Top 140 Frightening Quotes

I find beauty very frightening because it’s such an all consuming subject in our society.

I am neither a writer nor a theorist. For a person who creates things to utter too many words means to regulate himself – a frightening prospect.

The unknown is always frightening.

What makes art powerful is a flash of recognition, a frightening encounter with something familiar about the human condition.

There’s something frightening that comes with freedom. And there was something very frightening for a lot of slaves once they were free and were going through Reconstruction. It was like, what do you do now? There was nothing set up.

Not having a roof over your head at night must be frightening, cold, lonely and depressing. To be seriously ill as well must be beyond upsetting.

America’s fiscal future is frightening.

To be anywhere near an enormous ocean liner when you are just like a fish in the water is frightening.

Change can be frightening, and the temptation is often to resist it. But change almost always provides opportunities – to learn new things, to rethink tired processes, and to improve the way we work.

Anybody who is in freelance work, especially artistically, knows that it comes with all the insecurity and the ups and downs. It’s a really frightening life.

I believe without a single shadow of a doubt that it is necessary for young people to learn to make choices. Learning to make right choices is the only way they will survive in an increasingly frightening world.

Being a popular director or actor’s son can be frightening in this industry. What if you are not able to make it?

Too many books are full of recipes that aren’t doable at home. They are purely aspirational. They are quite frightening, even for me.

Following our inner guidance may feel risky and frightening at first, because we are no longer playing it safe, doing what we ‘should’ do, pleasing others, following rules, or deferring to outside authority.

Establish character – otherwise, it is difficult to connect with what is frightening.

Nothing is more desirable than to be released from an affliction, but nothing is more frightening than to be divested of a crutch.

Taking a risk is always frightening, but I gave myself a set period of time and had enough money to see me through. I operated from the belief that things would be okay, that if I wasn’t successful I would find myself a job, but either way, I would be fine.

It would be too frightening for me to consider myself a role model. But I like the idea of not being afraid of letting your imagination rule you, to feel the freedom of expression, to let creativity be your overwhelming drive rather than other things.

I don’t think anything can prepare you for a crew to come in and actually film you as yourself. It’s kind of frightening to think that all of a sudden people are going to know how you are, and how you act on a day-to-day basis.

We are afraid of ourselves and our own unconscious minds. When we are building something that reflects us, it’s the one thing we’re all afraid to face. We’re afraid to face ourselves. Building machines that mirror our consciousness is a very frightening proposition because we have seen how evil people can be.

In the same way you pick idly at chips, promising this is literally your last one, you may be in a relationship that you know isn’t going anywhere, but you’re hungry for love, and it feels less frightening than nothing.

It was frightening because it was the first time I had gotten a sense of how serious the problem was. It became clear from his notes that he felt the president himself was involved.

It is very frightening to see a resurgence of the old mores, or lack thereof, regarding women’s rights to their own bodies.

I really enjoy spending Sunday evenings with friends, because Sunday evenings are always frightening. You are obsessed by the fact that you are working again the next day. And sometimes you get the blues. I always decide to spend it with friends. It’s very nice.

In the battle for Kobane on the Syrian border, everyone talks about the enemy – IS – and the frightening ideas that drive them. No one talks about the Kurdish defenders and what inspires them.

There’s something frightening about finding a woman who would take your heart.

Trauma causes us to have an internal experience that is frightening, angry, and shameful. When we feel threatened, as we do when we are traumatized, our entire organism is geared up to find the source of that threat and to do something about it.

We live in a connected world now. Some find that frightening. If people are downloading our music, they’re listening to it. The internet is like radio for us.

As a musician, life is not over just because you are getting older, and so I find retirement a very frightening and dark thought.

I believe that young people wearing hoods, unless they are very young, can be frightening. What are they hiding? Why don’t they want to come out into the light with the rest of us? They may be perfectly nice, but the hoods send an uncertain statement.

It’s really frightening, American food on the whole. That’s what always strikes me, coming from Europe: There’s just so much of it! Then you plop down in front of the TV and watch ads for Weight Watchers. ‘Lose weight now!’ Well, eat less!

I got rounded up by the police in Quito as I didn’t have my passport with me. I was in prison for a night, which was pretty frightening, made more so when one of my male companions started crying.

What kids are exposed to on television is more frightening and horrifying than what they see in my books.

The 1993 Trade Center bombing was obviously frightening. It could have been much worse than it was.

I find the English flag – the cross – quite frightening; it has very bad symbolism for me. Not just football hooligans but supremacists and the BNP.

I think the story of ‘Alice in Wonderland’ in a way is a reminder that life is frightening, it can shift on you at any moment.

I experience a period of frightening clarity in those moments when nature is so beautiful. I am no longer sure of myself, and the paintings appear as in a dream.

‘Extraordinary’ is an original fairy tale, a contemporary story. But like a traditional fairy tale, it heads quickly into frightening, bloody territory. I am afraid for my book, as it goes out alone into the world, just as I was frightened for Phoebe as I wrote and rewrote her story.

In the older folklore, faeries were frightening beings. In fact, it was such a bad idea to get their attention that people would use flattering euphemisms for them, such as ‘the people of peace,’ ‘the little people,’ and ‘the good neighbors.’

There’s just a feeling, when you’re just an actor – I have great admiration for people who are just actors. I don’t understand it, the idea of waiting to get cast, being at the whim of others. I find it incredibly powerless and frightening, so that’s why I’ve been constantly trying to create my own content.

The buying and selling of women, girls and boys is a frightening modern day form of slavery that must be stopped.

Teen authors love to flirt with taboo, to grapple – sensitively – with dark and frightening issues, and there is nothing darker and more frightening than cancer.

For the most part, magic secrets are available on a level that’s overwhelming and frightening, and they are very accessible if you do the tiniest bit of digging. But, that said, there’s a certain group of individuals, in which I am included, who are very tight about secrets and don’t share them with anyone.

If a scientist sidesteps their scientific peers, and chooses to take an apparently changeable, frightening and technical scientific case directly to the public, then that is a deliberate decision, and one that can’t realistically go unnoticed.

Israel is frightening. Its behaviour is irresponsible.

Mental illnesses are so frightening and there’s so much ignorance about them that I think it comforts people to think, ‘Oh, well, it happens to these people because they deserve it.’

In college, I discovered the Joyce Carol Oates short story ‘Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?’ which is definitely one of the most incredibly unnerving, frightening short stories ever written.

I think I’m slightly older than the generation that was really bred on social media – I had Facebook in high school, but I was growing up in a time where these things were relatively new, and every generation below me is growing up having every single thing they do seen. And that is kind of frightening.

I believe in the limitlessness of humans. We’re capable of incredible things. At times, that realization is frightening.

How we are using up our home, how we are living and polluting the planet is frightening. It was evident when I was a child. It’s more evident now.

When you say, ‘I’m going to sing it once, and everyone is going to hear it forever,’ that’s kind of frightening.

It’s frightening to think about more sanctions. When I’ve met North Koreans in China, they’ve said to me, ‘You have no idea how difficult our lives are. We live like dogs.’ They wake up in the morning wondering what they’re going to eat for dinner.