Yalom on the fear of death

August 6, 2026 Mike Zonta Leave a comment

(hachettebookgroup.com)

“I’ve come to believe that the fear of death is always greatest in those who feel that they have not lived their life fully. A good working formula is: the more unlived life, or unrealized potential, the greater one’s death anxiety.”

~ Yalom

Irvin David Yalom is an American existential psychiatrist who is an emeritus professor of psychiatry at Stanford University, as well as author of both fiction and nonfiction. Wikipedia

Born June 13, 1931 (age 95 years), Washington, D.C.

Yalom

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Quotes

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“Perpetual inspiration is as necessary to the life of goodness, holiness and happiness as perpetual respiration is necessary to animal life.”
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“Truth moves at the speed of now.”
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“Everything has been figured out, except how to live.”
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“Show up. Dive in. Keep at it.”
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“Give me some TRUTH!”
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“At times I think and at times I am.”
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“I tore myself away from the safe comfort of certainties through my love for truth – and truth rewarded me.”
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“The Cosmic Intention is to evolve from a thing to a think.”
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“It is so respectful to not get involved in somebody else’s angst.”
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“There is a crack in everything. That’s how the light gets in.”
–Leonard Cohen, from his song “Anthem”

“Handsome is as handsome does.”
–Proverb

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“It is one of the most beautiful compensations of this life that no man can sincerely try to help another without helping himself.”
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“We think sometimes that poverty is only being hungry, naked and homeless. The poverty of being unwanted, unloved and uncared for is the greatest poverty. We must start in our own homes to remedy this kind of poverty.”
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“Loneliness is the poverty of self, solitude is the richness of self.”
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“Nothing that you lose is real. Nothing that is real can ever be lost.”
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“Man will not be satisfied until he is everywhere equally present.”
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“Human consciousness is how the universe understands itself.”
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“There is NO gender to art.”
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“Love believes all things and yet is never deceived.”
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“My life is not mine.”
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“Every man has inside himself a parasitic being who is acting not at all to his advantage.”
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“Our deepest fears are like dragons guarding our deepest treasure.”
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“Everyone has got some preconceptions, but you have to readjust them in front of reality. Reality has the last word.”
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“Love? What is it? Most natural pain killer what there is. LOVE.”
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“We acquire the strength we have overcome.”
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“I am all other men.”
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“Man is, that he might have joy.”
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“To the man who can perfectly practice inaction, all things are possible.”
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“People will forget what you say, but they will never forget how you make them feel.”
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“We have a right to know the truth; no right to ask anything else from God, but the right to know that.”
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“Forgiveness is giving up the hope that your life could have been any different.”
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“Don’t look at me like I’ve gotten old or something like that.”
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“Man must evolve for all human conflict a method which rejects revenge, aggression and retaliation. The foundation of such a method is love.”
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“Peace is not something you wish for; it’s something you make, something you do, something you are, and something you give away”
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“Don’t Believe Everything You Think”
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“When people asked [Jacques Cousteau], ‘Well, Captain, what do you expect to find?’ he always said, ‘If I knew, I wouldn’t go.’”
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“Let life happen to you. Life is in the right, always.”
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“And, as [Picasso] said, at the end of his life, he was in dialogue with the old masters, Rembrandt, Velasquez, Rubens. He thought he was talking to them and that they were talking back to him through his art.”
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“Inside every head is a different world.”
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“Thank God our time is now, when wrong comes up to meet us everywhere, never to leave us till we take the longest stride of soul men ever took.”
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“If you’re neurotic and you think, I’m not where I deserve to be or my mother didn’t love me, or blah, blah, blah, that lie, that neurotic vision, takes over your life and you’re plagued by it ’til it’s cleansed. In a play, at the end of the play, the lie is revealed. [T]he better the play is, the more surprising and inevitable the lie is, as Aristotle told us. Plays are about lies.”
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“And the day came when the risk it took to remain tight in the bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom.”
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“The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man.”
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“Have an open-mind, but don’t let your brains fall out.”
— Jacob Needleman

“When thought races ahead of Being, a civilization is racing towards destruction.”
— Jacob Needleman in his new book What is God?

“A great man knows he is not God, and the greater he is the better he knows it.”
— G.K. Chesterton

“Those who dream by day are cognizant of many things which escape those who dream only at night.”
— Edgar Allan Poe

“Give thanks to unknown blessings already on their way.”
— Native American proverb at cafe in San Francisco

“To be nobody but yourself in a world which is doing its best, night and day, to make you like everybody else means to fight the hardest battle which any human being can fight; and never stop fighting.”
–e.e. cummings

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Bathtub Bulletin

Yalom on the fear of death

“I’ve come to believe that the fear of death is always greatest in those who feel that they have not lived their life fully. A good working formula is: the more unlived life, or unrealized potential, the greater one’s death anxiety.”

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Consciousness, spirituality, biography, sexuality, androgyny, futurism, space, the arts, science, astrology, democracy, humor, books, movies and more