On my way to dance practice tonight, I passed by two guys and caught a fragment of their conversation. The main guy who was talking was saying something about the only thing [he] fear[s] is fear.

Methinks he forgot the “itself” part of that quote.

I also think that guy’s full of shit. (Pretty bold of me, going off of one snippet of conversation!) There’s plenty of fear to be had in this world: fear of losing what you have, fear of not attaining what you should, fear of physical pain, fear of social rejection… the list goes on and on (and this is listing rather high-level examples, not “fear of getting reprimanded by my boss for playing Flash games instead of working”), and those fears are all legitimate to some degree or another.

Sure, you can’t let your fears rule your life (that’s really what FDR was getting at, I’d say)—but you can’t wipe them out, either, at least while you’re living. To do so you would have to have nothing to lose, nothing to gain, nothing to change… it’d be a peculiar brand of sociopathy.

I don’t doubt that guy was just abusing a historical reference for posturing, but still.