Fear is a natural and common emotion that everyone experiences in their lives. However, allowing fear to control your life can hold you back from achieving your goals and living life to its fullest potential. Thus, it becomes important to learn to face fears and overcome them. In that sense, here are some inspiring quotes that can help you in your journey to face fears.
Nelson Mandela once said, “I learned that courage was not the absence of fear, but the triumph over it.” These words hold true in our pursuit to overcome fear. Often we believe that courage is the absence of fear, but it’s not the case. Instead, courage is about pushing through fear and emerging victoriously. Triumphing over our fears is empowering and helps us grow as a person.
Mark Twain’s quote, “Do the thing you fear most and the death of fear is certain,” is a great motivator to face and overcome fears. The best way to drive away fear is to face it head-on. In the process, you will find that the fear you had been holding onto for so long is no longer scary. Thus, tackling fear is the perfect antidote to your constant worries.
The Japanese proverb says, “Fear is only as deep as the mind allows.” In other words, fear is ultimately a product of our thoughts. This quote is a great reminder of how our thoughts are responsible for the fears we harbor. Sometimes, our biggest fears are nothing but a result of our thoughts and imagination, which may or may not be accurate. It teaches us to be mindful of our thoughts and not let them hold us captive.
Franklin D. Roosevelt’s quote, “The only thing we have to fear is fear itself,” reminds us that our fears are often unwarranted, and we need to stop focusing on what could go wrong. Fear can be paralyzing; it can hold us back from living our lives. But by focusing on the positive and not letting fear control us, we can overcome it.
Finally, Mark Twain reminds us that “Courage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear – not absence of fear.” This quote highlights the importance of resilience. Courage is not the absence of fear; it is about remaining steadfast in the face of fear. Strengthening our resolve is vital in overcoming fear.
100+ Inspiring Quotes to Help You Face Your Fears
“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`
“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
“I’ve learned that fear limits you and your vision. It serves as blinders to what may be just a few steps down the road for you. The journey is valuable, but believing in your talents, your abilities, and your self-worth can empower you to walk down an even brighter path. Transforming fear into freedom – how great is that? —Soledad O’Brien
“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
“Courage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear, not absence of fear.” —Mark Twain
“I think fearless is having fears but jumping anyway.” —Taylor Swift
“Curiosity will conquer fear even more than bravery will.” — James Stephens
“Who sees all beings in his own self, and his own self in all beings, loses all fear.” — Isa Upanishad, Hindu Scripture
“Laughter is poison to fear.” — George R.R. Martin
“To overcome fear, here’s all you have to do: realize the fear is there, and do the action you fear anyway.” — Peter McWilliams
“In skating over thin ice our safety is in our speed.” — Ralph Waldo Emerson
“Don’t fear, just live right.” — Neal A. Maxwell
“Find out what you’re afraid of and go live there.” — Chuck Palahniuk
“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
“There is a time to take counsel of your fears, and there is a time to never listen to any fear.” —George S. Patton
“Fear makes us feel our humanity.” — Benjamin Disraeli
“You have to get outside of your comfort zone if you’re going to make significant changes in your life, and since few things scare people like the unknown, feeling fear is an excellent sign that you’re on the right track.” —Jen Sincero
“There are times when fear is good. It must keep its watchful place at the heart’s controls.” — Aeschylus
“Being aware of your fear is smart. Overcoming it is the mark of a successful person.” —Seth Godin
“Fear has its use, but cowardice has none.” —Mahatma Gandhi
“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
“Some people ask why people would go into a dark room to be scared. I say they are already scared, and they need to have that fear manipulated and massaged. I think of horror movies as the disturbed dreams of a society.” —Wes Craven
“When you say ‘fear of the unknown’, that is the definition of fear; fear is the unknown, fear is what you do not know, and it’s genetically within us so that we feel safe. We feel scared of the woods because we’re not familiar with it, and that keeps you safe.” —M. Night Shyamalan
“Fear is our deepest and strongest emotion, and the one which best lends itself to the creation of nature-defying illusions.” H. P. Lovecraft
“Fear doesn’t shut you down; it wakes you up.” ― Veronica Roth, Divergent
“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
“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
“Fear comes from uncertainty. When we are absolutely certain, whether of our worth or worthlessness, we are almost impervious to fear.” —William Congreve
“Where there is charity and wisdom, there is neither fear nor ignorance.” —Francis of Assisi
“The greatest mistake we make is living in constant fear that we will make one.” —John C. Maxwell
“Fears are educated into us, and can, if we wish, be educated out.” — Karl Augustus Menninger
“Ignorance is the parent of fear.” — Herman Melville
“Fear: False Evidence Appearing Real.” — Unknown
“We are more often frightened than hurt; and we suffer more from imagination than from reality.” — Seneca
“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
“Fear is the lengthened shadow of ignorance.” — Arnold Glasow
“Fears are stories we tell ourselves.” — Unknown
“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
“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
“Fear is a phoenix. You can watch it burn a thousand times and still it will return.” ― Leigh Bardugo
“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 isn’t so difficult to understand. After all, weren’t we all frightened as children? Nothing has changed since Little Red Riding Hood faced the big bad wolf. What frightens us today is exactly the same sort of thing that frightened us yesterday. It’s just a different wolf. This fright complex is rooted in every individual.” ― Alfred Hitchcock
“How strange it is. We have these deep terrible lingering fears about ourselves and the people we love. Yet we walk around, talk to people, eat and drink. We manage to function. The feelings are deep and real. Shouldn’t they paralyze us? How is it we can survive them, at least for a little while? We drive a car, we teach a class. How is it no one sees how deeply afraid we were, last night, this morning? Is it something we all hide from each other, by mutual consent? Or do we share the same secret without knowing it? Wear the same disguise?” ― Don DeLillo
“Fears are nothing more than a state of mind.” —Napoleon Hill
“Never let the fear of striking out get in your way.” —Babe Ruth
“Fear is only as deep as the mind allows.” — Japanese Proverb
“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
“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
“The key to success is to focus our conscious mind on things we desire not things we fear.” —Brian Tracy
“As soon as the fear approaches near, attack and destroy it.” —Chanakya
“There are very few monsters who warrant the fear we have of them.” — Andre Gide
“Never be afraid to try something new. Remember, amateurs built the ark, professionals built the Titanic.” — Unknown
“Fear has a large shadow, but he himself is small.” — Ruth Gendler
“Fear’s useless. Either something bad happens or it doesn’t: If it doesn’t, you’ve wasted time being afraid, and if it does, you’ve wasted time that you could have spent sharpening your weapons.” ― Sarah Rees Brennan
“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
“Fear is the most debilitating emotion in the world, and it can keep you from ever truly knowing yourself and others – its adverse effects can no longer be overlooked or underestimated. Fear breeds hatred, and hatred has the power to destroy everything in its path.” —Kevyn Aucoin
“Fear is the dark room where the Devil develops his negatives.” —Gary Busey
“Fear defeats more people than any other one thing in the world.” —Ralph Waldo Emerson
“He who is not everyday conquering some fear has not learned the secret of life.” —Ralph Waldo Emerson
“Of all the liars in the world, sometimes the worst are our own fears.” — Rudyard Kipling
“Life shrinks or expands in proportion to one’s courage.” — Anais Nin
“In time we hate that which we often fear.” — William Shakespeare
“Of all forms of caution, caution in love is perhaps the most fatal to true happiness.” — Bertrand Russell
“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
“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
“Fear makes strangers of people who would be friends.” — Shirley Maclaine
“Fear of self is the greatest of all terrors, the deepest of all dread, the commonest of all mistakes. From it grows failure. Because of it, life is a mockery. Out of it comes despair.” — David Seasbury
“To dare is to lose one’s footing momentarily. To not dare is to lose oneself.”— Soren Kierkegaard
“No power so effectually robs the mind of all its powers of acting and reasoning as fear.” — Edmund Burke
“There are several good protections against temptation, but the surest is cowardice.” — Mark Twain
“There is only one thing that makes a dream impossible to achieve: the fear of failure.” ― Paulo Coelho
“Fear cuts deeper than swords.” ― George R.R. Martin
“Power does not corrupt. Fear corrupts… perhaps the fear of a loss of power.” ― John Steinbeck
“When we think we have been hurt by someone in the past, we build up defenses to protect ourselves from being hurt in the future. So the fearful past causes a fearful future and the past and future become one. We cannot love when we feel fear…. When we release the fearful past and forgive everyone, we will experience total love and oneness with all.” ― Gerald G. Jampolsky
“It is not death that a man should fear, but he should fear never beginning to live.” — Marcus Aurelius
“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
“Because fear kills everything,” Mo had once told her. “Your mind, your heart, your imagination.” ― Cornelia Funke
“You can’t make decisions based on fear and the possibility of what might happen.”― Michelle Obama
“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
“Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. The fearful are caught as often as the bold.” —Helen Keller
“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
“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
“Grab the broom of anger and drive off the beast of fear.” —Zora Neale Hurston
“The key to growth is acknowledging your fear of the unknown and jumping in anyway.” —Jen Sincero
“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
“The cave you fear to enter holds the treasure you seek.” — Joseph Campbell
“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
“Fear has two meanings: ‘Forget Everything And Run’ or ‘Face Everything And Rise.’ The choice is yours.” Zig Ziglar
“Do the thing you fear and the death of fear is certain.” Ralph Waldo Emerson
“Do one thing every day that scares you.” Eleanor Roosevelt
“Never let the fear of striking out get in your way.” Babe Ruth
“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
“Men go to far greater lengths to avoid what they fear than to obtain what they desire.” Dan Brown
“Fear of success can be just as crippling as the fear of failure.” John Allen
“Too many people are thinking of security instead of opportunity. They seem to be more afraid of life than death.” James F. Byrnes
“Everything you want is on the other side of fear.” Jack Canfield
“People are afraid to pursue their most important dreams, because they feel that they don’t deserve them, or that they’ll be unable to achieve them.” Paulo Coelho
“Action cures fear, inaction creates terror.” Douglas Horton
Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. The fearful are caught as often as the bold.” Helen Keller
“The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.” Franklin D. Roosevelt
“Limits, like fear, is often an illusion.” Michael Jordan
Conclusion
In conclusion, fear can hold us back if we allow it to. However, with the help of these inspiring quotes, we can find the strength and courage to overcome our fears. Remember, facing our fears is the first step in conquering them. By taking action and remaining resilient, we can achieve our goals and live life to the fullest.
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