“A life lived in fear is a life half lived,” declares a character in the 1992 Australian film “Strictly Ballroom,” the line attributed to the film’s director and co-writer, Baz Luhrmann. Similarly, a line from President Franklin Roosevelt’s 1933 inaugural address, to a nation paralyzed in the economic fear of the Great Depression, has endured its original meaning because “The only thing we have to fear is fear itself” speaks to the psychology of all panic. It’s also poignant now that coronavirus is invoking comparisons to world war. One of them, “Keep calm and carry on,” has grown in popularity over the years because its message is applicable beyond its original intent. It’s more important that their condensed insight holds us steady.Īhead of attacks on its cities during World War II, the British government issued and displayed three posters with messages written to boost morale and mentally prepare its civilians. Like a crow seeking shiny bits of enlightenment, I’ve indiscriminately snatched quotes from anywhere: books, songs, movies, speeches, articles, plays, poems, religious dogma, bumper stickers, graffiti, t-shirts, friends, family and strangers.īut it should be disclaimed that some quotes have their own journey at times their origin gets historically murky and the provenance dubious. And I turned to them this week, as we all face new struggles, looking for wisdom from the past to help the present.īelow are quotes I think speak to this time of coronavirus shutdowns and of health and economic fears.
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