Fear Quotes

Standing before this building, I learn something about fear. I learn that it is not the idle fantasies of someone who maybe wants something important to happen to him, even if the important thing is horrible. It is not the disgust of seeing a dead stranger, and not the breathlessness of hearing a shotgun pumped outside of Becca Arrington’s house. This cannot be addressed by breathing exercises. This fear bears no analogy to any fear I knew before. This is the basest of all possible emotions, the feeling that was with us before we existed, before this building existed, before the earth existed. This is the fear that made fish crawl onto dry land and evolve lungs, the fear that teaches us to run, the fear that makes us bury our dead.

~ John Green

Jude was good. But he let his fear and jealousy get to him. Daniel shrugged. 'Fear leads toanger. Anger leads to hate. Hate leads to the dark side.

~ Bree Despain

I will tell you the secret to getting rich on Wall Street. You try to be greedy when others are fearful. And you try to be fearful when others are greedy.

~ Warren Buffett

A further sign of health is that we don't become undone by fear and trembling, but we take it as a message that it's time to stop struggling and look directly at what's threatening us.

~ Pema Chödrön

Being terrified but going ahead and doing what must be done—that's courage. The one who feels no fear is a fool, and the one who lets fear rule him is a coward.

~ Piers Anthony

I suddenly realized. The zebra. It is not something outside of us. The zebra is something inside of us. Our fears. Our own self-destructive nature. The zebra is the worst part of us when we are face-to-face with our worst times. The demon is us!

~ Garth Stein

I'd still thought that everything I thought about that night-the shame, the fear-would fade in time. But that hadn't happened. Instead, the things that I remembered, these little details, seemed to grow stronger, to the point where I could feel their weight in my chest. Nothing, however stuck with me more than the memory of stepping into that dark room and what I found there, and how the light then took that nightmare and made it real.

~ Sarah Dessen

Find what you are afraid of, face it, and then you won't be afraid of it anymore.

~ Marilyn Manson

When you stop living your life based on what others think of you real life begins. At that moment, you will finally see the door of self acceptance opened.

~ Shannon L. Alder

Fear is a weakness. It makes a person lose her nerve and her cool. It makes people jumpy and organizations nervous, and when that happens, there is always a chance to take advantage.

~ Ally Carter

I often find that people confuse inner peace with some sense of insensibility whenever something goes wrong. In such cases inner peace is a permit for destruction: The unyielding optimist will pretend that the forest is not burning either because he is too lazy or too afraid to go and put the fire out.

~ Criss Jami

The greatest fear dogs know is the fear that you will not come back when you go out the door without them.

~ Stanley Coren

He will never have true friends who is afraid of making enemies.

~ William Hazlitt

A fear of weakness only strengthens weakness.

~ Criss Jami

A generous heart is always open, always ready to receive our going and coming. In the midst of such love we need never fear abandonment. This is the most precious gift true love offers - the experience of knowing we always belong.

~ Bell Hooks

Courage is the complement of fear. A man who is fearless cannot be courageous. [He is also a fool.]

~ Robert A. Heinlein

The lizard brain is hungry, scared, angry, and horny.The lizard brain only wants to eat and be safe.The lizard brain will fight (to the death) if it has to, but would rather run away. It likes a vendetta and has no trouble getting angry.The lizard brain cares what everyone else thinks, because status in the tribe is essential to its survival.A squirrel runs around looking for nuts, hiding from foxes, listening for predators, and watching for other squirrels. The squirrel does this because that's all it can do. All the squirrel has is a lizard brain.The only correct answer to 'Why did the chicken cross the road?' is 'Because it's lizard brain told it to.' Wild animals are wild because the only brain they posses is a lizard brain.The lizard brain is not merely a concept. It's real, and it's living on the top of your spine, fighting for your survival. But, of course, survival and success are not the same thing.The lizard brain is the reason you're afraid, the reason you don't do all the art you can, the reason you don't ship when you can. The lizard brain is the source of the resistance.

~ Seth Godin

The important task of literature is to free man, not to censor him, and that is why Puritanism was the most destructive and evil force which ever oppressed people and their literature: it created hypocrisy, perversion, fears, sterility.

~ Anaïs Nin

Could be. I’m a pretty dangerous dude when I’m cornered.”“Yeah,” said the voice from under the table, “you go to pieces so fast people get hit by the shrapnel.

~ Douglas Adams

I'm man enough to know when to scream.

~ Obert Skye

Fear could break a line faster than any enemy charge.

~ Sarah J. Maas

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 unerring ease. It begins in your mind, always. One moment you are feeling calm, self-possessed, happy. Then fear, disguised in the garb of mild-mannered doubt, slips into your mind like a spy.

~ Yann Martel

Child, child, love while you can The voice and the eyes and the soul of a man; Never fear though it break your heart-Out of the wound new joy will start; Only love proudly and gladly and well, Though love be heaven or love be hell.Child, child, love while you may, For life is short as a happy day; Never fear the thing you feel-Only by love is life made real; Love, for the deadly sins are seven, Only through love will you enter heaven.

~ Sara Teasdale

The best thing—in Shadow's opinion, perhaps the only good thing—about being in prison was a feeling of relief. The feeling that he'd plunged as low as he could plunge and he'd hit bottom. He didn't worry that the man was going to get him, because the man had got him. He was no longer scared of what tomorrow might bring, because yesterday had brought it.

~ Neil Gaiman

my imagination persisted in sticking horrors into the dark- so I stuck my imagination into the dark instead, and let it look out at me.

~ F. Scott Fitzgerald

The rhythm of the footsteps, the sound of whatever is coming down the ladder is driving both me and my mom steadily toward peeing our pants.

~ Kendare Blake

Fear is a strange soil. It grows obedience like corn, which grow in straight lines to make weeding easier. But sometimes it grows the potatoes of defiance, which flourish underground.

~ Terry Pratchett

I think that most people would rather face the light of a real enemy than the darkness of their imagined fears.

~ Max Brooks

Everyone gets scared at times. It's only the fools who won't admit it.

~ Jennifer A. Nielsen

Do not allow yourself to be blinded by fear and anger. Everything is only as it is.

~ Yuki Urushibara

She seemed to know, to accept, to welcome her position, the citadel of the family, the strong place that could not be taken. And since old Tom and the children could not know hurt or fear unless she acknowledged hurt or fear, she had practiced denying them in herself. And since, when a joyful thing happened, they looked to see whether joy was on her, it was her habit to build laughter out of inadequate materials....She seemed to know that if she swayed the family shook, and if she ever deeply wavered or despaired the family would fall.

~ John Steinbeck

She knew that was not an honest prayer, and she did not linger over it. The right prayer would have been, Lord . . . I am miserable and bitter at heart, and old fears are rising up in me so that everything I do makes everything worse.

~ Marilynne Robinson

The light of a new day always chases the shadows of the night away, and shows us that the shape of our fears is only the ghost of our own minds.

~ Terry Goodkind

When you were in love, you knew no fear or hatred. When you were fearful, there was no possibility of love or hate. And when there was hate, there was only hate.

~ Christopher Pike

But the thought of being a lunatic did not greatly trouble him the horror was that he might also be wrong.

~ George Orwell

After all, when a stone is dropped into a pond, the water continues quivering even after the stone has sunk to the bottom.

~ Arthur Golden

Fear motivates, more than love or ambition or joy. Fear is more powerful than anything else in the world. I have spent so long yearning for things—for love, for acceptance—that I do not really need. I need nothing except the submission that comes with fear. I do not know why it took me so long to learn this.

~ Marie Lu

If people would know how little brain is ruling the world, they would die of fear.

~ Ivo Andrić

Courage is about learning how to function despite the fear, to put aside your instincts to run or give in completely to the anger born from fear. Courage is about using your brain and your heart when every cell of your body is screaming at your to fight or flee - and then following through on what you believe is the right thing to do.

~ Jim Butcher

There is always danger for those who are afraid.

~ George Bernard Shaw