Everyone experiences fear in their life, but how we process and respond to fear is what makes us uniquely human. Facing fear and overcoming it can be a sign of strength and courage. Through these meaningful quotes, you’ll gain insight into the power of fear and how to take control of it to make positive changes in your own life. Powerful quotes about fear will help you be brave and fearless. These quotes will provide you with the motivation and guidance to help you keep going in the face of uncertainty and take on anything life throws your way. So, embrace your fear, use it for change, and find courage to face any challenge that comes your way.
Best Fear Quotes
You gain strength, courage, and confidence by 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
I’m not afraid of death; I just don’t want to be there when it happens. Woody Allen
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
Do one thing every day that scares you. Eleanor Roosevelt
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
Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won’t feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It’s not just in some of us; it’s in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others. Marianne Williamson
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
I must not fear. Fear is the mind killer. Fear is the little death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain. Frank Herbert
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
There is only one thing that makes a dream impossible to achieve the fear of failure. Paulo Coelho
How very little can be done under the spirit of fear. Florence Nightingale
There are two basic motivating forces fear and love. When we are afraid, we pull back from life. When we are in love, we open to all that life has to offer with passion, excitement, and acceptance. We need to learn to love ourselves first, in all our glory and our imperfections. If we cannot love ourselves, we cannot fully open to our ability to love others or our potential to create. Evolution and all hopes for a better world rest in the fearlessness and open-hearted vision of people who embrace life. John Lennon
I say I am stronger than fear. Malala Yousafzai
Bran thought about it. Can a man still be brave if he’s afraid? That is the only time a man can be brave, his father told him. George R.R. Martin
Yoga is a way to freedom. By its constant practice, we can free ourselves from fear, anguish and loneliness. Indra Devi
There are three things all wise men fear the sea in storm, a night with no moon, and the anger of a gentle man. Patrick Rothfuss
Limits, like fear, is often an illusion. Michael Jordan
Fear doesn’t shut you down; it wakes you up. Veronica Roth
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
Fear cuts deeper than swords. George R.R. Martin
Fears are nothing more than a state of mind. Napoleon Hill
Fear of a name increases fear of the thing itself. J.K. Rowling
Fear comes from uncertainty. When we are absolutely certain, whether of our worth or worthlessness, we are almost impervious to fear. William Congreve
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.
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
There is a stubbornness about me that never can bear to be frightened at the will of others. My courage always rises at every attempt to intimidate me. Jane Austen
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
Tell your heart that the fear of suffering is worse than the suffering itself. And that no heart has ever suffered when it goes in search of its dreams, because every second of the search is a second’s encounter with God and with eternity. Paulo Coelho
Of all the liars in the world, sometimes the worst are our own fears. Rudyard Kipling
We can easily forgive a child who is afraid of the dark; the real tragedy of life is when men are afraid of the light. Plato
Ignorance is the parent of fear. Herman Melville
Have no fear of perfection you’ll never reach it. Salvador Dali
Fear is only as deep as the mind allows. Japanese Proverb
It’s the questions we can’t answer that teach us the most. They teach us how to think. If you give a man an answer, all he gains is a little fact. But give him a question and he’ll look for his own answers. Patrick Rothfuss
To overcome fear, here’s all you have to do realize the fear is there, and do the action you fear anyway. Peter McWilliams
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
Life shrinks or expands in proportion to one’s courage. Anais Nin
Scared is what you’re feeling. Brave is what you’re doing. Emma Donoghue
Don’t fear, just live right. Neal A. Maxwell
Anxiety is the dizziness of freedom. Søren Kierkegaard
No power so effectually robs the mind of all its powers of acting and reasoning as fear. Edmund Burke
Fear is a phoenix. You can watch it burn a thousand times and still it will return. Leigh Bardugo
Fear has two meanings Forget Everything And Run or Face Everything And Rise. The choice is yours. Zig Ziglar
Don’t give in to your fears. If you do, you won’t be able to talk to your heart. Paulo Coelho
Fears are educated into us, and can, if we wish, be educated out. Karl Augustus Menninger
No one ever told me that grief felt so like fear. C.S. Lewis
Man cannot discover new oceans unless he has the courage to lose sight of the shore. Andre Gide
Only when we are no longer afraid do we begin to live. Dorothy Thompson
I imagine one of the reasons people cling to their hates so stubbornly is because they sense, once hate is gone, they will be forced to deal with pain. James Baldwin
No one saves us but ourselves. No one can and no one may. We ourselves must walk the path. Gautama Buddha
I don’t trust anybody. Not anybody. And the more that I care about someone, the more sure I am they’re going to get tired of me and take off. Rainbow Rowell
If you are pained by external things, it is not they that disturb you, but your own judgement of them. And it is in your power to wipe out that judgement now. Marcus Aurelius
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
There is no illusion greater than fear. Lao Tzu
Men go to far greater lengths to avoid what they fear than to obtain what they desire. Dan Brown
To escape fear, you have to go through it, not around. Richie Norton
I have accepted fear as part of life specifically the fear of change. I have gone ahead despite the pounding in the heart that says: turn back. Erica Jong
Saw a little girl touch a big bug and shout, I conquered my fear! Yes! and calmly walk away. I was inspired. Nathan Fillion
I must say a word about fear. It is life’s only true opponent. Only fear can defeat life. It is a clever, treacherous adversary, how well I know. It has no decency, respects no law or convention, shows no mercy. It goes for your weakest spot, which it finds with unnerving ease. It begins in your mind, always so you must fight hard to express it. You must fight hard to shine the light of words upon it. Because if you don’t, if your fear becomes a wordless darkness that you avoid, perhaps even manage to forget, you open yourself to further attacks of fear because you never truly fought the opponent who defeated you. Yann Martel
Sometimes, when we want something so badly, we fear failure more than we fear being without that thing. Matthew J. Kirby
The only calibration that counts is how much heart people invest, how much they ignore their fears of being hurt or caught out or humiliated. And the only thing people regret is that they didn’t live boldly enough, that they didn’t invest enough heart, didn’t love enough. Nothing else really counts at all. Ted Hughes
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
Of course I’ll hurt you. Of course you’ll hurt me. Of course we will hurt each other. But this is the very condition of existence. To become spring, means accepting the risk of winter. To become presence, means accepting the risk of absence. Antoine de Saint Exupéry
Hang on! God will be thy strength in any act of your pursuit. Lailah Gifty Akita
We are all the pieces of what we remember. We hold in ourselves the hopes and fears of those who love us. As long as there is love and memory, there is no true loss. Cassandra Clare
You have to conquer every obstacle before you can reach the top of the mountain. Lailah Gifty Akita
A man that flies from his fear may find that he has only taken a short cut to meet it. J.R.R. Tolkien
Just like in life, we need to overcome our fears before exploring the next adventure. M. Liz Boyle
I wonder if fears ever really go away, or if they just lose their power over us. Veronica Roth
We fear the thing we want the most. Robert Anthony
It is not death that a man should fear, but he should fear never beginning to live. Marcus Aurelius
Always do what you are afraid to do. Ralph Waldo Emerson
Most people do not really want freedom, because freedom involves responsibility, and most people are frightened of responsibility. Sigmund Freud
Have no fear of perfection you’ll never reach it. Salvador Dali
I’m intimidated by the fear of being average. Taylor Swift
The only thing we have to fear is fear itself. Franklin D. Roosevelt
I believe that words are strong, that they can overwhelm what we fear when fear seems more awful than life is good. Andrew Solomon
Thinking will not overcome fear but action will. W. Clement Stone
The moment we begin to fear the opinions of others and hesitate to tell the truth that is in us, and from motives of policy are silent when we should speak, the divine floods of light and life no longer flow into our souls. Elizabeth Cady Stanton
Even death is not to be feared by one who has lived wisely. Buddha
The 3 types of terror The Gross out the sight of a severed head tumbling down a flight of stairs, it’s when the lights go out and something green and slimy splatters against your arm. The Horror the unnatural, spiders the size of bears, the dead waking up and walking around, it’s when the lights go out and something with claws grabs you by the arm. And the last and worse one Terror, when you come home and notice everything you own had been taken away and replaced by an exact substitute. It’s when the lights go out and you feel something behind you, you hear it, you feel its breath against your ear, but when you turn around, there’s nothing there. Stephen King
It is better to be feared than loved, if you cannot be both. Niccolo Machiavelli
The cave you fear to enter holds the treasure you seek. Joseph Campbell
Ultimately we know deeply that the other side of every fear is freedom. Marilyn Ferguson
How much I missed, simply because I was afraid of missing it. Paulo Coelho
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
Laughter is poison to fear. George R.R. Martin
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
Fear is the mother of foresight. Thomas Hardy
The only thing we have to fear is fear it self. Franklin D. Roosevelt
I think fearless is having fears but jumping anyway. Taylor Swift
Without fear there cannot be courage. Christopher Paolini
What we have most to fear is failure of the heart. Sonia Johnson
He who has overcome his fears will truly be free. Aristotle
The pleasures of love are always in proportion to our fears. Stendhal
We meet fear. We greet the unexpected visitor and listen to what he has to tell us. When fear arrives, something is about to happen. Leigh Bardugo
True success is overcoming the fear of being unsuccessful. Paul Sweeney
Brave doesn’t mean you’re not scared. It means you go on even though you’re scared. Angie Thomas
Nothing gives a fearful man more courage than another’s fear. Umberto Eco
The human race is a monotonous affair. Most people spend the greatest part of their time working in order to live, and what little freedom remains so fills them with fear that they seek out any and every means to be rid of it. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Fear has many eyes and can see things underground. Miguel de Cervantes
When I dare to be powerful, to use my strength in the service of my vision, then it becomes less and less important whether I am afraid. Audre Lorde
Great work is done by people who are not afraid to be great. Fernando Flores
Courage is feeling fear, not getting rid of fear, and taking action in the face of fear. Roy T. Bennett
There is no hope unmingled with fear, and no fear unmingled with hope. Baruch Spinoza
Here is the world. Beautiful and terrible things will happen. Don’t be afraid. Frederick Buechner
The fear of becoming a has been keeps some people from becoming anything. Eric Hoffer
That is the fear I have lost something important, and I cannot find it, and I need it. It is fear like if someone lost his glasses and went to the glasses store and they told him that the world had run out of glasses and he would just have to do without. John Green
The fear of death follows from the fear of life. A man who lives fully is prepared to die at any time. Mark Twain
Because fear kills everything, Mo had once told her. Your mind, your heart, your imagination. Cornelia Funke
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
Keep your fears to yourself, but share your courage with others. Robert Louis Stevenson
I am constantly trying to communicate something incommunicable, to explain something inexplicable, to tell about something I only feel in my bones and which can only be experienced in those bones. Basically it is nothing other than this fear we have so often talked about, but fear spread to everything, fear of the greatest as of the smallest, fear, paralyzing fear of pronouncing a word, although this fear may not only be fear but also a longing for something greater than all that is fearful. Franz Kafka
Don’t be pushed around by the fears in your mind. Be led by the dreams in your heart. Roy T. Bennett
Anything that’s human is mentionable, and anything that is mentionable can be more manageable. When we can talk about our feelings, they become less overwhelming, less upsetting, and less scary. The people we trust with that important talk can help us know that we are not alone. Fred Rogers
It is the unknown we fear when we look upon death and darkness, nothing more. J.K. Rowling
There are two kinds of fears rational and irrational or in simpler terms, fears that make sense and fears that don’t. Lemony Snicket
I have loved the stars too fondly to be fearful of the night. Sarah Williams
Find out what you’re afraid of and go live there. Chuck Palahniuk
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
There’s no shame in fear, my father told me, what matters is how we face it. George R.R. Martin
Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. The fearful are caught as often as the bold. Helen Keller
Our greatest fear should not be of failure but of succeeding at things in life that don’t really matter. Francis Chan
What is needed, rather than running away or controlling or suppressing or any other resistance, is understanding fear; that means, watch it, learn about it, come directly into contact with it. We are to learn about fear, not how to escape from it. Jiddu Krishnamurti
Nothing in life is to be feared. It is only to be understood. Marie Curie
Fear is the path to the dark side. Fear leads to anger. Anger leads to hate. Hate leads to suffering. George Lucas
I am afraid. Not of life, or death, or nothingness, but of wasting it as if I had never been. Daniel Keyes
I’m not afraid of death; I just don’t want to be there when it happens. Woody Allen
Cherish those who seek the truth but beware of those who find it. Voltaire
Monsters come in all shapes and sizes. Some of them are things people are scared of. Some of them are things that look like things people used to be scared of a long time ago. Sometimes monsters are things people should be scared of, but they aren’t. Neil Gaiman
I must not fear. Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain. Frank Herbert
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
Don’t fear failure. Not failure, but low aim, is the crime. In great attempts it is glorious even to fail. Bruce Lee
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
It’s better to die laughing than to live each moment in fear. Michael Crichton
Fear defeats more people than any other one thing in the world. Ralph Waldo Emerson
People tend to be generous when sharing their nonsense, fear, and ignorance. And while they seem quite eager to feed you their negativity, please remember that sometimes the diet we need to be on is a spiritual and emotional one. Be cautious with what you feed your mind and soul. Fuel yourself with positivity and let that fuel propel you into positive action. Steve Maraboli
Too many of us are not living our dreams because we are living our fears. Les Brown
I am all in a sea of wonders. I doubt; I fear; I think strange things, which I dare not confess to my own soul. Bram Stoker
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
Everyone is afraid of something. We fear things because we value them. We fear losing people because we love them. We fear dying because we value being alive. Don’t wish you didn’t fear anything. All that would mean is that you didn’t feel anything. Cassandra Clare
Fear is, I believe, a most effective tool in destroying the soul of an individual and the soul of a people. Anwar Sadat
A man who fears suffering is already suffering from what he fears. Michel de Montaigne
A kind of light spread out from her. And everything changed color. And the world opened out. And a day was good to awaken to. And there were no limits to anything. And the people of the world were good and handsome. And I was not afraid any more. John Steinbeck
Proclaim the truth and do not be silent through fear. St. Catherine of Siena
Far better it is to dare mighty things, to win glorious triumphs, even though checkered by failure, than to take rank with those poor spirits who neither enjoy much nor suffer much, because they live in the gray twilight that knows neither victory nor defeat. Theodore Roosevelt
You have two choices, to conquer your fear or to let your fear conquer you. Roy T. Bennett
He who fears he shall suffer, already suffers what he fears. Michel de Montaigne
Cowards make the best torturers. Cowards understand fear and they can use it. Mark Lawrence
What you fear most of all is fear. Very wise. J.K. Rowling
Do not allow yourself to be blinded by fear and anger. Everything is only as it is. Yuki Urishibara