There are some quotes that seem to endure, such as President Roosevelt’s “The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.” FDR made the speech during the Great Depression, in order to stir a country to get past a harrowing time. But then the phrase itself, with different wording but the same sentiment, was used by others before Roosevelt, possibly four centuries before in French and/or English literature.
Perhaps it’s partially because the phrase reflects a key theme from the practice of mindfulness, which has been around for centuries beyond Western literature. By the time you react to an emotion, it almost always is already past. The instant of fear or anger or excitement appears, but then the reaction is what lingers. There’s nothing wrong with feeling any particular emotion, it’s the next action, the next resulting move that needs addressing, especially when it becomes a trap of cyclical negative feelings.
So even though FDR was using the words to inspire an entire country to be positive and courageous in a particular historical period, taking the sentiment today and using it as motivation to reconfigure our own behaviors and habits can be the next step in the evolution of a timeless quote.
