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.

Writing can be a frightening, distressing business, and whatever kind of structure or buffer is available can help a lot.

It’s a very frightening time when something as basic as due process is seen as somehow radical.

I wish that I had known back then that a mastery of process would lead to a product. Then I probably wouldn’t have found it so frightening to write.

A lot of black guys always ask me, ‘Did Larry Bird really play that good?’ I said, ‘Larry Bird is so good it’s frightening.’

I think safely experiencing fear by watching a horror movie makes real life a little less frightening.

The crimes that become iconic etch themselves into the collective consciousness because they suggest a frightening truth: that the universe does not rely on cause and effect.

The Gabba is not a frightening place to play.

I like having the script before I start. With new plays, you’re constantly developing as you’re doing it. It’s really frightening. You don’t quite know how it’s going to end up.

2011 is one of those years that historians are likely to look back on as a ‘hinge.’ And the truth, at once frightening and exhilarating, is that we don’t know yet which way the door will swing.

Me in drag is kind of scary, actually. It’s frightening. I actually look pretty good.

I was constantly being sought after for money. And the vitriol that came my way from many who felt threatened by controversial aspects of ‘for colored girls’ was often frightening.

To make Michael Myers frightening, I had him walk like a man, not a monster.

When I first drove my car down Sunset Strip, I nearly crashed my car gazing at the monolithic ads of various celebrities. They are bigger than King Kong, and more frightening.

I think Shakespeare is really the one. Words as music and music as words. Everything he wrote was good, which is really frightening.

It can be frightening to turn your back on what others think is right. But I’m not the same as a lot of people – I’m quite artistic and quite eccentric sometimes. If you honour that, you fit into yourself better – and people accept you for what you are.

Thanks to evolution, our bodies have powerful ways to ward off illness and infection and enable us to live long and healthy lives. Why, then, do health costs continue to climb at unsustainable and frightening rates?

However painful the process of leaving home, for parents and for children, the really frightening thing for both would be the prospect of the child never leaving home.

I’m terrified that I’m genetically predisposed to only having boys. That’s frightening. By the time I was 10 years old, and I’m not exaggerating, I knew how to patch drywall.

A terrible additional worry was the emergence of AIDS. I know I wasn’t the only friend of George’s who worried about him during that uncertain, frightening period.

Inflation is as violent as a mugger, as frightening as an armed robber and as deadly as a hit man.

I think. as a child, there’s something frightening about certain adults, particularly when you’re in their clutches or power. That must be the reason why Roald Dahl creates such brilliant characters: He taps into something in the collective memory of people.

The very damaging, frightening part of postpartum is the lack of perspective and the lack of priority and understanding what is really important.

There’s more GPS in the phone in your pocket than on most of our 21st century airliners – that’s frightening.

As frightening as this may sound, what you see in the books is the way I see the world. And so far I haven’t seen anything, either in Florida or elsewhere, to dissuade me from it.

Life is as horrifyingly frightening as it is hilarious.

I find the whole idea of religion overwhelming and frightening and not for me.

I try to pull my inspirations from everyday life. If I came across a situation that is like, ‘Oh, that’s going to be scary, that’s going to be frightening,’ that’s when I get inspired, and I put that into my films.

ISIS is not an existential threat to something happening to someone in the United States of America. It’s a serious problem overseas, but it’s confusing and frightening.

Healing and miracles have been a mystery to men of all times. To some, the phenomenon is frightening, while others find it exhilarating.

My mother tried really hard to protect us, but occasionally, after afternoon cartoons of whatever was on… the nightly news would come on, and I’d see footage from the war zone, and I would hear the word ‘Vietnam,’ and I would know my dad was over there, and it was a very frightening experience for me.

Death is frightening, and so is Eternal Life.

The public is eager for stories of True Cybercrime, and the media is happy to glamorize the subject. But when teenagers take the bait and live out our fantasies for us, we punish them for frightening us too much.

We in Britain stopped evolving gastronomically with the advent of the pie. Everything beyond that seemed like a brave, frightening new world. We knew the French were up to something across the Channel, but we didn’t want anything to do with it.

This death cult has no reason and is beyond negotiation. This is what makes it so frightening. This is what causes so many to engage in a sort of mental diversion. They don’t want to confront this horror. So they rush off in search of more comprehensible things to hate.

Of course, when you’re a parent, that’s your paramount concern, for your children, and there were some very credible and frightening threats, and the agency declined to provide any security, and it felt like a betrayal all over again. It was really painful.

I like the idea of a place that is dealing with painful, messy, frightening, and very human events that is also so beautiful and ethereal.

The Ebola epidemic was the most frightening outbreak I have witnessed in my lifetime, and I believe it was necessary to react globally as strongly as we did.

It is very frightening to feel alone when you are standing against a rich and powerful person and all his attendant helpers.

American politics is theatre. There is a frightening emotionalism at national conventions.

This whole climate change and what it’s doing to our environment is frightening to people.

I became almost immediately fascinated by the possibilities of trying out all conceivable reactions with them, some leading to explosions, others to unbearable poisoning of the air in our house, frightening my parents.

I don’t think Hollywood per se is supposed to be taken seriously, otherwise, dear Lord, that would be frightening.

If frightening sensations are not given the time and attention they need to move through the body and resolve or dissolve, the individual will continue to be gripped by fear.

For any couple, once you delve into the idea of non-monogamy, you’re entering pretty frightening territory.

Unprecedented’ is the term I’ve heard most commonly to describe the COVID-19 pandemic. As for me, I would describe it as a storm at sea. Lengthy and ferocious. Uncontrollable. Frightening. All-pervading.

I think one of the very frightening things about the regime of the National Socialists is that it made people happy.

Life without oil, in fact, would be so different that it is frightening to contemplate. We are addicted, and it is no comfortable addiction.

Sometimes it was so quiet, it’s frightening. It really prioritizes things.

Ambiguity is our permanent state, isn’t it? We don’t like it being so. Most of us crave order and routine, and yet yawning before us is our future, as frightening as it is thrilling.

It’s less frightening to do television, theatre is very nerve-wracking, very raw.

If you have to be frightening, you need some actors around you to be really frightened. And if they’re not frightened, you’re not so frightening anymore. In the same way, people say, ‘I think you come in, and you’re really sexy’. But how do you play sexy? It depends on the eyes that are looking.

The more freedom I allow myself as a writer to wander, become lost and go into uncertain territory – and I am always trying to go to the more awkward place, the more difficult place – the more frightening it is, because I have no plan.

I see many black males grasping for some thread of hope. There are so many destructive practices, glimpses into a psychic abyss. That must be very frightening.

My nine-year-old was trying to read my spiel. When she tried to pronounce the word ‘pharmaceutical,’ it was frightening. She would love to argue in the Supreme Court one day. My son asked me, ‘Mommy, why do you have to have so many arguments? Why can’t you have agreements?’

Sureness is something like a neck brace, which we clamp around our lives, hoping to somehow protect ourselves from the frightening, constant whiplash of change. Sadly, the brace doesn’t always hold.

I’ve always been slightly afraid of coming out with my record because it’s so personal to me. Now it doesn’t feel as frightening as I thought it would.

The more frightening and sort of dark and oppressive a movie is, the more free you are to explore the supernatural and explore faith. The two just somehow go hand-in-hand really nicely.

Kids love to be scared; we all do. But there’s a difference between leaving them hanging out there, with their fears, and then bringing them safely home. Kids love it when someone like them stands up against real evil, something really horrendous and frightening, and win.

Working with great writers can be humbling and frightening, but it can also change you for good, forever.

One of the few ways in which I feel I’ve actually matured is that as I’ve grown older I do find the concept of ‘men’ mystifying, whereas when I was a feisty young thing I was forever saying ‘The most fun part of being a feminist is frightening men!’

The speed with which we in the Congress are going down is sometimes frightening. Government administration in the districts is rapidly reaching a low level. No strong opposition party has been able to emerge.

A lot of people have their own idea of how you need to conduct yourself. But I think it’s important to be spontaneous and honest, because what’s frightening in the process of being correct is that you might lose yourself.

Carter’s hopes died when the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan and he ended up having to reverse policy and launch the military buildup that Reagan continued. Mr. Obama would be forced back into a war on terror if terrorist groups pull off enough damaging or frightening attacks to force this issue to the fore.

For me, I actually found that it would have been more frightening to take the conventional path.

There’s nothing more frightening – and exciting – than getting lost in a forest. There is a journey towards the light, and you’ve got to go through the dark to get to the light. That’s what the forest is all about.

I wanted to explore cancer not just biologically, but metaphorically. The idea that tuberculosis in the 19th century possessed the same kind of frightening and decaying quality was very interesting to me, and it seemed that one could explore the idea that every age defined its own illness.

We never let go. Ever. Even with punctuation. It’s frightening. I can’t see anyone from any record company ever writing an email to Neil and not getting it back, with corrections.

The greatest benefit of being a solo performer is that it is seriously frightening, but at the same time very empowering. It’s just you and the audience. All the weight is on you to deliver the songs.

It’s frightening how easy it is to commit murder in America. Just a drink too much. I can see myself doing it. In England, one feels all the social restraints holding one back. But here, anything can happen.

When you hear that howl alone at night in the forest, it’s one of the most frightening sounds you’ll ever hear.

It was pretty frightening because as we all know, when large, famous groups breakup, a lot of the members don’t survive in solo careers.

The things worth writing about, and the things worth reading about, are the things that feel almost beyond description at the start and are, because of that, frightening.

I think there’s a collective consciousness around the world that there are things beyond our control that have the power to annihilate us, as a species, and it’s all rather frightening.

I have had manic-depressive illness, also known as bipolar disorder, since I was 18 years old. It is an illness that ensures that those who have it will experience a frightening, chaotic and emotional ride. It is not a gentle or easy disease.

If there is anything more frightening than the threat of global nuclear war, it is the certainty that humans not only stand on the verge of producing new life forms but may soon be able to tinker with them as if they were vintage convertibles or bonsai trees.

I see ‘Jekyll’ as a very scary comedy thriller, partly because Hyde is violent and frightening as a character but at the same time he’s very funny – and that’s quite an achievement.

It’s very frightening when you’re told you have any form of the c-word, but because of early detection, they caught it before it had hardly begun. I’m completely cured and will go on to have a wonderful, fruitful life. I’ll never die of prostate cancer.

I just love the idea of never seeing a city before and seeing the glow in the distance, and it just looking frightening, like you’re driving into a fire.

I read ‘Men Who Hate Women and the Women Who Love Them,’ and I found frightening pieces that related to… my own life.

Silence is only frightening to people who are compulsively verbalizing.

We are moving into a world where companies will be able to offer us products and services based on our last two hours of activity. This is both exciting and frightening at the same time.

We hesitate to call liars out in professional environments because we feel guilty for being suspicious. Calling someone a liar for no good reason is a frightening proposition for most.

The word ‘leukemia’ is a very frightening word. In many instances, it’s a killer and it’s something that you have to deal with in a very serious and determined way if you’re going to beat it.

When I started in 1992, I really thought the ‘Vogue’ fashion department was one of the most frightening places on the planet.

Successful entrepreneurs develop products that inspire their passion. They have to. It’s that passion that gets them through the long, arduous, uncertain and frightening early days of a start-up.

I ask myself what is a dictator? I don’t understand. It is some kind of terrible person, a bad person. But I am not frightening. I am not a bad person at all.

Considering how dangerous everything is, nothing is really very frightening.

I spend a frightening amount of money on books.