Fear Quotes

Fear is the needle that pierces us that it may carry a thread to bind us to heaven.
– James Hastings
Regrets over yesterday and the fear of tomorrow are twin thieves that rob us of the moment.
– Robert J. Hastings
I would sort out all the arguments and see which belonged to fear and which to creativeness. Other things being equal, I would make the decision which had the larger number of creative reasons on its side.
– Katharine Butler Hathaway
Do not fear fear.
– L. M. Heroux
What has kept the world safe from the bomb since 1945 has not been deterrence, in the sense of fear of specific weapons, so much as it's been memory. The memory of what happened at Hiroshima.
– John Hersey
I think what weakens people most is fear of wasting their strength.
– Etty Hillesum
Much of the debate over global warming is predicated on fear, rather than science.
– James Inhofe
No society has been able to abolish human sadness, no political system can deliver us from the pain of living, from our fear of death, our thirst for the absolute. It is the human condition that directs the social condition, not vice versa.
– Eugene Ionesco
Leaders are visionaries with a poorly developed sense of fear and no concept of the odds against them.
– Robert Jarvik
Feel the fear and do it anyway.
– Susan Jeffers
We are reluctant to admit that we owe our liberties to men of a type that today we hate and fear - unruly men, disturbers of the peace, men who resent and denounce what Whitman called 'the insolence of elected persons' - in a word, free men.
– Gerald W. Johnston
I often wonder why you should fear me and my family so much that you would want to deny us equal justice under the law.
– Sunshine Jones
Unless India stands up to the world, no one will respect us. In this world, fear has no place. Only strength respects strength.
– Abdul Kalam
Today, we say the only thing we have to fear is four more years of George Bush.
– Edward Kennedy
I told myself that I would not go back to the camps as an actor ever again, that I was very frightened of wearing a yellow star. It was fear, it was cowardice, I was.
– Ben Kingsley
Pitching is the art of instilling fear.
– Sandy Koufax
But the vitriol also reflects the fact that many of the people at the Republican National Convention, for all their flag-waving, hate America. They want a controlled, monolithic society; they fear and loathe our nation's freedom, diversity and complexity.
– Paul Krugman
We need to teach the next generation of children from day one that they are responsible for their lives. Mankind's greatest gift, also its greatest curse, is that we have free choice. We can make our choices built from love or from fear.
– Elisabeth Kubler-Ross
I think the big mistake in schools is trying to teach children anything, and by using fear as the basic motivation. Fear of getting failing grades, fear of not staying with your class, etc. Interest can produce learning on a scale compared to fear as a nuclear explosion to a firecracker.
– Stanley Kubrick
The tax code is not the only area where the administration is helping the rich get richer and the poor get poorer. It has spent $155 billion for an unnecessary war driven by fear.
– Dennis Kucinich
Fear less, hope more; eat less, chew more; whine less, breathe more; talk less, say more; hate less, love more & all good things are yours.
– Dexter Scott King
Adopting a stance that does not fear pain, does not flinch at the barriers of vested interests, and is not shackled by the experience of the past, I want to establish an economic and social system suitable for the 21st century.
– Junichiro Koizumi
Lead me from death to life, from falsehood to truth;Lead me from despair to hope, from fear to trust;Lead me from hate to love, from war to peace;Let peace fill our heart, our world, our universe.
– Satish Kumar
We need not fear life, because God is the Ruler of all and we need not fear death, because He shares immortality with us.
– Ann Landers
Fear is natural. Be with it.
– Thomas Leonard
At present our greatest anxiety is for the fate of New York which I greatly fear is devoted to distruction. The Ministeral Army on Staten Island are said to be 13,000 strong with a considerable Naval Force, and we hourly expect to hear the City is attacked. If so there is in my opinion little probability of it's being saved.
– Francis Lewis
From the tenor of my Contract with Griffiths, I am induced to believe the Committee has been imposed upon in their Contracts entered into at Phila, and to urge the Orange Company to a complyance with theirs will I fear be attended with difficulties & disappointments, therefore think it reasonable that they Should have the same prices given to others.
– Francis Lewis
Fear God and work hard.
– David Livingstone
I feel a kind of reverence for the first books of young authors. There is so much aspiration in them, so much audacious hope and trembling fear, so much of the heart's history, that all errors and shortcomings are for a while lost sight of in the amiable self assertion of youth.
– Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Look not mournfully into the past, it comes not back again. Wisely improve the present, it is thine. Go forth to meet the shadowy future without fear and with a manly heart.
– Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
But the thing about skydiving: I feel when you do something where it's almost like your whole life flashes in front of you, it's supposed to be that when you hit the ground, you don't fear anything. And it's really a motivating force for you to just get out there and do as much as you can, because it's crazy.
– Ludacris
It's so much fun playing Ling, but I have this fear that people are going to run away from me in terror on the streets. They think I'm going to bite their heads off or something.
– Lucy Liu
Courage is the complement of fear. A man who is fearless cannot be courageous.
– Lazarus Long
So much of what is best in us is bound up in our love of family, that it remains the measure of our stability because it measures our sense of loyalty. All other pacts of love or fear derive from it and are modeled upon it.
– Haniel Long
When an individual fear or apathy passes by the unfortunate, life is of no account.
– Haniel Long
Identifying and overcoming natural fear is one of the pleasing struggles intrinsic to climbing.
– Alex Lowe
There is nothing in the universe that I fear, but that I shall not know all my duty, or shall fail to do it.
– Mary Lyon
It is part of the general pattern of misguided policy that our country is now geared to an arms economy which was bred in an artificially induced psychosis of war hysteria and nurtured upon an incessant propaganda of fear.
– General Douglas MacArthur
Our government has kept us in a perpetual state of fear - kept us in a continuous stampede of patriotic fervor - with the cry of grave national emergency.
– General Douglas MacArthur
Fear makes strangers of people who would be friends.
– Shirley MacLaine
If I wanted to go be social I would. I don't have any fear of that. I don't feel like I'm a shy person at all.
– Tobey Maguire
It is an old psychological axiom that constant exposure to the object of fear immunizes against the fear.
– Maxwell Maltz
As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.
– Nelson Mandela
I fear being like everyone I hate, I fear failure, I fear losing control. I love balancing between chaos and control with everything I do. I always have a fear of going one way or another, getting lost in something, or losing everything to get lost in. And I fear being a completely acceptable sheep in society.
– Marilyn Manson
Be content to be what you are, and prefer nothing to it, and do not fear or wish for your last day.
– Marcus Valerius Martial
In the company of the accomplished, people hope it will rub off on themselves, in the company of the misfortunate, they fear it!
– Bryant H. McGill
Meanness inherits a set of silverware and keeps it in the bank. Economy uses it only on important occasions, for fear of loss. Thrift sets the table with it every night for pure pleasure, but counts the butter spreaders before they are put away.
– Phyllis McGinley
The voice of the intelligence is drowned out by the roar of fear. It is ignored by the voice of desire. It is contradicted by the voice of shame. It is biased by hate and extinguished by anger. Most of all it is silenced by ignorance.
– Karl A. Menninger
If you reject the food, ignore the customs, fear the religion and avoid the people, you might better stay at home.
– James A. Michener
They're getting used to it. I think fear is slowly turning into pride: I think they were quite perturbed in the beginning, but they're coming round to it. I was always a bit of a loose cannon, then again I was always the artistic one: bit of a social misfit. I probably still am.
– Brian Molko
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
People fear death even more than pain. It's strange that they fear death. Life hurts a lot more than death. At the point of death, the pain is over. Yeah, I guess it is a friend.
– Jim Morrison
I suppose that writers should, in a way, feel flattered by the censorship laws. They show a primitive fear and dread at the fearful magic of print.
– John Mortimer
African women in general need to know that it's OK for them to be the way they are - to see the way they are as a strength, and to be liberated from fear and from silence.
– Wangari Maathai
Now there is distress of nations, with perplexity, the seas and the waves roaring, men's hearts failing them for fear.
– Margaret MacDonald
Your children don't have to fear you to respect you.
– Michael Madsen
How many pessimists end up by desiring the things they fear, in order to prove that they are right.
– Robert Mallet
Studies by Medical Corps psychiatrists of combat fatigue cases... found that fear of killing, rather than fear of being killed, was the most common cause of battle failure, and that fear of failure ran a strong second.
– S. L. A. Marshall
Understanding is curing ignorance and curing ignorance is abolishing fear.
– Matt Marty
The greatest mistake we make is living in constant fear that we will make one.
– John C. Maxwell
It is a great mystery that though the human heart longs for Truth, in which alone it finds liberation and delight, the first reaction of human beings to Truth is one of hostility and fear!
– Anthony de Mello
Walk Against Fear.
– James Meredith
Somewhere in the brain of every prima donna there is a deep craving for security and comfort, linked with a fear of old age. This causes her to pick a man who is prepared to act as a permanent wet nurse.
– Andre Mertens
Willpower is the key to success. Successful people strive no matter what they feel by applying their will to overcome apathy, doubt or fear.
– Dan Millman
Americans need never fear their government because of the advantage of being armed, which the Americans possess over the people of almost every other nation.
– Gouverneur Morris
You block your dream when you allow your fear to grow bigger than your faith.
– Mary Manin Morrissey
Society is pressed to its ancient defense against the violent criminal: the fear of swift and severe punishment. Either we take that road now, or we will live in the sickly twilight of a soulless people too weak to drive predators out of their own house.
– Francis T. Murphy
Don't let the fear of the time it will take to accomplish something stand in the way of your doing it. The time will pass anyway; we might just as well put that passing time to the best possible use.
– Earl Nightingale
People living deeply have no fear of death.
– Anais Nin
Now, there is always a tremendous fear of science and progressing forward into areas of the unknown and it is a valid fear. Some of the genetic alterations of food are a little edgy.
– Nick Nolte
God calls men to be imitators of His son, Jesus Christ, to conform themselves to Christ's image (1 Cor. 15:49). They are to work out the salvation that God gives them, and they are to do this with fear and trembling (Phil. 2:12). This kind of steady improvement involves upward mobility: spiritual improvement, at the very least, but also economic and social mobility.
– Gary North
Fear is the highest fence.
– Dudley Nichols
Half the things that people do not succeed in are through fear of making the attempt.
– James Northcote
It is a measure of the framers' fear that a passing majority might find it expedient to compromise 4th Amendment values that these values were embodied in the Constitution itself.
– Sandra Day O'Connor
Social Security is a government program with a constituency made up of the old, the near old and those who hope or fear to grow old. After 215 years of trying, we have finally discovered a special interest that includes 100 percent of the population. Now we can vote ourselves rich.
– P. J. O'Rourke
Most agencies run scared, most of the time... Frightened people are powerless to produce good advertising...If I were a client, I would do everything in my power to emancipate my agencies from fear, even to the extent of giving them long-term contracts.
– David M. Ogilvy
We crucify ourselves between two thieves: regret for yesterday and fear of tomorrow.
– Fulton Oursler
Minds that are ill at ease are agitated by both hope and fear.
– Ovid
Freedom is contagious. That's why despots fear it so much.
– Bill Owens
Our nation, and our state, have paid a high price in the defense of our nation. Perhaps the only higher price that we as a society could pay is to not send brave men and women into battle and then live in the fear and darkness that tyrants like Saddam Hussein would condemn us to.
– Bill Owens
Cry, the beloved country, for the unborn child that is the inheritor of our fear. Let him not love the earth too deeply... For fear will rob him of all if he gives too much.
– Alan Paton
I have one great fear in my heart, that one day when they (the whites of South Africa) have turned to loving, they will find we (the blacks) are turned to hating.
– Alan Paton
Battle is the most magnificent competition in which a human being can indulge. It brings out all that is best; it removes all that is base. All men are afraid in battle. The coward is the one who lets his fear overcome his sense of duty. Duty is the essence of manhood.
– George S. Patton
I do not fear failure. I only fear the slowing up of the engine inside of me which is pounding, saying, Keep going, someone must be on top, why not you?
– George S. Patton
If we take the generally accepted definition of bravery as a quality which knows no fear, I have never seen a brave man. All men are frightened. The more intelligent they are, the more they are frightened.
– George S. Patton
The time to take counsel of your fears is before you make an important battle decision. That's the time to listen to every fear you can imagine! When you have collected all the facts and fears and made your decision, turn off all your fears and go ahead!
– George S. Patton
The fear of making permanent commitments can change the mutual love of husband and wife into two loves of self-two loves existing side by side, until they end in separation.
– Pope John Paul II
Action is a great restorer and builder of confidence. Inaction is not only the result, but the cause, of fear. Perhaps the action you take will be successful; perhaps different action or adjustments will have to follow. But any action is better than no action at all.
– Norman Vincent Peale
If we mourn for the death of any person departed, and the waters appear upon the face of man, yet after the seventh day, when the Olive leaf is pluckt, when we have considered the peace, and rest, and joyes of the souls departed in the fear of God, 'tis time for the waters to abate, for mourning to cease.
– John Pearson
It is a testament to the enduring virtue of our democratic experiment that more than 225 years since the birth of our republic we still decide our destiny as a nation without tanks in the street, or without fear or intimidation, but instead in the sanctity of a voting.
– Rick Perry
The fear of life is the favorite disease of the 20th century.
– William Lyon Phelps
Today it is not big business that we have to fear. It is big government.
– Wendell Phillips
Know one knows whether death, which people fear to be the greatest evil, may not be the greatest good.
– Plato
When the tyrant has disposed of foreign enemies by conquest or treaty, and there is nothing more to fear from them, then he is always stirring up some war or other, in order that the people may require a leader.
– Plato
Scientology explains to me the answers to life, the mind, people, insanity, man, in a way that, to me, is applicable. It doesn't use fear, or suppression or the devil - it's not repressive. Mainly, it's a way for me to figure out who I am. It's a lot of self-discovery; it's not someone you follow or praise.
– Lisa Marie Presley
To fear is one thing. To let fear grab you by the tail and swing you around is another.
– Katherine Paterson
Well may the boldest fear and the wisest tremble when incurring responsibilities on which may depend our country's peace and prosperity, and in some degree the hopes and happiness of the whole human family.
– James Knox Polk
Fear of the future is worse than one's present fortune.
– Marcus Fabius Quintilian
The surest way to prevent war is not to fear it.
– John Randolph
Slasher movies are fun. You watch yourself get chopped to pieces, yet you're still alive. You see the blood on the ax and think, Holy **it, this is sick, but you kind of get over your fear of death.
– Tara Reid