Inspirational Quotes About Overcoming Fear
“We are more often frightened than hurt; and we suffer more from imagination than from reality.”
Seneca
“He who is not everyday conquering some fear has not learned the secret of life.”
Ralph Waldo Emerson
“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
“If you are distressed by anything external, the pain is not due to the thing itself, but to your estimate of it; and this you have the power to revoke at any moment.”
Marcus Aurelius
“To dare is to lose one’s footing momentarily. To not dare is to lose oneself.”
Soren Kierkegaard
“There is no illusion greater than fear.”
Lao Tzu
“A person’s success in life can usually be measured by the number of uncomfortable conversations he or she is willing to have.”
Tim Ferriss
“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
“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
“Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. The fearful are caught as often as the bold.”
Helen Keller
“Remembering that I’ll be dead soon is the most important tool I’ve ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything – all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure – these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important.”
Steve Jobs
“When I hear music, I fear no danger. I am invulnerable. I see no foe. I am related to the earliest times, and to the latest.”
Henry David Thoreau
“The cave you fear to enter holds the treasure you seek.”
Joseph Campbell
“It is not death that a man should fear, but he should fear never beginning to live.”
Marcus Aurelius
“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
“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
“Do the thing we fear and the death of fear is certain.”
Ralph Waldo Emerson
“Curiosity will conquer fear even more than bravery will.”
James Stephens
“Fear: False Evidence Appearing Real.”
Unknown
“The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.”
Franklin D. Roosevelt
“Too many people are thinking of security instead of opportunity. They seem to be more afraid of life than death.”
James F. Byrnes
“It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes up short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.”
Theodore Roosevelt
“In skating over thin ice our safety is in our speed.”
Ralph Waldo Emerson
“I’m not afraid of storms, for I’m learning how to sail my ship.”
Louisa May Alcott
“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 have lived through this horror. I can take the next thing that comes along.’ You must do the thing you think you cannot do.”
Eleanor Roosevelt
“Find out what you’re afraid of and go live there.”
Chuck Palahniuk
“Don’t let the fear of striking out hold you back.”
Babe Ruth
“The enemy is fear. We think it is hate; but, it is fear.”
Gandhi
“Of all the liars in the world, sometimes the worst are our own fears.”
Rudyard Kipling
“Fear is the path to the Dark Side. Fear leads to anger, anger leads to hate, hate leads to suffering.”
Yoda, Star Wars
“We should all start to live before we get too old. Fear is stupid. So are regrets.”
Marilyn Monroe
“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. Our eyes can still see the beautiful sky. Our ears can still hear the voices of our loved ones.”
Thich Nhat Hanh
“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
“Do one thing every day that scares you.”
Eleanor Roosevelt
“People living deeply have no fear of death.”
Anais Nin
“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
“When a resolute young fellow steps up to the great bully, the world, and takes him boldly by the beard, he is often surprised to find it comes off in his hand, and that it was only tied on to scare away the timid adventurers.”
Ralph Waldo Emerson
“Fears are educated into us, and can, if we wish, be educated out.”
Karl Augustus Menninger
“Each of us must confront our own fears, must come face to face with them. How we handle our fears will determine where we go with the rest of our lives. To experience adventure or to be limited by the fear of it.”
Judy Blume
“There is only one thing that makes a dream impossible to achieve: the fear of failure.”
Paulo Coelho, The Alchemist
“Ignorance is the parent of fear.”
Herman Melville
“Of all forms of caution, caution in love is perhaps the most fatal to true happiness.”
Bertrand Russell
“Fear is the lengthened shadow of ignorance.”
Arnold Glasow
“The best way out is always through.”
Robert Frost
“I am not afraid of tomorrow, for I have seen yesterday and I love today.”
William Allen White
“Laughter is poison to fear.”
George R.R. Martin
“Fear is pain arising from the anticipation of evil.”
Aristotle
“Instead of worrying about what people say of you, why not spend time trying to accomplish something they will admire.”
Dale Carnegie
“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
“You can discover what your enemy fears most by observing the means he uses to frighten you.”
Eric Hoffer
“To overcome fear, here’s all you have to do: realize the fear is there, and do the action you fear anyway.”
Peter McWilliams
“Fear defeats more people than any other one thing in the world.”
Ralph Waldo Emerson
“Everything you want is on the other side of fear.”
Jack Canfield
“There are times when fear is good. It must keep its watchful place at the heart’s controls.”
Aeschylus
“There are very few monsters who warrant the fear we have of them.”
Andre Gide
“The greatest mistake we make is living in constant fear that we will make one.”
John C. Maxwell
“The way you overcome shyness is to become so wrapped up in something that you forget to be afraid.”
Lady Bird Johnson
“Fear makes strangers of people who would be friends.”
Shirley Maclaine
“If you’re not willing to risk, you cannot grow. If you cannot grow, you cannot be your best. If you cannot be your best, you cannot be happy. If you cannot be happy, what else is there?”
Les Brown
“Obstacles are like wild animals. They are cowards but they will bluff you if they can. If they see you are afraid of them… they are liable to spring upon you; but if you look them squarely in the eye, they will slink out of sight.”
Orison Swett Marden
Have any other favorite quotes about fear you’d add to the collection? Let me know in the comments.
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