Very often it is fear that holds us back from pursuing the things we really want. So many of us let our biggest dreams fade away just because we are too afraid to pursue them. But what if I told you that you can actually use fear as a tool for your self-development? It may sound incredible but it is by overcoming our fears that we make ourselves stronger and push ourselves to the next level of our development and success in life. In this article, we have collected 50 inspirational fear quotes that will help you to become more courageous and start living your life to the fullest!
We hope these fear quotes will encourage you to overcome your fears and move forward towards your biggest goals!
50 Motivational Fear Quotes
#1
“When you stay on purpose and refuse to be discouraged by fear, you align with the infinite self, in which all possibilities exist.”
– Wayne Dyer
#2
“Everybody you have come in contact with has been imposing fear on you, because fear is the antithesis of freedom. The more fear you have in you, the less is the possibility of freedom. The more fear is there, the less is the possibility of rebellion.
“The society, the church, the state, all want everybody to be in a state of constant fear: fear of the known, fear of the unknown, fear of death, fear of hell, fear of missing heaven, fear of not making your name in the world, fear of just being a nobody. Everybody around you from the very birth is creating fear. No child is born with fear. Every child is born with freedom, doubt, rebellion, individuality, innocence – all great qualities. But he is helpless, dependent.
“But when you are grown up, you can see – you can try to peel the onion layer by layer – how fears have been created in you, how gullible you have been, how people have exploited your innocence. The priest had no knowledge of God, yet he deceived you and pretended that he knows God. He had no idea of heaven and hell, yet he forced you to be afraid of hell, to be ambitious for heaven. He created greed, he created fear. He himself was a victim of other people. Now you can look back: your father was not aware what he was teaching, what he was telling to you.”
– Osho
#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
“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
#5
“Decide that you want it more than you are afraid of it.”
– Bill Cosby
#6
“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
#7
“The brave man is not he who does not feel afraid, but he who conquers that fear.”
– Nelson Mandela
#8
“I’m not afraid of storms, for I’m learning how to sail my ship.”
– Louisa May Alcott
Fear Quotes
#9
“Don’t follow your fear instinct, because that is going to make you a coward. It degrades your humanity. It is a humiliation imposed by yourself. Whenever you see some fear, go against it! A simple criterion: whenever you see there is fear, go against it and you will be always moving, growing, expanding, coming closer to the moment when ego simply drops – because its whole functioning is through fear. And the absence of the ego is enlightenment; it is not something plus.
“Just a simple principle: remember, anything that makes you afraid, fearful, is a clear indication of what you have to do. You have to do just the opposite. You are not to become a follower of fear, you have to fight your fear. The moment you decide to fight your fear, you are on the way towards enlightenment.”
– Osho
#10
“He who is not everyday conquering some fear has not learned the secret of life.”
– Ralph Waldo Emerson
#11
“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
#12
“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
#13
“Fears are nothing more than a state of mind.”
— Napoleon Hill
#14
“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
#15
“Everything you want is on the other side of fear.”
– Jack Canfield
Fear Quotes
#16
“Life should be surrounded by love, not by fear. It is fear that creates anger. It is fear that ultimately creates violence. Have you watched? Fear is only a feminine form of anger and anger is a masculine form of fear. Fear is a passive form of anger and anger is an active form of fear. So you can change fear into anger very easily, and anger into fear – very easily.
“I say, ‘You just try!’ And it becomes a revelation even to them. If they can beat the pillow in real, hot anger, immediately fear disappears, because the same energy turns and becomes active. It was inactive, then it was fear. Fear is the root cause of hate, anger, violence.”
– Osho
#17
“Do not be afraid to give up the good to go for the great.”
– John Rockefeller
#18
“Fear is only as deep as the mind allows.”
– Japanese Proverb
#19
“Feel the fear and do it anyway.”
– Susan Jeffers
#20
“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
#21
“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
#22
“Most great people have attained their greatest success just one step beyond their greatest failure.”
– Napoleon Hill
Fear Quotes
#23
“What is fear? First: fear is always around some desire. You want to become a famous man, the most famous man in the world – then there is fear. What if you cannot make it? – fear comes. Now fear comes as a by-product of desire: you want to become the richest man in the world. What if you don’t succeed? You start trembling; fear comes. You possess a woman: you are afraid that tomorrow you may not be able to possess, she may go to somebody else. She is still alive, she can go. Only dead women won’t go; she is still alive. You can possess only a corpse – then there is no fear, the corpse will be there. You can possess furniture, then there is no fear.
“But when you try to possess a human being fear comes. Who knows, yesterday she was not yours, today she is yours…Who knows – tomorrow she will be somebody else’s. Fear arises. Fear is arising out of the desire to possess, it is a by-product; because you want to possess, hence fear. If you don’t want to possess, then there is no fear. If you don’t have a desire that you would like to be this and that in the future, then there is no fear. If you don’t want to go to heaven then there is no fear, then the priest cannot make you afraid. If you don’t want to go anywhere then nobody can make you afraid.
“If you start living in the moment, fear disappears. Fear comes through desire. So basically, desire creates fear.”
– Osho
#24
“Men are not afraid of things, but of how they view them.”
– Epictetus
#25
“The greatest mistake you can make in life is to continually be afraid you will make one.”
– Elbert Hubbard
#26
“Our greatest glory is not in never falling, but in rising every time we fall.”
– Confucius
#27
“Remember your dreams and fight for them. You must know what you want from life. There is just one thing that makes your dream become impossible: the fear of failure.”
– Paulo Coelho
#28
”Success is not final, failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts.”
– Winston Churchill
#29
”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…Evolution and all hopes for a better world rest in the fearlessness and open-hearted vision of people who embrace life.”
– John Lennon
Fear Quotes
#30
“You are afraid to die? Buddha says: You cannot die, because, in the first place, you are not. How can you die? Look into your being, go deep into it. See, who is there to die? – and you will not find any ego there. Then there is no possibility of death. Only the idea of ego creates the fear of death. When there is no ego there is no death. You are utter silence, deathlessness, eternity – not as you, but as an open sky, uncontaminated by any idea of ‘I’, of self – unbounded, undefined. Then there is no fear.
“Fear comes because there are other things. You will have to look into those things, and looking into them will start changing things. So please don’t ask how it can be mastered or killed. It is not to be mastered, it is not to be killed. It cannot be mastered and it cannot be killed; it can only be understood. Let understanding be your only law.”
–Osho
#31
“Too many of us are not living our dreams because we are living our fears.”
– Les Brown
#32
“Thinking will not overcome fear but action will.”
– W. Clement Stone
#33
“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
#34
“There is no illusion greater than fear.”
– Lao Tzu
#35
“When you are afraid, do the thing you are afraid of and soon you will lose your fear of it.”
– Norman Vincent Peale
#36
”The real destroyer of inner peace is fear and distrust. Fear develops frustration, frustration develops anger, anger develops violence.”
– Dalai Lama
Fear Quotes
#37
“To fear is one thing. To let fear grab you by the tail and swing you around is another.”
– Katherine Paterson
#38
“Anxiety is the fear that one of a pair of opposites might cancel the other. Forever.”
– Alan Watts
#39
“Where fear is, happiness is not.”
– Seneca
#40
“Ultimately we know deeply that the other side of every fear is freedom.”
– Mary Ferguson
#41
“You will have to drop fear. And if it is a question of choosing between the inner feeling and the fear, choose the inner feeling. Don’t choose the fear. So many people have chosen their religion out of fear, so they live in limbo. They are neither religious nor worldly. They live in indecision.
“Fear is not going to help. Fear always means the fear of the unknown. Fear always means the fear of death. Fear always means the fear of being lost, but if you really want to be alive, you have to accept the possibility of being lost. You have to accept the insecurity of the unknown, the discomfort, and the inconvenience of the unfamiliar, the strange.
“That is the price one has to pay for the blessing that follows it, and nothing can be achieved without paying for it. You have to pay for it: otherwise, you will remain fear-paralyzed. Your whole life will be lost.”
– Osho
#42
”Nothing in life is to be feared. It is only to be understood.’
– Marie Curie
#43
”If you have fear of some pain or suffering, you should examine whether there is anything you can do about it. If you can, there is no need to worry about it; if you cannot do anything, then there is also no need to worry.”
– Dalai Lama
Fear Quotes
#44
“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
#45
“Being brave isn’t the absence of fear. Being brave is having that fear but finding a way through it.”
— Bear Grylls
#46
“Do not fear mistakes. You will know failure. Continue to reach out.”
– Benjamin Franklin
#47
“Fear is becoming rampant on the planet. We can see it every day in the news. Fear is a lack of trust in ourselves, and because of this, we don’t trust Life. We don’t trust that we’re being taken care of on a higher level, so we feel we must control everything from the physical level. Obviously, we’re going to feel fear because we can’t control everything in our lives.”
“Trust is what we learn when we want to overcome our fears. It’s called “taking a leap of faith” and trusting in the Power within that’s connected to Universal Intelligence. Remember, the Power that supplies our breath is the same Power that created the Universe.”
– Louise Hay
#48
“Fear only exists when you do not understand that you have the power to project thought and that the Universe will respond.”
– Abraham Hicks
#49
“Faith and fear both demand you believe in something you cannot see. You choose!”
– Bob Proctor
#50
“If you take yourself to be the body and mind only, you will die! When you discover yourself as awareness, the fear of death will not trouble you any longer.”
– Mooji