I do not fear fear

"As a child I was taught that to tell the truth was often painful. As an adult I have learned that not to tell the truth is more painful, and that the fear of telling the truth — whatever the truth may be — that fear is the most painful sensation of a moral life."

June Millicent Jordan, political activist, writer, poet, essayist, and teacher (1936-2002), in Life After Lebanon (1984) (also in Some of Us Did Not Die: New and Selected Essays of June Jordan (2002))