104 Motivational Quotes About Fear That Will Give You Courage

“The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.” – Franklin D Roosevelt

Fear is an inevitable emotion experienced by everyone. However, motivational quotes on fear can lift our spirits and give us the courage to fight it off. Fear is triggered when we face difficult situations. Though it gives us stressful days and sleepless nights, fear can also be the catalyst to make us strong and courageous. It triggers the survival instinct to stay safe in dangerous conditions. Cristina Dovan, a Certified Life Coach, says, “Fear is our brain trying to keep us safe and not to adventure doing things outside our comfort zone. We all fear something, we just have to know that we can go after what we want in spite of it.”

Here, we have curated a list of best fear quotes that help you overcome it and motivate you to take up challenges. Keep reading to check them out.

104 Inspiring Quotes About Fear

1. “You gain strength, courage and confidence by every experience in which you really stop to look fear in the face.” – Eleanor Roosevelt
2. “You feed your fears to grow muscles against you when you run away from what frightens you. Little do you know that it’s frightened when you face it boldly!” – Israelmore Ayivor
3. “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
4. “For God gave us a spirit not of fear but of power and love and self-control.”  – 2 Timothy 1:7, Bible
5. “Our greatest fear should not be of failure but of succeeding at things in life that don’t really matter.”  – Francis Chan, Crazy Love: Overwhelmed by a Relentless God
6. “There are two kinds of fears: rational and irrational – or in simpler terms, fears that make sense and fears that don’t.”  -Lemony Snicket

Did You Know?

Past experiences, panic attacks, triggers, and genetic predispositions can all contribute to irrational fear or phobias. Gradual and repeated exposure to the cause of fear in a controlled environment can help overcome the situation.

7. “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
8. “There’s no shame in fear, my father told me, what matters is how we face it.”  -George R.R. Martin, A Clash of Kings
9. “The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.”  -Franklin D. Roosevelt, Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s First Inaugural Address
10. “Without fear, there cannot be courage.”  -Christopher Paolini
11. “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, Unpopular Essays
12. “Power does not corrupt. Fear corrupts…perhaps the fear of a loss of power.” –John Steinbeck
13. “Have no fear of perfection – you’ll never reach it.” –Salvador Dali

14. “First of all, let me assert my firm belief that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself – nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance.” –Franklin D. Roosevelt
15. “He who has overcome his fears will truly be free.” –Aristotle
16. “Courage is knowing what not to fear.” –Plato
17. “The cave you fear to enter holds the treasure you seek.” –Joseph Campbell
18. “It is not death that a man should fear, but he should fear never beginning to live.” –Marcus Aurelius

Trivia

Marcus Aurelius is said to have cried when he was declared the emperor of Rome in 161 AD. He was scared, but he didn’t allow this fear to rule over him. He rose above the fear to take up his job seriously.

19. “He is terribly afraid of dying because he hasn’t yet lived.” –Franz Kafka
20. “I am afraid. Not of life, or death, or nothingness, but of wasting it as if I had never been.” –Daniel Keyes, Flowers for Algernon
21. “Do the thing you fear and the death of fear is certain.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson
22. “Of all the liars in the world, sometimes the worst are our own fears.” –Rudyard Kipling
23. “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, Pride and Prejudice
24. “I believe that words are strong, that they can overwhelm what we fear when fear seems more awful than life is good.” –Andrew Solomon, The Noonday Demon: An Atlas of Depression

25. “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 anymore.” –John Steinbeck, East of Eden
26. “I’m not afraid of death; I just don’t want to be there when it happens.” Woody Allen
27. “We promise according to our hopes and perform according to our fears.” –François de La Rochefoucauld
28. “In time we hate that which we often fear.” – William Shakespeare, Antony andCleopatra
29. “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
30. “Ignorance is the parent of fear.” –Herman Melville, Moby-Dick
31. “Don’t fear failure. — Not failure, but low aim is the crime. In great attempts, it is glorious even to fail.” –Bruce Lee, Striking Thoughts: Bruce Lee’s Wisdom for Daily Living
32. “Be strong and courageous. Do not fear or be in dread of them, for it is the Lord your God who goes with you. He will not leave you or forsake you.” –Deuteronomy 31:6, Bible
33. “Find out what you’re afraid of and go live there.” –Chuck Palahniuk
34. “I think the big mistake in schools is trying to teach children anything, and by using fear as the basic motivation. Fear of getting failing grades, fear of not staying with your class, etc. Interest can produce learning on a scale compared to fear as a nuclear explosion to a firecracker.” –Stanley Kubrick

35. “Fear defeats more people than any other one thing in the world.” –Ralph Waldo Emerson
36. “Fear doesn’t shut you down; it wakes you up” –Veronica Roth, Divergent
37. “Move outside the tangle of fear-thinking. Live in silence.” –Rumi
38. “But fear doesn’t need doors and windows. It works from the inside.”–Andrew Clements, Things Not Seen
39. “Here is the world. Beautiful and terrible things will happen. Don’t be afraid.” –Frederick Buechner, Beyond Words: Daily Readings in the ABC’s of Faith
40. “Do not be afraid; our fate, Cannot be taken from us; it is a gift.” –Dante Alighieri, Inferno
41. “Gratitude looks to the Past and love to the Present; fear, avarice, lust, and ambition look ahead.” –S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters
42. “What do you fear, lady?” [Aragorn] asked. “A cage,” [Éowyn] said. “To stay behind bars, until use and old age accept them, and all chance of doing great deeds is gone beyond recall or desire.” –J.R.R. Tolkien, The Return of the King
43. “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
44. “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, The Sorrows of Young Werther
45. “There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear. For fear has to do with punishment, and whoever fears has not been perfected in love. We love because he first loved us.” –1 John 4:18–19
46. “Fear of a name increases fear of the thing itself.” –K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone
47. “There is only one thing that makes a dream impossible to achieve: the fear of failure.” –Paulo Coelho, The Alchemist
48. “No power so effectually robs the mind of all its powers of acting and reasoning as fear.” –Edmund Burke
49. “Anxiety is the dizziness of freedom.” –Søren Kierkegaard, The Concept of Anxiety: A Simple Psychologically Orienting Deliberation on the Dogmatic Issue of Hereditary Sin
50. “Do one thing every day that scares you.” –Eleanor Roosevelt
51. “Fear is a darkroom where negatives develop.” –Usman B. Asif
52. “Fear is the thief of dreams.” –Brian Krans
53. “There are three things all wise men fear: the sea in storm, a night with no moon, and the anger of a gentleman.” –Patrick Rothfuss, The Wise Man’s Fear
54. “Fear is only as deep as the mind allows.” – Japanese Proverb
55. “Fear is an insidious and deadly thing. It can warp judgment, freeze reflexes, breed mistakes. Worse, it’s contagious.” –Jimmy Stewart
56. “Fear cuts deeper than swords.” –George R.R. Martin, A Game of Thrones
57. “Men are not afraid of things, but of how they view them.”  – Epictetus
58. “He who is not everyday conquering some fear has not learned the secret of life.”  – Shannon L. Alder
59. “Everything you want is on the other side of fear.”  –Jack Canfield
60. “Men go to far greater lengths to avoid what they fear than to obtain what they desire.”  –Dan Brown, The Da Vinci Code
61. “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
62. “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
63. “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.” – JoyBell C.
64. “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
65. “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
66. “Scared is what you’re feeling. Brave is what you’re doing.” – Emma Donoghue, Room
67. “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, Looking for Alaska
68. “I’m intimidated by the fear of being average.”  –Taylor Swift
69. “Don’t give in to your fears. If you do, you won’t be able to talk to your heart.”  –Paulo Coelho, The Alchemist
70. “No one ever told me that grief felt so like fear.”  –S. Lewis, A Grief Observed
71. “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, The Fire Next Time
72. “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
73. “Fear is a phoenix. You can watch it burn a thousand times and still it will return.”  –Leigh Bardugo, Crooked Kingdom
74. “A man that flies from his fear may find that he has only taken a shortcut to meet it.”  –R.R. Tolkien, The Children of Húrin
75. “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
76. “Laughter is poison to fear.”  –George R.R. Martin, A Game of Thrones
77. “Courage is feeling fear, not getting rid of fear, and taking action in the face of fear.”  – Roy T. Bennett, The Light in the Heart
78. “‘Because fear kills everything,’ Mo had once told her. ‘Your mind, your heart, your imagination.’”  –Cornelia Funke, Inkheart
79. “Keep your fears to yourself, but share your courage with others.”  –Robert Louis Stevenson
80. “It’s true, I am afraid of dying. I am afraid of the world moving forward without me, of my absence going unnoticed, or worse, being some natural force propelling life on. Is it selfish? Am I such a bad person for dreaming of a world that ends when I do? I don’t mean the world ending with respect to me, but every set of eyes closing with mine.”  –Jonathan Safran Foer, Everything Is Illuminated
81. “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, Crooked Kingdom
82. “The Lord is my light and my salvation; whom shall I fear? The Lord is the stronghold of my life; of whom shall I be afraid?”  –Psalm 27:1, Bible
83. “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, Lord of Shadows

84. “It’s better to die laughing than to live each moment in fear.” –Michael Crichton
85. “The man who fears losing has already lost.” –George R.R. Martin, A Game of Thrones
86. “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, A Game of Thrones
87. “Don’t be afraid of being scared. To be afraid is a sign of common sense. Only complete idiots are not afraid of anything.” –Carlos Ruiz Zafón, The Angel’s Game
88. “You can’t make decisions based on fear and the possibility of what might happen.”  –Michelle Obama
89. “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, Dracula
90. “He who fears he shall suffer, already suffers what he fears.” –Michel de Montaigne, The Complete Essays
91. “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, Letters to Milena
92. “One is never afraid of the unknown; one is afraid of the known coming to an end.”  – Krishnamurti
93. “Fear is a manipulative emotion that can trick us into living a boring life.”  –Donald Miller, A Million Miles in a Thousand Years: What I Learned While Editing My Life
94. “All that ever holds somebody back, I think, is fear. For a minute I had fear. [Then] I went into the [dressing] room and shot my fear in the face…”  –Lady Gaga
95. “There is no beauty in sadness. No honor in suffering. No growth in fear. No relief in hate. It’s just a waste of perfectly good happiness.” –Katerina Stoykova Klemer
96. “Men who fear demons see demons everywhere.” – Gerald Brom, The Child Thief
97. “When you are grateful, fear disappears and abundance appears.”  –Anthony Robbins
98. “Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for you are with me; your rod and your staff, they comfort me.” –Psalm 23:4, Bible
99. “I believe that every single event in life happens in an opportunity to choose love over fear.” –Oprah Winfrey
100. “To overcome fear is the quickest way to gain your self-confidence.”  –Roy T. Bennett, The Light in the Heart
101. “May your choices reflect your hopes, not your fears.”  –Nelson Mandela
102. “I have such a fear of finding another like myself, and such a desire to find one! I am so utterly lonely, but I also have such a fear that my isolation be broken through, and I no longer be the head and ruler of my universe.”  –Anaïs Nin, House of Incest
103. “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
104. “Ultimately we know deeply that the other side of every fear is a freedom.”  –Marilyn Ferguson

Frequently Asked Questions

Where does the fear come from?

The threat of emotional, physical, or psychological harm leads to fear. The threat may either be real or imagined.

What verse in the Bible says you have no fear?

Isaiah 41:10 appeals to humans to be fearless as the Almighty shall protect them.

Watch the following video for a motivational speech that deals with overcoming fear. This video will help you gain inspiration and insight so you can conquer your limitations and embrace fearlessness in pursuing your goals.

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Cristina DovanCertified Life Coach

     

Cristina is a certified life coach who blends her passion for human behavior with her experience in digital entrepreneurship. She embarked on her personal development journey over five years ago and is now devoted to using her insights to help others transform their lives.

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Shivani ChandelBeauty & Lifestyle Writer

 

Shivani Chandel is a postgraduate in English literature from Panjab University, Chandigarh and a certified relationship coach. She has four years of experience in copy editing and writing about entertainment, health, lifestyle, and beauty.

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Subhrojyoti Mukherjee

Subhrojyoti is an associate editor at StyleCraze with four years of experience. He has a master’s degree in English from Presidency University, Kolkata, and has also done a post-graduate certificate course in Editing and Publishing from Jadavpur University, Kolkata.

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Sneha Tete

Sneha has a master's degree in Applied Linguistics from the University of Hyderabad, a professional Relationship Coach diploma, and over four years of experience in writing. She writes about relationships and lifestyle.Sneha began her career as an instructional designer, shifted to freelance technical and research writing, and self-published a novella on the theme of adolescent mental health.

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