Frozen In Fright? These 50+ Fear Quotes Can Help You Conquer Any Phobia

Fear is quite the enemy. It can put you in a vulnerable place. Fear can leave you paralyzed and unable to act at the most inopportune moments. Perhaps it prevents you from taking your foot off the brake. It might even keep you planted in your seat instead of diving to safety. That “fight or flight” notion often seems to have no rhyme or reason whatsoever. It’s a roll of the dice as to how you’ll respond in a crisis situation. With bravery? Or with less gumption? And although immersing yourself in more fear might sound counterintuitive, reading fear quotes can actually help you feel less alone and, in the process, more empowered.

Because, as we all know, fear is universal. It doesn’t just play into emergencies, either. Fear can be the very thing keeping you from bigger moves and more long-term goals, too. A fear of failure might be stopping you from starting your own photography business or opening your own restaurant. A fear of leaving someone as traumatized as you might make you shy away from having kids or starting a new relationship. Letting our fear dictate every decision we make can often put us in a slump. Still, it’s hard to do anything when you’re being swallowed by said emotions.

We can’t compliment your cooking or help you pick out a website name. We won’t try to convince you that you should start that relationship. But we can offer up these quotes about fear and that maybe some of them might inspire you to go after the thing you’ve been too frightened to reach for.

Fear Quotes To Help Embolden You

1. “Curiosity will conquer fear even more than bravery will.” — James Stephens
2. “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
3. “People living deeply have no fear of death.” — Anais Nin
4. “Anything I’ve ever done that ultimately was worthwhile… initially scared me to death.” — Betty Bender
5. “Find out what you’re afraid of and go live there.” — Chuck Palahniuk
6. “There is only one thing that makes a dream impossible to achieve: the fear of failure.” — Paulo Coelho, The Alchemist
7. “I’m not afraid of storms, for I’m learning how to sail my ship.” — Louisa May Alcott
8. “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
9. “The brave man is not he who does not feel afraid, but he who conquers that fear.” — Nelson Mandela
10. “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
11. “We are more often frightened than hurt, and we suffer more from imagination than from reality.” — Seneca
12. “There are several good protections against temptation, but the surest is cowardice.” — Mark Twain
13. “We should all start to live before we get too old. Fear is stupid. So are regrets.” — Marilyn Monroe
14. “The key to change… is to let go of fear.” — Rosanne Cash
15. “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
16. “Fear is only as deep as the mind allows.” — Japanese Proverb
17. “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
18. “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, The Wise Man’s Fear
19. “Of all the liars in the world, sometimes the worst are our own fears.” — Rudyard Kipling
20. “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
21. “The greatest mistake we make is living in constant fear that we will make one.” — John C. Maxwell
22. “Fear makes us feel our humanity.” — Benjamin Disraeli
23. “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
24. “Don’t let the fear of striking out hold you back.” — Babe Ruth
25. “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
26. “The way you overcome shyness is to become so wrapped up in something that you forget to be afraid.” — Lady Bird Johnson
27. “There are very few monsters who warrant the fear we have of them.” — Andre Gide
28. “Fear is a darkroom where negatives develop.” — Usman B. Asif
29. “The oldest and strongest emotion of making is fear, and the oldest and strongest kind of fear is fear of the unknown.” — H.P. Lovecraft
30. “Fear doesn’t shut you down; it wakes you up.” — Veronica Roth, Divergent
31. “He who is not everyday conquering some fear has not learned the secret of life.” — Ralph Waldo Emerson
32. “Too many people are thinking of security instead of opportunity. They seem to be more afraid of life than death.” — James F. Byrnes
33. “It is not death that a man should fear, but he should fear never beginning to live.” — Marcus Aurelius
34. “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
35. “Fear makes strangers of people who would be friends.” — Shirley MacLaine
36. “Fear is the path to the Dark Side. Fear leads to anger, anger leads to hate, hate leads to suffering.” — Yoda
37. “Nothing in life is to be feared. It is only to be understood.” — Marie Curie
38. “Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. The fearful are caught as often as the bold.” — Helen Keller
39. “Fears are educated into us, and can, if we wish, be educated out.” — Karl Augustus Menninger
40. “Don’t fear, just live right.” — Neal A. Maxwell
41. “Fear has a large shadow, but he himself is small.” — Ruth Gendler
42. “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
43. “No power so effectually robs the mind of all its powers of acting and reasoning as fear.” — Edmund Burke
44. “Keep your fears to yourself but share your courage with others.” — Robert Louis Stevenson
45. “Do one thing every day that scares you.” — Eleanor Roosevelt
46. “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, Dune
47. “The enemy is fear. We think it is hate, but it is fear.” — Gandhi
48. “Fear has two meanings: ‘Forget everything and run’ or ‘Face everything and rise.’ The choice is yours.” — Zig Ziglar
49. “Try a thing you haven’t done three times. Once, to get over the fear of doing it. Twice, to learn how to do it. And a third time to figure out whether you like it or not.” — Virgil Thomson
50. “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
51. “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
52. “Fear can be good when you’re walking past an alley at night or when you need to check the locks on your doors before you go to bed, but it’s not good when you have a goal and you’re fearful of obstacles. We often get trapped by our fears, but anyone who has had success has failed before.” — Queen Latifah
53. “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, City of Heavenly Fire
54. “A man that flies from his fear may find that he has only taken a shortcut to meet it.” — J.R.R. Tolkien, The Children of Húrin