Fear - Quotes

‘Tis foolish to fear what you cannot avoid. - Publilius Syrus

A fearless man thrives on far horizons. - Unknown

A man that flies from his fear may find that he has only taken a short cut to meet it. - J. R. R. Tolkien

A man who will not get scared on some occasions, lacks good sense. - Edgar Watson Howe

But while all fear is not laziness, much fear is exactly that. Much of our fear is fear of a change in the status quo, a fear that we might lose what we have if we venture forth from where we are now. - M. Scott Peck

Constant exposure to the object of fear immunizes against the fear. - Maxwell Maltz

Do not let fear confine your life inside a shell of doubt; A turtle never moves until his head is sticking out. - Charles Ghigna 

Do the thing you fear most and the death of fear is certain. - Mark Twain

Do what you fear and fear disappears. - Shakespeare

Don’t be afraid of being scared. To be afraid is a sign of common sense. Only complete idiots are not afraid of anything. - Carlos Ruiz Zafon

Don’t be afraid of fear. Because it sharpens you, it challenges you, it makes you stronger; and when you run away from fear, you also run away from the opportunity to be your best possible self. - Ed Helms

Don’t be afraid of your fears. They’re not there to scare you. They’re there to let you know that something is worth it. - C. JoyBell C.

Early and provident fear is the mother of safety. - Edmund Burke

Even the fear of death is nothing compared to the fear of not having lived authentically and fully. - Frances Moore Lappe

Fear begins and ends with the desire to be secure; inward and outward security, with the desire to be certain, to have permanency. The continuity of permanence is sought in every direction, in virtue, in relationship, in action, in experience, in knowledge, in outward and inward things. To find security and be secure is the everlasting cry. It is this insistent demand that breeds fear. - Jiddu Krishnamurti

Fear can only grow in darkness. Once you face fear with light, you win. - Steve Maraboli

Fear comes from uncertainty. When we are absolutely certain, whether of our worth or worthlessness, we are almost impervious to fear. - Eric Hoffer

Fear defeats more people than any other one thing in the world. - Ralph Waldo Emerson

Fear does not have any special power unless you empower it by submitting to it. - Les Brown

Fear flies through fancy's door. - Edward Counsel

Fear follows crime and its punishment. - Voltaire

Fear grows in darkness; if you think there's a bogeyman around, turn on the light. - Dorothy Thompson

Fear has never helped anybody make good choices. It leads to clinging when we should be walking. - Harriet Lerner

Fear hath a numerous progeny. - Edward Counsel

Fear invites aggression – do not show it to a predator. - Brian Herbert & Kevin J. Anderson

Fear is primarily a creation of the mind. I create it in my mind – it doesn’t really exist outside the mind. I can dissolve it there as well. - John Mackey

Fear is a darkroom where negatives develop. - Usman B. Asif

Fear is a disease that eats away at logic and makes man inhuman. - Marian Anderson 

Fear is a destructive emotion that can deal a fatal blow to any attempt on your part to build total self-confidence. If you allow your fears to run your life, it will be impossible to create the life you truly desire. - Robert Anthony

Fear is a distorting mirror in which anything can appear as a caricature of itself, stretched to terrible proportions; once inflamed, the imagination pursues the craziest and most unlikely possibilities. What is most absurd suddenly seems the most probable. - Stefan Zweig

Fear is a fantastic marketing tool. - Daniel Gardner

Fear is a great poseur. Men especially are loath to admit that they're scared, even to themselves. Instead they convert anxiety into more acceptable feelings (anger, usually). - Ralph Keyes

Fear is a message – sometimes helpful, sometimes not – but often conveying critical information about our beliefs, our needs, and our relationship to the world around us. - Harriet Lerner

Fear is a noose that binds until it strangles. - Jean Toomer

Fear is a quicksand that slows and grips and strangles, leaving its victims unable to act, too timid to do what life requires. - Bob Lonsberry

Fear is a sneaky thief, stealing away precious moments of your life. - Elizabeth Lesser

Fear is an emotion indispensable for survival. - Hannah Arendt

Fear is an injurious state of mind because it paralyses your faculty of reason and ruins your gift of imagination. - Unknown

Fear is an instructor of great sagacity, and the herald of all revolutions. - Ralph Waldo Emerson

Fear is another emotion that is strongly suppressed. We cannot afford to be afraid, and so we don't allow ourselves to sense and feel the fear within us. We lower our brows to deny it, set our jaws to defy it, and smile to deceive ourselves. But inwardly we remain scared to death. - Alexander Lowen

Fear is contagious. You can catch it. - Neil Gaiman

Fear is good in small amounts, but when it is a constant companion, it cuts away at who you are and makes it hard to do what you know is right. - Christopher Paolini

Fear is never a good counsellor and victory over fear is the first spiritual duty of man. - Nicolas Berdyaev

Fear is pain arising from the anticipation of evil. - Aristotle

Fear is something to be moved through, not something to be turned from. - Peter Mcwilliams 

Fear is static that prevents me from hearing myself. - Samuel Butler

Fear is that little darkroom where negatives are developed. - Michael Pritchard

Fear is the enemy of logic. - Frank Sinatra

Fear is the highest fence. - Dudley Nichols

Fear is the main source of superstition, and one of the main sources of cruelty. To conquer fear is the beginning of wisdom, in the pursuit of truth as in the endeavor after a worthy manner of life. - Bertrand Russell

Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration. - Frank Herbert

Fear is the mother of foresight. - Thomas Hardy

Fear is the path to the dark side. Fear leads to anger, anger leads to hate, hate leads to suffering. Yoda

Fear makes strangers of people who should be friends. - Unknown

Fear keeps us focused on the past or worried about the future. If we can acknowledge our fear, we can realize that right now we are okay. Right now, today, we are still alive, and our bodies are working marvellously. Our eyes can still see the beautiful sky. Our ears can still hear the voices of our loved ones. - Thich Nhat Hanh

Fear makes the wolf bigger than he is. - German Proverb

Fear may be the first serious enemy you have to face in our society. It is the most destructive emotional bogyman there is. Cold feet, panic, depression and violence are all symptoms of fear – when it is out of control. But this feeling, ironically can also trigger courage, alertness, objectively. You cannot surrender to fear, but you can use it as a kind of fuel. Once you learn to control fear – to make it work for you – it will become one of your best friends. - Unknown

Fear of the unknown translates to fear of losing control. In order to feel safe, we feel we must control every variable – human, environmental, technical. And yet, as life, this just isn't realistic. Controlling everything that's around the corner simply isn't possible. - Ivy Naistadt

Fear sells. Fear makes money. The countless companies and consultants in the business of protecting the fearful from whatever they may fear know it only too well. The more fear, the better the sales. - Daniel Gardner

Fear stifles our thinking and actions. It creates indecisiveness that results in stagnation. I have known talented people who procrastinate indefinitely rather than risk failure. Lost opportunities cause erosion of confidence, and the downward spiral begins. - Charles Stanley

Fear the person who fears you. - Middle Eastern Proverb

Fear to let fall a drop and you spill a lot. - Unknown

Fear will bind you closer than love, or hate, and it works a hell of a lot quicker. - Laurel K. Hamilton

Fear will keep you alive; indifference won't. - Laurel K. Hamilton

Fear: False Evidence Appearing Real. - Unknown

Fear; if allowed free rein, would reduce all of us to trembling shadows of men, for whom only death could bring release. - John M. Wilson

Fearlessness requires attention and receptivity – it takes focus to stand in the still eye of a tornado and not be swept away by it. - Susan Piver

Fears are educated into us, and can, if we wish, be educated out. - Karl Augustus Menninger

Fears work into the mind like maggots in a corpse; they fester and boil and work to no good. - David C. Smith & Richard L. Tierney

Having no fear does not mean you have to prove it by acting rashly. Remember that fearlessness is a cousin sister of recklessness. The former represents courage; the latter, stupidity. - Unknown

He that fears not the future may enjoy the present. - Thomas Fuller

He who fears he shall suffer already suffers what he fears. - Michel de Montaigne

He who fears not, is to be feared. - Eliza Cook

I believe that anyone can conquer fear by doing the things he fears to do, provided he keeps doing them until he gets a record of successful experiences behind him. - Eleanor Roosevelt

I have learned over the years that when one’s mind is made up, this diminishes fear; knowing what must be done does away with fear. - Rosa Parks

I have not ceased being fearful, but I have ceased to let fear control me. I have accepted fear as part of life specifically fear of change and fear of the unknown; and I have gone ahead despite the pounding in the heart that says, turn back, turn back, you’ll die if you venture too far. - Erica Jong

I know beyond all doubt that the dark things crowding in on me either did not exist or were not dangerous to me, and still I was afraid. - John Steinbeck

If there is one thing which I would banish from the earth it is fear. - Henry Ford

If we let things terrify us, life will not be worth living. - Seneca

If you listen to your fears, you will die never knowing what a great person you might have been. - Robert Schuller

In regard to the great mass of men, anything that breaks the realm of fear is not salutary, but dangerous; because it takes off one of the hoops that hold the barrel together in which the evil spirits are confined. - Henry Ward Beecher

Inaction breeds doubt and fear. Action breeds confidence and courage. If you want to conquer fear, do not sit home and think about it. Go out and get busy. - Dale Carnegie

It is the unknown we fear when we look upon death and darkness, nothing more. - J. K. Rowling

It is torture to fear what you cannot overcome. - Anacharsis

Keep your fears to yourself, but share your courage with others. - Robert Luis Stevenson

Let the fear of danger be a spur to prevent it; he that fears not, gives advantage to the danger. - Francis Quarles

Living fearlessly is not the same thing as never being afraid. It's good to be afraid occasionally. Fear is a great teacher. - Michael Ignatieff

Man’s fear of ideas is probably the greatest dike holding back human knowledge and happiness. - Max Leopold Ernst

Many of our fears are tissue-paper-thin, and a single courageous step would carry us clear through them. - Brendan Francis

Neither a man nor a crowd nor a nation can be trusted to act humanely or to think sanely under the influence of a great fear. - Bertrand Russell

No man has fear until fear come to him. - Unknown

No passion so effectually robs the mind of all its powers of acting and reasoning as fear. - Edmund Burke

Not to fear where there is occasion, is as great a weakness as to fear unduly, without reason.... Fear is a kind of bell, or gong, which rings the mind into quick life and avoidance upon the approach of danger. - Henry Ward Beecher

Nothing in life is to be feared. It is only to be understood. - Unknown

Nothing like fear to wash your mind clean. - Laurel K. Hamilton

Of all base passions, fear is most accursed. - Shakespeare

Of all the mental and physical polluters of life, nothing exercises such a poisonous effect as fear. - Elbert Hubbard

Once you have explored a fear, it becomes less terrifying. Part of courage comes from extending our knowledge. - Brian Herbert & Keven J. Anderson

Our fears always outnumber our dangers. - Latin Proverb

Real fear is like intense pain. It's there to warn you something's truly wrong. - Tim Lebbon

Since fear is mostly about ignorance, the best part is that it’s as temporary as you choose. - Christine Comaford

Since fear is nothing more than a state of mind, it can be controlled and directed if you will it to. - Unknown

Social control is best managed through fear. - Michael Crichton

Sometimes, fear is a warning. It's like someone putting a hand on your shoulder and saying, “Go no further.” - Anne Rice

Sometimes, fear is wholesome and rational; it is well to swing fear as a mighty battle-axe over men's heads when no other motive will move them. - Henry Ward Beecher

The ambitious man climbs up high and perilous stairs, and never cares how to come down; the desire of rising hath swallowed up his fear of a fall. - Thomas Adams

The conquest of fear is of very great importance. Fear is in itself degrading; it easily becomes an obsession; it produces hate of that which is feared, and it leads headlong to excesses of cruelty. - Bertrand Russell

The conquest of fear yields the courage of life. That is the cardinal initiation of every heroic adventure – fearlessness and achievement. - Joseph Campbell 

The fears we don’t face becomes our limits. - Unknown

The greatest fear in the world is of the opinions of others. And the moment you are unafraid of the crowd you are no longer a sheep, you become a lion. A great roar arises in your heart, the roar of freedom. - Osho

The man who fears nothing is as powerful as he who is feared by everybody. - J. C. F. von Schiller

The most dangerous kind of person ... is one who is afraid of his own shadow. - Philip K. Dick

The oldest and strongest emotion of mankind is fear, and the oldest and strongest kind of fear is fear of the unknown. - H. P. Lovecraft

The one permanent emotion of the inferior man is fear – fear of the unknown, the complex, the inexplicable. What he wants beyond everything else is safety. - H. L. Mencken

The only honourable, desirable kind of fear that shouldn’t be feared is the fear of harm on a loved one. It’s the kind of fear that leads to self-sacrifice and the kind of fear where you would truly jump in front of a bus to save another. - Criss Jami

The only real prison is fear, and the only real freedom is freedom from fear. - Aung San Suu Kyi

The only thing we have to fear is fear itself. - Franklin Delano Roosevelt

The only way to get rid of the fear of doing something is to go out ... and do it. - Susan J. Jeffers

The understanding of fear cures fear. - Robert Anthony

There are times when fear is good. It must keep its watchful place. - Aeschylus

There is a time to take counsel of your fears, and there is a time to never listen to any fear. - George Patton

There is great beauty in going through life without anxiety or fear. Half our fears are baseless, and the other half discreditable. - Christian Nestell Bovee

There is perhaps nothing so bad and so dangerous in life as fear.  - Jawaharlal Nehru

Thinking will not overcome fear, action will. - Unknown

Throughout evolutionary history, anxiety and fear have helped every species to be wary and to survive. Fear can signal us to act, or, alternatively, to resist the impulse to act. It can help us to make wise, self-protective choices in and out of relationships where we might otherwise sail mindlessly along, ignoring signs of trouble. - Harriet Lerner

To be feared is to fear: no one has been able to strike terror into others and at the same time enjoy peace of mind. - Seneca

To overcome a fear, here's all you have to do: realize the fear is there, and do the action you fear anyway. - Peter Mcwilliams

To overcome your fear, you must take away its power by confronting it with courage. - Unknown

Too many of us are not living our dreams because we are living our fears. - Les Brown

We cannot banish dangers, but we can banish fears. We must not demean life by standing in awe of death. - David Sarnoff

We fear things in proportion to our ignorance of them. - Christian Nestell Bovee

We must control fear or it will control us. - Walter Matthews

We often suffer more from our fears, than from the dangers of our situation. - Norman MacDonald

We should not let our fears hold us back from pursuing our hopes. - John F Kennedy

What man does not understand, he fears; and what he fears, he tends to destroy. - Unknown

When a man is afraid and accedes to fear, he will always find arguments to justify his own surrender. - Natan Sharansky

When you face your fear, most of the time you will discover that it was not really such a big threat after all. - Les Brown

When you fear something, think, – how long do you want to carry that fear in your mind. - Unknown

Where fear is present, wisdom cannot be. - Lactanius

Where fear is, happiness is not. - Seneca

Who sees all beings in his own self, and his own self in all beings, loses all fear. - Isa Upanishad

Without fear, we are able to see more clearly our connections to others. Without fear, we have more room for understanding and compassion. Without fear, we are truly free. - Thich Nhat Hanh

You are frightened of everything. You call it caution. You call it common sense. You call it practicality. You call it playing the odds, but that’s only because you’re afraid to call it by its real name, and its real name is fear. - Mick Farren

You block your dream when you allow your fear to grow bigger than your faith. - Mary Manin Morrissey

You can conquer almost any fear if you will only make up your mind to do so. For remember, fear doesn’t exist anywhere except in the mind. - Dale Carnegie

You can't stop being afraid just by pretending everything that scares you isn't three. - Michael Marshall

You gain strength, experience and confidence every time you stop to look fear in the face. - Unknown