Fear is an emotional response to a perceived threat or danger. It is a natural and instinctual reaction that helps us protect ourselves from harm. When we feel fear, our body and mind prepare for a potential threat by triggering the “fight-or-flight” response.
Fear can be both a positive and negative emotion, depending on the context and intensity. It serves as a survival mechanism by alerting us to potential dangers and motivating us to take appropriate action. For example, if we encounter a wild animal, fear can prompt us to either run away or defend ourselves.
On the negative side, fear can also be paralyzing and limit our ability to think clearly or make rational decisions. It can create anxiety, and stress, and hinder personal growth or progress. Unreasonable or excessive fear can lead to phobias, panic attacks, or other anxiety disorders that can significantly impact a person’s daily life.
However, fear can also be seen as an opportunity for personal development and growth. Facing and overcoming our fears can lead to increased self-confidence, resilience, and a sense of accomplishment. It can push us out of our comfort zones and help us discover our true potential.
Ultimately, the meaning of fear can vary from person to person and situation to situation. It is a complex emotion that can have both positive and negative effects on individuals depending on how it is perceived and managed.
Fear Quotes
1. “If you want to conquer fear, don’t sit home and think about it. Go out and get busy.”
— Dale Carnegie
2. “You gain strength, courage, and confidence through every experience in which you really stop to look fear in the face. You are able to say to yourself, ‘I lived through this horror. I can take the next thing that comes along.”
— Eleanor Roosevelt
3. “Don’t let fear or insecurity stop you from trying new things. Believe in yourself. Do what you love. And most importantly, be kind to others, even if you don’t like them.”
— Stacy London
4. “I learned that courage was not the absence of fear, but the triumph over it. The brave man is not he who does not feel afraid, but he who conquers that fear.”
— Nelson Mandela
5. “We must build dikes of courage to hold back the flood of fear.”
— Martin Luther King, Jr.
6. “You always have two choices: your commitment versus your fear.”
— Sammy Davis, Jr.
7. “As soon as the fear approaches near, attack and destroy it.”
— Chanakya
8. “Nothing in life is to be feared, it is only to be understood. Now is the time to understand more, so that we may fear less.”
— Marie Curie
9. “If you know the enemy and know yourself you need not fear the results of a hundred battles.”
— Sun Tzu
10. “The eagle has no fear of adversity. We need to be like the eagle and have a fearless spirit of a conqueror!”
— Joyce Meyer
11. “Living with fear stops us from taking risks, and if you don’t go out on the branch, you’re never going to get the best fruit.”
— Sarah Parish
12. “Fear doesn’t exist anywhere except in the mind.”
— Dale Carnegie
13. “Expose yourself to your deepest fear; after that, fear has no power, and the fear of freedom shrinks and vanishes. You are free.”
— Jim Morrison
14. “Fear not, we are of the nature of the lion, and cannot descend to the destruction of mice and such small beasts.”
— Elizabeth I
15. “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
16. “Being brave isn’t the absence of fear. Being brave is having that fear but finding a way through it.”
— Bear Grylls
17. “The key to growth is acknowledging your fear of the unknown and jumping in anyway.”
— Jen Sincero
18. “You just have to get rid of fear and confront the world. Look at yourself in the mirror and say to yourself, ‘I love you and nothing will destroy you and you’re not going to fall.”
— Ricky Martin
19. “If you go deeper and deeper into your own heart, you’ll be living in a world with less fear, isolation and loneliness.”
— Sharon Salzberg
20. “I was set free because my greatest fear had been realized, and I still had a daughter who I adored, and I had an old typewriter and a big idea. And so rock bottom became a solid foundation on which I rebuilt my life.”
— J. K. Rowling
21. “Never let the fear of striking out get in your way.”
— Babe Ruth
22. “I believe that every single event in life happens in an opportunity to choose love over fear.”
— Oprah Winfrey
23. “The key to success is to focus our conscious mind on things we desire not things we fear.”
— Brian Tracy
24. “He who is not every day conquering some fear has not learned the secret of life.”
— Ralph Waldo Emerson
25. “Kill the snake of doubt in your soul, crush the worms of fear in your heart and mountains will move out of your way.”
— Kate Seredy
26. “I have a very positive attitude in life. My insecurity, fear and need to know about tomorrow has fortunately eased. What is going to happen will happen anyway. So why break my head over it?”
— Katrina Kaif
27. “Fear is stupid. So are regrets.”
— Marilyn Monroe
28. “Don’t fear failure so much that you refuse to try new things. The saddest summary of a life contains three descriptions: could have, might have, and should have.”
— Louis E. Boone
29. “Fear is the main source of superstition and one of the main sources of cruelty. To conquer fear is the beginning of wisdom.”
— Bertrand Russell
30. “How very little can be done under the spirit of fear.”
— Florence Nightingale
31. “I say I am stronger than fear.”
— Malala Yousafzai
32. “Yoga is a way to freedom. By its constant practice, we can free ourselves from fear, anguish and loneliness.”
— Indra Devi
33. “Limits, like fear, is often an illusion.”
— Michael Jordan
34. “One of the greatest discoveries a man makes, one of his great surprises, is to find he can do what he was afraid he couldn’t do.”
— Henry Ford
35. ”Fears are nothing more than a state of mind.”
— Napoleon Hill
36. “Fear comes from uncertainty. When we are absolutely certain, whether, of our worth or worthlessness, we are almost impervious to fear.”
— William Congreve
37. “If you look into your own heart, and you find nothing wrong there, what is there to worry about? What is there to fear?”
— Confucius
38. “Failure isn’t an option. I’ve erased the word ‘fear’ from my vocabulary, and I think when you erase fear, you can’t fail.”
— Alicia Keys
39. “Of all the liars in the world, sometimes the worst are our own fears.”
— Rudyard Kipling
40. “Ignorance is the parent of fear.”
— Herman Melville
41. “Fear is only as deep as the mind allows.”
— Japanese Proverb
42. “To overcome fear, here’s all you have to do: realize the fear is there, and do the action you fear anyway.”
— Peter McWilliams
43. “Life shrinks or expands in proportion to one’s courage.”
— Anais Nin
44. “Don’t fear, just live right.”
— Neal A. Maxwell
45. “No power so effectually robs the mind of all its powers of acting and reasoning as fear.”
— Edmund Burke
46. “Fear has two meanings: ‘Forget Everything And Run’ or ‘Face Everything And Rise.’ The choice is yours.”
— Zig Ziglar
47. “Fears are educated into us, and can, if we wish, be educated out.”
— Karl Augustus Menninger
48. “Man cannot discover new oceans unless he has the courage to lose sight of the shore.”
— Andre Gide
49. “Only when we are no longer afraid do we begin to live.”
— Dorothy Thompson
50. “No one saves us but ourselves. No one can and no one may. We ourselves must walk the path.”
— Gautama Buddha
51. “It’s OKAY to be scared. Being scared means you’re about to do something really, really brave.
— Mandy Hale
52. “If you are pained by external things, it is not they that disturb you, but your own judgment of them. And it is in your power to wipe out that judgment now.”
— Marcus Aurelius
53. “There is no illusion greater than fear.”
— Lao Tzu
54. “To escape fear, you have to go through it, not around.”
— Richie Norton
55. “Saw a little girl touch a big bug and shout, I conquered my fear! YES! and calmly walk away. I was inspired.”
— Nathan Fillion
56. “Sometimes, when we want something so badly, we fear failure more than we fear being without that thing.”
— Matthew J. Kirby
57. “I have to face the fear. I have to take control of the situation and find a way to make it less frightening.”
— Veronica Roth
58. “Hang on! God will be thy strength in any act of your pursuit.”
— Lailah Gifty Akita
59. “You have to conquer every obstacle before you can reach the top of the mountain.”
— Lailah Gifty Akita
60. “Just like in life, we need to overcome our fears before exploring the next adventure.”
— M. Liz Boyle
61. “We fear the thing we want the most.”
— Robert Anthony
62. “Always do what you are afraid to do.”
— Ralph Waldo Emerson
63. “Have no fear of perfection – you’ll never reach it.”
— Salvador Dali
64. “The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.”
— Franklin D. Roosevelt
65. “Thinking will not overcome fear but action will.”
— W. Clement Stone
66. “Even death is not to be feared by one who has lived wisely.”
— Buddha
67. “It is better to be feared than loved if you cannot be both.”
— Niccolo Machiavelli
68. “Ultimately we know deeply that the other side of every fear is freedom.”
— Marilyn Ferguson
69. “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
70. “I may be compelled to face danger, but never fear it, and while our soldiers can stand and fight, I can stand and feed and nurse them.”
— Clara Barton
71. “Fear is the mother of foresight.”
— Thomas Hardy
72. “I think fearless is having fears but jumping anyway.”
— Taylor Swift
73. “What we have most to fear is the failure of the heart.”
— Sonia Johnson
74. “The pleasures of love are always in proportion to our fears.”
— Stendhal
75. “True success is overcoming the fear of being unsuccessful.”
— Paul Sweeney
76. “Nothing gives a fearful man more courage than another’s fear.”
— Umberto Eco
77. “Fear has many eyes and can see things underground.”
— Miguel de Cervantes
78. “Great work is done by people who are not afraid to be great.”
— Fernando Flores
79. “There is no hope unmingled with fear, and no fear unmingled with hope.”
— Baruch Spinoza
80. “The fear of becoming a ‘has-been’ keeps some people from becoming anything.”
— Eric Hoffer
81. “The fear of death follows from the fear of life. A man who lives fully is prepared to die at any time.”
— Mark Twain
82. “Becoming fearless isn’t the point. That’s impossible. It’s learning how to control your fear, and how to be free from it.”
— Veronica Roth
83. “There is only one thing that makes a dream impossible to achieve: the fear of failure.”
— Paulo Coelho
84. “Don’t be pushed around by the fears in your mind. Be led by the dreams in your heart.”
— Roy T. Bennett
85. “It is the unknown we fear when we look upon death and darkness, nothing more.”
— J.K. Rowling
86. “I have loved the stars too fondly to be fearful of the night.”
— Sarah Williams
87. “I do not fear death. I had been dead for billions and billions of years before I was born, and had not suffered the slightest inconvenience from it.”
— Mark Twain
88. “Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. The fearful are caught as often as the bold.”
— Helen Keller
89. “What is needed, rather than running away or controlling or suppressing or any other resistance, is understanding fear; that means, watching it, learning about it, come directly into contact with it. We are to learn about fear, not how to escape from it.”
— Jiddu Krishnamurti
90. “Fear is the path to the dark side. Fear leads to anger. Anger leads to hate. Hate leads to suffering.”
— George Lucas
91. “I’m not afraid of death; I just don’t want to be there when it happens.”
— Woody Allen
92. “Do one thing every day that scares you.”
— Eleanor Roosevelt
93. “I must not fear. Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain.”
— Frank Herbert
94. “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 marvelously.”
— Thich Nhat Hanh
95. “Fear is an insidious virus. Given a breeding place in our minds … it will eat away our spirit and block the forward path of our endeavors.”
— James F. Bell, III
96. “Fear defeats more people than any other one thing in the world.”
— Ralph Waldo Emerson
97. “Too many of us are not living our dreams because we are living our fears.”
— Les Brown
98. “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
99. “Fear is, I believe, a most effective tool in destroying the soul of an individual – and the soul of a people.”
— Anwar Sadat
100. “A man who fears suffering is already suffering from what he fears.”
— Michel de Montaigne
101. “Proclaim the truth and do not be silent through fear.”
— St. Catherine of Siena
102. “You have two choices, to conquer your fear or to let your fear conquer you.”
— Roy T. Bennett
103. “Cowards make the best torturers. Cowards understand the fear and they can use it.”
— Mark Lawrence
104. “Do not allow yourself to be blinded by fear and anger. Everything is only as it is.”
— Yuki Urishibara
105. “Fear can make you do more wrong than hate or jealousy… fear makes you always, always hold something back.”
— Philip K. Dick
106. “Fear and realization of ignorance, strong medicines against stupid pride.”
— Garth Nix
107. “Fear is inevitable, I have to accept that, but I cannot allow it to paralyze me.”
— Isabel Allende
108. “Many times, the thought of fear itself is greater than what it is we fear.”
— Idowu Koyenikan
109. “Fear is the mind-killer.”
— Frank Herbert
110. “Everything you want is on the other side of fear.”
— Jack Canfield
111. “Do the thing you fear to do and keep on doing it… that is the quickest and surest way ever yet discovered to conquer fear.”
— Dale Carnegie
112. “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.
113. “The brave man is not he who does not feel afraid, but he who conquers that fear.”
— Nelson Mandela
114. “The first duty of man is to conquer fear; he must get rid of it, he cannot act till then.”
— Thomas Carlyle
115. “The thing you fear most has no power. Your fear of it is what has the power. Facing the truth really will set you free.”
— Oprah Winfrey
116. “He who has overcome his fears will truly be free.”
— Aristotle
117. “Fear of the unknown is a destructive force. It causes people to make suboptimal choices by avoiding that fear.”
— Cliff Lerner
118. “Too many of us never realize our full potential because our fears block us.”
— Les Brown
119. “Don’t give in to your fears. If you do, you won’t be able to talk to your heart.”
— Paulo Coelho
120. “It is the perpetual dread of fear, the fear of fear, that shapes the face of a brave man.”
— Georges Bernanos
121. “Confront your fears list them get to know them and only then will you be able to put them aside and move ahead.”
— Jerry Gillies
122. “Bravery does not mean being fearless. It means to be full of fear but still not being dominated by it.”
— Rajneesh
123. “Fear is an emotion indispensable for survival.”
— Hannah Arendt
124. “Courage is not the absence of fear, but the mastery of it.”
— Mark Twain
125. “You can do anything you put your heart, mind, and soul into. Far more than you can imagine. Be fearless. Do it.”
— LL Cool J
126. “Inaction breeds doubt and fear. Action breeds confidence and courage.”
— Dale Carnegie
127. “Fear of danger is ten thousand times more terrifying than danger itself.”
— Daniel Defoe
128. “Every fear hides a wish.”
— David Mamet
129. “There are times when fear is good. It must keep its watchful place at the heart’s controls.”
— Aeschylus
130. “The real destroyer of inner peace is fear and distrust. Fear develops frustration, frustration develops anger, anger develops violence.”
— Dalai Lama
