By Jim Hagarty
2014
I have always had a problem with fear. Ironically, for most of my life, I have been afraid to admit that. For a long time, however, I have been challenging it and in the immortal word of Charlie Sheen, I’ve been “winning” the odd battle. One way I have employed is to study fear, to learn about it. That helps. Here are a bunch of quotes I have assembled recently on the matter. I learned them sitting in a pew at the Church of Google.
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
Always do what you are afraid to do.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Only when we are no longer afraid do we begin to live.
Dorothy Thompson
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
What is needed, rather than running away or controlling or suppressing or any other resistance, is understanding fear; that means, watch it, learn about it, come directly into contact with it. We are to learn about fear, not how to escape from it.
Jiddu Krishnamurti
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
True success is overcoming the fear of being unsuccessful.
Paul Sweeney
We should not fret for what is past, nor should we be anxious about the future; men of discernment deal only with the present moment.
Chanakya
Find out what you’re afraid of and go live there.
Chuck Palahniuk
The first duty of man is to conquer fear; he must get rid of it, he cannot act till then.
Thomas Carlyle
Do what you fear and fear disappears.
David Joseph Schwartz
We fear the thing we want the most.
Robert Anthony
We fear things in proportion to our ignorance of them.
Christian Nestell Bovee
This is all you have. This is not a dry run. This is your life. If you want to fritter it away with your fears, then you will fritter it away, but you won’t get it back later.
Laura Schlessinger
Ultimately we know deeply that the other side of every fear is freedom.
Marilyn Ferguson
If you let your fear of consequence prevent you from following your deepest instinct, your life will be safe, expedient and thin.
Katharine Butler Hathaway
One had to take some action against fear when once it laid hold of one.
Rainer Maria Rilke
To fight fear, act. To increase fear – wait, put off, postpone.
David Joseph Schwartz
I’d rather give my life than be afraid to give it.
Lyndon B. Johnson
Why is it that when we get older, we get more fearful?
Sandra Bullock
When you’re fearful, you stumble.
Jenna Jameson
I think so many people live their whole life in fear and doubt and shame.
Dolly Parton
Stand before the people you fear and speak your mind – even if your voice shakes.
Maggie Kuhn
Audacity augments courage; hesitation, fear.
Publilius Syrus
Do the thing we fear, and death of fear is certain.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Where fear is, happiness is not.
Lucius Annaeus Seneca
Thinking will not overcome fear but action will.
W. Clement Stone
Sometimes you must suffer through something to defeat your fear of it.
Joyce Meyer
Fear is a question: What are you afraid of, and why? Just as the seed of health is in illness, because illness contains information, your fears are a treasure house of self-knowledge if you explore them.
Marilyn Ferguson
How can you defy fear? Fear is a human instinct, just like hunger. Whether you like it or not, you become hungry. Similarly with fear. But I have learned to train myself to live with this fear.
Shirin Ebadi
We must travel in the direction of our fear.
John Berryman
Fear of failure has always been my best motivator.
Douglas Wood
People who are prone to anxiety are nearly always people-pleasers who fear conflict and negative feelings like anger. When you feel upset, you sweep your problems under the rug because you don’t want to upset anyone. You do this so quickly and automatically that you’re not even aware you’re doing it.
David D. Burns
A fear of the unknown keeps a lot of people from leaving bad situations.
Kathie Lee Gifford
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
I think one of the terrible things today is that people have this deathly fear of food: fear of eggs, say, or fear of butter. Most doctors feel that you can have a little bit of everything.
Julia Child
The key to change… is to let go of fear.
Rosanne Cash
Do what you fear most and you control fear.
Tom Hopkins
In boxing, I had a lot of fear. Fear was good. But, for the first time, in the bout with Muhammad Ali, I didn’t have any fear. I thought, ‘This is easy. This is what I’ve been waiting for’. No fear at all. No nervousness. And I lost.
George Foreman
The first several years of my life were used to upload incredible amounts of fear, and I just became afraid of everything. I was afraid of my parents, afraid of my classmates, afraid of the streets of Washington, D.C. I would flinch at every gesture.
Henry Rollins
You can’t let fear paralyze you. The worse that can happen is you fail, but guess what: You get up and try again. Feel that pain, get over it, get up, dust yourself off and keep it moving.
Queen Latifah
I like to do something I fear.
Heath Ledger
Fear paralyses you – fear of flying, fear of the future, fear of leaving a rubbish marriage, fear of public speaking, or whatever it is.
Annie Lennox
I, for one, find writing excruciating. Some mornings, as I’m on my way to my desk, my hands actually tremble with fear. The fear, of course, is that I’ll sit down at the desk and discover that what I’ve written is claptrap. Fear inevitably leads to procrastination.
Rosemary Mahoney
I live in fear of being a contented passenger. I’d rather get parts I can’t play.
Michael Gambon
I know from personal experience how fear and low self worth can cripple one’s ability to succeed in life. But with a little support, caring and inspiration, miracles can happen.
Richard Hatch
What is the biggest thing that stops people from living their lives in the present moment? Fear – and we must learn how to overcome fear.
Brian Weiss
Fear has its use but cowardice has none.
Mahatma Gandhi
The thing we fear we bring to pass.
Elbert Hubbard
Listen to what you know instead of what you fear.
Richard Bach
Fear runs our lives. It doesn’t matter who you are. You have to understand your relationship with fear. Whether you’re scared of getting into a relationship; or taking the new job; or a confrontation – you have to size fear up.
Chris Pine
I am grateful that I didn’t let fear get the best of me. It only holds you back from possibilities and greatness.
Mariska Hargitay
The choice that frees or imprisons us is the choice of love or fear. Love liberates. Fear imprisons.
Gary Zukav
Living with fear stops us taking risks, and if you don’t go out on the branch, you’re never going to get the best fruit.
Sarah Parish
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
Dare to be honest and fear no labor.
Robert Burns
I think when you move past your fear and you go after your dreams wholeheartedly, you become free.
LL Cool J
A fear of the unknown keeps a lot of people from leaving bad situations.
Kathie Lee Gifford
You’re not human if you don’t feel fear. But I’ve learnt to treat fear as an emotion that sharpens me. It’s there to give me that edge for what I have to do.
Bear Grylls
The thing you fear most has no power. Your fear of it is what has the power. Facing the truth really will set you free.
Oprah Winfrey
I am so tired of fear. And I don’t want my girls to live in a country, in a world, based on fear.
Michelle Obama
Action cures fear, inaction creates terror.
Douglas Horton
To live a creative life, we must lose our fear of being wrong.
Joseph Chilton Pearce
Follow the path of the unsafe, independent thinker. Expose your ideas to the danger of controversy. Speak your mind and fear less the label of ‘crackpot’ than the stigma of conformity.
Thomas J. Watson
I am totally fearless! Well, of course, I’m not totally fearless. I worry constantly and obsess over things, but I just don’t let fear stand in the way of doing something that I really want to do.
Tom Ford
To live a creative life, we must lose our fear of being wrong.
Joseph Chilton Pearce
I’ve always felt that if you back down from a fear, the ghost of that fear never goes away. It diminishes people.
Hugh Jackman
The meaning I picked, the one that changed my life: Overcome fear, behold wonder.
Richard Bach
Grab the broom of anger and drive off the beast of fear.
Zora Neale Hurston
If you go deeper and deeper into your own heart, you’ll be living in a world with less fear, isolation and loneliness.
Sharon Salzberg
As you know from school, it’s when you have not prepared for the test that you have the fear of failing. And if you have prepared, even if you fail, you’ve done your best.
Alice Walker
Do not fear mistakes. There are none.
Miles Davis
It’s the most unhappy people who most fear change.
Mignon McLaughlin
Slowness to change usually means fear of the new.
Phil Crosby
Some days it is a heroic act just to refuse the paralysis of fear and straighten up and step into another day.
Edward Albert
Worry is a cycle of inefficient thoughts whirling around a center of fear.
Corrie Ten Boom
They who have conquered doubt and fear have conquered failure.
James Allen
As soon as the fear approaches near, attack and destroy it.
Chanakya
Fear defeats more people than any other one thing in the world.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
I don’t run away from a challenge because I am afraid. Instead, I run toward it because the only way to escape fear is to trample it beneath your feet.
Nadia Comaneci
God, make me so uncomfortable that I will do the very thing I fear.
Ruby Dee
Failure isn’t an option. I’ve erased the word ‘fear’ from my vocabulary, and I think when you erase fear, you can’t fail.
Alicia Keys
Greatness comes from fear. Fear can either shut us down and we go home, or we fight through it.
Lionel Richie
To fear love is to fear life, and those who fear life are already three parts dead.
Bertrand Russell
The weeds keep multiplying in our garden, which is our mind ruled by fear. Rip them out and call them by name.
Sylvia Browne
Kill the snake of doubt in your soul, crush the worms of fear in your heart and mountains will move out of your way.
Kate Seredy
There is perhaps nothing so bad and so dangerous in life as fear.
Jawaharlal Nehru
The greatest mistake we make is living in constant fear that we will make one.
John C. Maxwell
The way to develop self-confidence is to do the thing you fear and get a record of successful experiences behind you.
William Jennings Bryan
As we let our light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence actually liberates others.
Marianne Williamson
To conquer fear is the beginning of wisdom.
Bertrand Russell
Fear is the base of what everybody does wrong in their lives.
Elaine Stritch
You can conquer almost any fear if you will only make up your mind to do so. For remember, fear doesn’t exist anywhere except in the mind.
Dale Carnegie
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
The biggest obstacle to wealth is fear. People are afraid to think big, but if you think small, you’ll only achieve small things.
T. Harv Eker
My father was a mean, controlling and manipulative person for most of his life. He was unpredictable and unstable. As a result, the atmosphere of our home was super-charged with fear because you never knew if what you did would make him mad or not.
Joyce Meyer
When someone fears losing your affection, he or she will strive to keep it. Perhaps you have strived to keep someone’s affection, too. Fear of loss is not love.
Gary Zukav
Discipline strengthens the mind so that it becomes impervious to the corroding influence of fear.
Bernard Law Montgomery
Fear of failure must never be a reason not to try something.
Frederick W. Smith
Valor grows by daring, fear by holding back.
Publilius Syrus
I fear the boredom that comes with not learning and not taking chances.
Robert Fulghum
God, make me so uncomfortable that I will do the very thing I fear.
Ruby Dee
Failure isn’t an option. I’ve erased the word ‘fear’ from my vocabulary, and I think when you erase fear, you can’t fail.
Alicia Keys
