Quotes About Fear

Perhaps down in his heart Okonkwo was not a cruel man. But his whole life was dominated by fear, the fear of failure and of weakness. It was deeper and more intimate that the fear of evil and capricious gods and of magic, the fear of the forest, and of the forces of nature, malevolent, red in tooth and claw. Okonkwo’s fear was greater than these. It was not external but lay deep within himself.

Fear never wrote a symphony or poem, negotiated a peace treaty, or cured a disease. Fear never pulled a family out of poverty or a country out of bigotry. Fear never saved a marriage or a business. Courage did that. Faith did that. People who refused to consult or cower to their timidities did that. But fear itself? Fear herds us into a prison and slams the doors. Wouldn't it be great to walk out?

Fear shuts off possibilities. The first thing that kicks in when you're reacting with fear... This is what I love about Roosevelt's quote, "There's nothing to fear but fear itself."

There is always great beauty, not of images, feeling or thought. Beauty is neither thought nor feeling; it has nothing whatsoever to do with emotion or sentiment. There is fear. Fear is never an actuality; it is either before or after the active present. When there is fear in the active present, is it fear? It is there and there is no escape from it, no evasion possible. There, at that actual moment, there is total attention at the moment of danger, physical or psychological.

Mari remembered what she had read in the young girl's eyes the moment she had come into the refectory: fear. Fear. Veronika might feel insecurity, shyness, shame, constraint, but why fear? That was only justifiable when confronted by a real threat: ferocious animals, armed attackers, earthquakes, but not a group of people gathered together in a refectory. But human beings are like that,' she thought. 'We've replaced nearly all our emotions with fear.

One who loves must learn fear. One who fears must learn love. The thinker must do. The doer must think. The pacifist must fight, the fighter must find peace. If you flow as a river, burn as a fire. If you burn as a furnace, flow as a river. If you fly as a bird, sit firm as a rock. If you sit firmly, then fly as a bird. Be a fire that flows. A rock that flies. Love with fear and fear with love. For we are not fire, not water, not air, not rocks, not thoughts, not deeds, not fear, not love. We are G-dly beings.

Fear is the greatest obstacle to learning. But fear is your best friend. Fear is like fire. If you learn to control it, you let it work for you. If you don’t learn to control it, it’ll destroy you and everything around you. Like a snowball on a hill, you can pick it up and throw it or do anything you want with it before it starts rolling down, but once it rolls down and gets so big, it’ll crush you to death. So one must never allow fear to develop and build up without having control over it, because if you don’t you won’t be able to achieve your objective or save your life.

Once the government can demand of a publisher the names of the purchasers of his publication, the free press as we know it disappears. Then the spectre of a government agent will look over the shoulder of everyone who reads. ... Fear of criticism goes with every person into the bookstall. The subtle, imponderable pressures of the orthodox lay hold. Some will fear to read what is unpopular, what the powers-that-be dislike. ... fear will take the place of freedom in the libraries, book stores, and homes in the land.

Most artists are always fighting for their fame. They have that fear, like the saying goes, "out of sight, out of mind." They need to keep themselves out there. I have never had that fear. If I have any fear, it's not doing enough to reach people.

Laughter kills fear, and without fear there can be no faith. For without fear of the devil there is no need for God.

Fear is stronger than love, remember that. Fear is stronger than love, all that love I gave didn't mean nothing when it came to fear.

The sorrow of God lies in our fear of Him, our fear of life, and our fear of ourselves. He anguishes over our self-absorption and self-sufficiency... God's sorrow lies in our refusal to approach Him when we sinned and failed.

All fear has ever done is hold me back. I have so many things I want to accomplish in my life. For myself and for the world. Fear is useless; it just gets in the way of accomplishing everything Overcome fear today and and confront one of your phobias.

Be not afraid of anything. You will do marvelous work. The moment you fear, you are nobody. Be a hero. Always say, 'I have no fear'. Tell this to everybody-'Have no fear'.

Love dispels fear just as light dispels darkness. If even for a moment you have been in love with someone, fear disappears and thinking stops. With fear thinking continues. The more you are afraid, the more you have to think.

I kind of look at what's on the T-shirts and I see another solution, which also worries me. I see "Just do it." "No fear." - this kind of suppressive response to the treacle that the culture tries to define for us as a meaningful life also blows up on you. "No fear" is not something that you should put on your shirt. How about "I can hold my fear and still connect with you"? Put that on your shirt. "It's okay to be me, with all of my history." Put that on your shirt.

Most people's lives are run by desire and fear. Desire is the need to add something to yourself in order to be yourself more fully. All fear is the fear of losing something and thereby becoming diminished and being less. These two movements obscure the fact that Being cannot be given or taken away. Being in its fullness is already within you, Now.

Much-Afraid, don't ever allow yourself to begin trying to picture what it will be like. Believe me, when you get to the place which you dread you will find that they are as different as possible from what you have imagined, just as was the case when you were actually ascending the precipice. I must warn you that I see your enemies lurking among the trees ahead, and if you ever let Craven Fear begin painting a picture on the screen of your imagination, you will walk with fear and trembling and agony, where no fear is.

Looking to the material world for the satisfaction of our inner needs is the source of much fear. All fear is, in essence, fear of the future. We are afraid of things that have not yet happened, but which if they did might bring us pain, suffering, or some other discomfort - or stand in the way of some future contentment. And we are afraid that circumstances that are already causing us displeasure may continue in the future.

It is not easy for a people conditioned by fear under the iron rule of the principle that might is right to free themselves from the enervating miasma of fear. Yet even under the most crushing state machinery courage rises up again and again, for fear is not the natural state of civilized man.

I'm afraid to walk in public, because people look at me. But I'm not going to stop. I'm afraid because if I want to commune with my friend Shad (Meier), I have to ask him to cut my chicken for me. But I did it. And I'm afraid to go back and see my teammates and coaches because I know that I'll feel envy. But I'm going to do it anyway. Because fear is just a feeling, and if you can acknowledge that fear, digest that fear and overcome it, the rewards are incredible.

I've always felt that if you back down from a fear, the ghost of that fear never goes away. It diminishes people. So I've always said 'yes' to the thing I'm most scared about. The fear of letting myself down - of saying 'no' to something that I was afraid of and then sitting in my room later going, 'I wish I'd had the guts to say this or that' - that galvanizes me more than anything.

The thing political figures fear most is a terror event that will ruin their careers. The biggest thing they fear is that a bomb goes off and it can be traced to something they did or didn’t do, an action they did or didn’t support. They all fear being accused of not doing enough to keep the citizenry safe.

The next time you encounter fear, consider yourself lucky. This is where the courage comes in. Usually we think that brave people have no fear. The truth is that they are intimate with fear. When I was first married, my husband said I was one of the bravest people he knew. When I asked him why, he said because I was a complete coward but went ahead and did things anyhow.

The cave you fear to enter holds the treasure you seek. Fear of the unknown is our greatest fear. Many of us would enter a tiger's lair before we would enter a dark cave. While caution is a useful instinct, we lose many opportunities and much of the adventure of life if we fail to support the curious explorer within us.

But how to know the falsity of death? How can we know there is no death? Until we know that, our fear of death will not go either. Until we know the falsity of death, our lives will remain false. As long as there is fear of death, there cannot be authentic life. As long as we tremble with the fear of death, we cannot summon the capacity to live our lives. One can live only when the shadow of death has disappeared forever. How can a frightened and trembling mind live? And when death seems to be approaching every second, how is it possible to live? How can we live?

I think this fear of insanity is comparable to the fear people once had of falling off the edge of the world. Or the fear of heretics...What's happening is that each year our old flat earth of conventional reason becomes less and less adequate to handle the experiences we have and this is creating wide-spread feelings of topsy-turviness. As a result we're getting more and more people in irrational areas of thought...occultism, mysticism, drug changes and the like...because they feel an inadequacy in classical reason to handle what they know are real experiences.

Much male fear of feminism is the fear that, in becoming whole human beings, women will cease to mother men, to provide the breast, the lullaby, the continuous attention associated by the infant with the mother. Much male fear of feminism is infantilism–the longing to remain the mother’s son, to possess a woman who exists purely for him.

To overcome a fear, here's all you have to do: realize the fear is there, and do the action you fear anyway.

Oh, my sweet summer child," Old Nan said quietly, "what do you know of fear? Fear is for the winter, my little lord, when the snows fall a hundred feet deep and the ice wind comes howling out of the north. Fear is for the long night, when the sun hides its face for years at a time, and little children are born and live and die all in darkness while the direwolves grow gaunt and hungry, and the white walkers move through the woods

The first and most important step is to realize that, as my mother used to say, fearlessness isn't the absence of fear, but the mastery of fear. It's not that you never have fear, but that you don't let your fears stop you.

Where there is reverence there is fear, but there is not reverence everywhere that there is fear, because fear presumably has a wider extension than reverence.

The true, unacknowledged purpose of capital punishment is to inspire fear and awe -- fear and awe of the State.

Man alone measures time. Man alone chimes the hour. And, because of this, man alone suffers a paralysing fear that no other creature endures. A fear of time running out.

COURAGE isn't an absence of fear. It is doing what you are afraid to do, letting go of the familiar and forging ahead into new territory. What I have discovered is that the best leaders have the courage to act - are willing to take the risk, make the statement, point the way, lead the way - when others hesitate out of fear. Effective leadership requires the ability to stand up, stand out, and the conviction to do it. I have never known a successful leader that was not courageous.

Any time we open ourselves up to fear, we fall prey to his deceptions and intimidations. Yet, if we submit our hearts to God and stand in faith, we can resist those first fearful thoughts. As we yield to God we can master our reactions to fear and the enemy will soon flee.

I hope that you choose ultimately to follow your heart, and learn that whatever your plans, your goals, your dreams, life will take you in directions you haven't even dreamed of. Be open to the path not chosen, the door unopened, welcome your fear, and the choices that allow you that fear....Through all the changes, through all the disappointments, the unexpected turns, the victories, and the pain, the losses that you will experience, there will always be a constant, along with your breath, there will always be one thing that you will know, that you have the ability to choose your heart.

We fear men so much, because we fear God so little.

If mankind is to profit freely from the small and sporadic crop of the heroically gifted it produces, it will have to cultivate the delicate art of handling ideas. Psychology is now able to tell us with reasonable assurance that the most influential obstacle to freedom of thought and to new ideas is fear; and fear which can with inimitable art disguise itself as caution, or sanity, or reasoned skepticism, or on occasion even as courage.

Since fear is such a primal reaction, making the choice to move forward despite fear is an evolved decision that transcends our animal nature.

Most men are very attached to the idea of being male, and usually experience a lot of fear and insecurity around the idea of being a man. Most women are very identified with their gender, and also experience a tremendous amount of fear and insecurity.

We are more concerned about looking stupid (fear of people) than we are about acting sinfully (fear of the Lord).

To know God is to fear Him. And this fear is to love Him as He deserves to be loved.

Remember, we know the end of the story of World War II and the Cold War. But day by day, living in fear of the Nazis and then in fear of the Soviets, the outcome was by no means certain.

Can you imagine a life with no fear? What if faith, not fear, was your default reaction to threats?

Firstly, do not fear hardship, and secondly, do not fear death.

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?

From the moment fear begins I have ceased to fear.