50 Quotes About Overcoming Fear
Facing fears can change your life and make you stronger. Explore 50 inspiring quotes from famous people, encouraging you to tackle your worries with courage and discover the exciting opportunities waiting for you on the other side of fear.
Fear is a universal emotion, one that can both protect and paralyze us. It often stands as a barrier between where we are and where we want to be. Yet, the act of overcoming fear is one of life’s greatest achievements, leading to personal growth, fulfillment, and the discovery of our own resilience.
Here are 50 quotes from various thinkers, leaders, and creatives that shed light on the nature of fear and encourage the courage to overcome it. Let these words of wisdom empower you to face your fears head-on and embrace the life you've always desired.
- "The only thing we have to fear is fear itself." – Franklin D. Roosevelt
- "Feel the fear and do it anyway." – Susan Jeffers
- "Do not be afraid; our fate cannot be taken from us; it is a gift." – Dante Alighieri
- "Courage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear – not absence of fear." – Mark Twain
- "Fear is only as deep as the mind allows." – Japanese Proverb
- "Everything you've ever wanted is on the other side of fear." – George Addair
- "Fear is the path to the dark side. Fear leads to anger. Anger leads to hate. Hate leads to suffering." – Yoda
- "I learned that courage was not the absence of fear, but the triumph over it." – Nelson Mandela
- "One of the greatest discoveries a man makes is to find he can do what he was afraid he couldn’t do." – Henry Ford
- "Fears are educated into us and can, if we wish, be educated out." – Karl Augustus Menninger
- "Too many of us are not living our dreams because we are living our fears." – Les Brown
- "You gain strength, courage, and confidence by every experience in which you really stop to look fear in the face." – Eleanor Roosevelt
- "I am not afraid of storms, for I am learning how to sail my ship." – Louisa May Alcott
- "The brave man is not he who does not feel afraid, but he who conquers that fear." – Nelson Mandela
- "He who is not everyday conquering some fear has not learned the secret of life." – Ralph Waldo Emerson
- "The only way to get rid of the fear of doing something is to go out and do it." – Susan J. Jeffers
- "Fear is faith that it won’t work out." – Unknown
- "What would life be if we had no courage to attempt anything?" – Vincent van Gogh
- "Of all the liars in the world, sometimes the worst are our own fears." – Rudyard Kipling
- "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
- "Fear defeats more people than any other one thing in the world." – Ralph Waldo Emerson
- "Fear doesn’t exist anywhere except in the mind." – Dale Carnegie
- "The key to change... is to let go of fear." – Rosanne Cash
- "Don’t be afraid to give up the good to go for the great." – John D. Rockefeller
- "Most of the important things in the world have been accomplished by people who have kept on trying when there seemed to be no hope at all." – Dale Carnegie
- "I am not afraid of tomorrow, for I have seen yesterday and I love today." – William Allen White
- "Fear is the destroyer of dreams and the slayer of ambitions." – Unknown
- "You must do the thing you think you cannot do." – Eleanor Roosevelt
- "If you are afraid to take a chance, take one anyway. What you don't do can create the same regrets as the mistakes you make." – Iyanla Vanzant
- "Fear is temporary. Regret is forever." – Unknown
- "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
- "Fear is contagious. But so is courage." – Unknown
- "It’s not the absence of fear. It’s overcoming it. Sometimes you’ve got to blast through and have faith." – Emma Watson
- "Great fear is concealed under daring." – Lucan
- "Let us not pray to be sheltered from dangers but to be fearless when facing them." – Rabindranath Tagore
- "To escape fear, you have to go through it, not around." – Richie Norton
- "Fearlessness is not the absence of fear. It’s the mastery of fear. It’s about getting up one more time than we fall down." – Arianna Huffington
- "Fear: False Evidence Appearing Real." – Unknown
- "Courage starts with showing up and letting ourselves be seen." – Brené Brown
- "Vulnerability sounds like truth and feels like courage. Truth and courage aren’t always comfortable, but they’re never weakness." – Brené Brown
- "We should all start to live before we get too old. Fear is stupid. So are regrets." – Marilyn Monroe
- "Fear is a reaction. Courage is a decision." – Winston Churchill
- "We are more often frightened than hurt; and we suffer more from imagination than from reality." – Seneca
- "Fear is a natural reaction to moving closer to the truth." – Pema Chödrön
- "Find out what you’re afraid of and go live there." – Chuck Palahniuk
- "Fear makes strangers of people who would be friends." – Shirley MacLaine
- "Bravery is the capacity to perform properly even when scared half to death." – Omar N. Bradley
- "I decided I can’t pay a person to rewind time, so I may as well get over it." – Serena Williams
- "Do what you fear and fear disappears." – David Schwartz
- "Fear is a phoenix. You can watch it burn a thousand times and still it will return." – Leigh Bardugo