Daily Inspiration Quote by George Bernard Shaw

Danger, Shaw implies, is not just out there; it is something fear actively manufactures. The line flips the usual warning on its head. We tend to think fear is a rational response to threat, a kind of inner alarm system. Shaw treats it as a magnet: the more you dread danger, the more you invite it - by shrinking your options, misreading signals, and telegraphing vulnerability to the world.

The phrasing is deceptively plain, almost proverbial, and that’s part of the trick. “Always” makes it feel like a law of nature, not a pep talk. “For those who are afraid of it” narrows the target: danger is not distributed fairly; it clings to a certain posture toward life. Shaw’s dramatist instinct is showing here. His characters often get trapped less by villains than by their own timidity, respectability, and anxious self-protection. Fear becomes a stage direction that forces them to act small, and acting small has consequences.

The subtext is quietly political, too. Shaw lived through late-Victorian rigidity and the churn of industrial modernity, where social status could feel like a tightrope. In that environment, caution is marketed as virtue. Shaw counters with a sharper moral: fear doesn’t keep you safe; it keeps you governable. He’s not denying real hazards. He’s arguing that the most reliable way to meet them is to stop rehearsing catastrophe and start behaving as if you have agency.