you've written, I said, although I wanted desperately to avoid looking at it. — Osamu Dazai

Without such trust and safety, social relationships tend to become strategic rather than cooperative, increasingly full of skepticism and even anxiety and fear about others' intentions. (p. 27) — Donald Rothberg

Life is made of fear. Some people eat fear soup three times a day. Some people eat fear soup all the meals there are. I eat it sometimes. When they bring me fear soup to eat, I try not to eat it, I try to send it back. But sometimes I'm too afraid to and have to eat it anyway. — Martin Amis