Chris Hadfield Quotes

The absent danger greater still appears less fears he who is near the thing he fears.

There is often less danger in the things we fear than in the things we desire.

It seemed his demon couldn't tell the physical difference between when he was in danger and when he was "in" Danger.

I won't touch on risky, because that's subjective. People are just afraid of things too much. Afraid of things that don't necessarily merit fear.

Now the amygdala is our early warning detector, our danger detector. It sorts and scours through all of the information looking for anything in the environment that might harm us. So given a dozen news stories, we will preferentially look at the negative news.

On climbs, there is a general way we manage fear. We look at things objectively, separating out perceived risk from real risk. You can really bring down the level of fear by knowing the real risks and setting aside the others. You also know that panicking just makes things worse.

By sort of combining the research of a lot of smart people, I came up with an equation for dread [dread=uncontrollability+unfamiliarity+imaginability+suffering+scale of destruction+unfairness]. The dread equation is a simplification, but it's a way to explain why we fear something so much when it is so unlikely. Part of it is the lack of control. That's why we're more scared of plane crashes than car crashes even though we know rationally which is more dangerous.

The less there is of fear, the less there is of danger.

I’m also fascinated by the difference between terror and fear. Fear says, “Do not actually put your hand in the alligator,” while terror says, “Avoid Florida entirely because alligators exist.

Safety's just danger, out of place.

I'll give you a list of a hundred ways that I'm more likely to be injured than belting around a race track with people who know what they're doing. It's not a place where I feel I'm in unnecessary danger.

Once we start believing that the apocalypse is coming, the amygdala goes on high alert, filtering out most anything that says otherwise.

The risk to be percieved defines the duty to be obeyed.

People have perceived dangers and real dangers, but to politicians, it's all the same.

And your brain doesn't naturally know how to think the way Zeckhauser knows how to play bridge. "for example," people do not react symmetrically to loss and gain. Well maybe a great bridge player like Zeckhauser does, but that's a trained response. Ordinary people, subconsciously affected by their inborn tendencies.

Nothing is really so very frightening when everything is so very dangerous

A risk is something that feels risky to the person who's taking it.

The argument of danger only applies to those who live in relative safety.

Saba used to say there was a difference between bravery and courage. Bravery was doing something dangerous without thinking. Courage was walking into danger, knowing full well the risks.

Stress comes from within; it is your reaction to circumstances, not the circumstances themselves.

Humor is an almost physiological response to fear.

Fear is like a little garden spider that makes us jump back or the poor lost bee on the steering wheel that we blame for our automobile wreck. The problem in fear is our response - the way we treat animals or insects that frighten us. . . . Fear is also the universal scapegoat we blame when we take flight from intimacy or shrink up inside ourselves in a thousand little ways.

I believe there is no other difference between those who are called courageous and those who are branded craven than that the second are fearful before the danger and the first after it. No one can be much frightened, certainly, during a period of great and immanent peril -- the mind is too much concentrated on the thing itself, and on the actions necessary to meet or avoid it. The coward is a coward, then, because he has brought his fear with him; persons we think cowardly will sometimes amaze us by their bravery, if they have had no forewarning of their danger.

Before putting yourself in peril, it is necessary to foresee and fear it; but when one is there, nothing remains but to despise it.