When I was younger I used to pick things just to face the fear.

Here's what the right-wing has in there's no shortage of the natural resources of ignorance apathy hate fear. As long as those things are in the collective conscious and unconscious the Republicans will have some votes.

I like normal stuff people fear - like spiders and heights. I'm frightened by the unknown by things that are hard to figure out and get a grip on.

A line from one of my 1997 columns - 'Do one thing every day that scares you' - is now widely attributed to Eleanor Roosevelt though I have yet to see any evidence that she ever said it and I don't believe she did. She said some things about fear but not that thing.

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.

The things you fear are undefeatable not by their nature but by your approach.

I don't think that anyone seriously fears that the world can be blown to pieces all together. But what one can fear and rightly so are regional things like in the Middle East India Pakistan the Korean Peninsula borders in Africa etc.

Fear can make all of us do the wrong things sometimes.

So then learn to conquer your fear. This is the only art we have to master nowadays: to look at things without fear and to fearlessly do right.

Respect and fear are two different things.