Michel Eyquem de Montaigne (1580):
C'est dequoy j'ay le plus de peur que la peur.
The thing I fear the most is fear.
Francis Bacon (1623):
Nothing is terrible except fear itself.
Arthur Wellesley, Duque de Wellington (1831):
The only thing I am afraid of is fear.
Henry David Thoreau (1851):
Nothing is so much to be feared as fear.
Franklin D. Roosevelt (1933) :
Let me assert my firm belief that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself — nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance.