Letter to John Adams

We suffer more in fear than in fact

Echoes, per a summary

Quote Investigator gives Jefferson’s letter to Adams: “how much pain have cost us the evils which have never happened”. The claim is in his own words and he credits no one.

1. c. 64 CE

   “There are more things, Lucilius, likely to frighten us than there are to crush us; we suffer more often in imagination than in reality.”

   Seneca, Moral Letters. Earliest we can find, about 1,750 years earlier.

2. 1816

   “always counting that the worst will happen, because it may happen. To these I say, how much pain have cost us the evils which have never happened!”