Top 100 Fear Quotes of All Time

A short, finished list rather than an endless feed: 100 of the best fear quotes ever written, picked out of the full fear archive on QuoteForever. You will find Francis Bacon, Frank Herbert, George Bernard Shaw and Dustin Hoffman among them.

Read the list top to bottom, or use it as a starting point - every author name links to everything else they said, and every quote has its own page you can share or turn into an image.

1

Inaction breeds doubt and fear. Action breeds confidence and courage.

2

It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us.

3

Let us not look back in anger, nor forward in fear, but around in awareness.

4

The moment you start seeing life as non-serious, a playfulness, all the burden on your heart disappears. All the fear of death, of life, of love - everything disappears.

5

The average Ph.D. Thesis is nothing but a transference of bones from one graveyard to another.

6

The enemy is fear. We think it is hate; but, it is fear.

7

There will one day spring from the brain of science a machine or force so fearful in its potentialities, so absolutely terrifying, that even man, the fighter, who will dare torture and death in order to inflict torture and death, will be appalled, and so abandon war forever.

8

Religion is the opium of the masses.

9

... an institution cannot be run progressively on a basis of fear.

10

The natural order will emerge only if we let go of the fear of the disorder, we trust each other.

11

In this world, fear has no place. Only strength respects strength.

12

All of us who are concerned for peace and triumph of reason and justice must be keenly aware how small an influence reason and honest good will exert upon events in the political field.

13

Truths would you teach, or save a sinking land? All fear, none aid you, and few understand.

14

When I have a camera in my hand, I know no fear.

15

When we think we have been hurt by someone in the past, we build up defenses to protect ourselves from being hurt in the future. So the fearful past causes a fearful future and the past and future become one.

16

If I have a thousand ideas and only one turns out to be good, I am satisfied.

17

How could I tell the doctor what was wrong with me? I didn't understand it myself. I couldn't articulate the pain; it was the pain of nothingness. My fear was of the weather, the atmosphere, the very air. What good did safety tips do me now? 'Avoid water, metal objects, rooftops; stay off the telephone in a storm, don't think glass can protect you; even if a storm was 8 miles away, you're still not safe from a strike. Avoid life perhaps that was the answer. The number one safety tip, stay away from it all.

18

Self-preservation, nature's first great law, all the creatures, except man, doth awe.

19

I don't think that there is anything that is really magical unless it has a terrifying quality.

20

To regret the exchange of earthly pleasures for the joys of Heaven, is as if the grovelling caterpillar should lament that it must one day quit the nibbled leaf to soar aloft and flutter through the air, roving at will from flower to flower, sipping sweet honey from their cups, or basking in their sunny petals.

21

Only the unknown frightens men. But once a man has faced the unknown, that terror becomes the known.

22

Now, if anything at all can be known to be wrong, it seems to me to be unshakably certain that it would be wrong to make any sentient being suffer eternally for any offence whatever.

23

We consume our tomorrows fretting about our yesterdays.

24

It is not power that corrupts but fear. Fear of losing power corrupts those who wield it and fear of the scourge of power corrupts those who are subject to it.

25

There is no hope unmingled with fear, and no fear unmingled with hope.

26

The point is, we can decry the dangers we face or ignore them or even allow ourselves to be paralyzed by fear.

27

Freedom of speech and freedom of action are meaningless without freedom to think. And there is no freedom of thought without doubt.

28

Freedom in general may be defined as the absence of obstacles to the realization of desires.

29

You can make it, but it's easier if you don't have to do it alone.

30

When I was in that danger...I felt like I was shaken awake...after everything she made me feel...I made a decision and went to sleep. Do you know what that's like - trying to go to sleep, and lose yourself in the hopes of burying the worst fears in your life?...I wasn't in love with the past. I was terrified of my own future.

31

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.

32

People everywhere enjoy believing things that they know are not true. It spares them the ordeal of thinking for themselves and taking responsibility for what they know.

33

One extremely important purpose of emotions from an evolutionary perspective is to help us decide what to remember and what to forget. The cavewoman who could remember which cave had the gentle guy who gave her food is more likely to be our foremother than the cave woman who confused it with the cave that held the killer bear. The emotion of love (or something resembling it) and the emotion of fear would help secure her memories.

34

The freedom to choose...means the freedom to make mistakes, to falter and fail, to come face-to-face with your own flaws and limitations and fears and secrets, to live with the terrible uncertainty that necessarily attends the construction of a self.

35

The one thing we owe absolutely to God is never to be afraid of anything.

36

Do not let fear confine your life Inside a shell of doubt; A turtle never moves until His head is sticking out.

37

Thus, when the lamp that lighted The traveller at first goes out, He feels awhile benighted, And looks around in fear and doubt. But soon, the prospect clearing, By cloudless starlight on he treads, And thinks no lamp so cheering As that light which Heaven sheds.

38

The lens of fear magnifies the size of uncertainty.

39

The worst evils of life are those which do not exist except in our imagination. If we had no troubles but real troubles, we should not have a tenth part of our present sorrows. We feel a thousand deaths in fearing one, but the (the Christian) cured of the disease of fearing.

40

Don't try to be fearless or pretend you aren't impacted by fear. Just try to prevent fear from making your decisions for you.

41

Do I fear death? No, I am not afraid of being dead because there's nothing to be afraid of, I won't know it. I fear dying, of dying I feel a sense of waste about it and I fear a sordid death, where I am incapacitated or imbecilic at the end which isn't something to be afraid of, it's something to be terrified of.

42

Nothing is more terrifying than fearlessness.

43

After she's gone, another brief lull sets in. This one is probably the last. But what good is a lull? It's only a breathing spell in which to get more frightened. Because anticipatory fear is always twice as strong as present fear. Anticipatory fear has both fears in it at once - the anticipatory one and the one that comes simultaneously with the dread happening itself. Present fear only has the one, because by that time anticipation is over.

44

When we meet real tragedy in life, we can react in two ways - either by losing hope and falling into self-destructive habits, or by using the challenge to find our inner strength.

45

Nothing is bigger than life. There's nothing noble in death. What's noble about never seeing the sunshine again? What's noble about having your legs and arms blown off? What's noble about being an idiot? What's noble about being blind and deaf and dumb? What's noble about being dead?

46

There are two kinds of fears: rational and irrational- or in simpler terms, fears that make sense and fears that don't.

47

I'm not givin' in an inch to fear.

48

Persecutors fear loss of control. Rescuers fear loss of purpose. Rescuers need Victims-someone to protect or fix-to bolster their self-esteem.

49

Fine art and pizza delivery: what we do falls neatly in between.

50

Fear of self is the greatest of all terrors, the deepest of all dread, the commonest of all mistakes. From it grows failure. Because of it, life is a mockery. Out of it comes despair.

51

Then what are you? An electronic Hannibal Lector? You can't eat my liver with fava beans through a modem, you know.

52

Sometimes good choices are really bad ones, wrapped up in so much fear you can't even see straight.

53

There are only 2 responses to the world, fear or love. Your life depends on which one you choose.

54

Fear is self-awareness raised to a higher level.

55

There are two kinds of politics in the world: the politics of love and the politics of fear.

56

One thing about being successful is that I stopped being afraid of dying. Once you're a star you're dead already. You're embalmed.

57

Blame is for God and small children.

58

Progress is a comfortable disease.

59

since the thing perhaps is to eat flowers and not to be afraid

60

Martyrs have been sincere. And so have tyrants. Wise men have been sincere. And so have fools.

61

To implant fear in the minds of children is a crime. If parents try to rule the child by fear, then fear rules the child.

62

I always turn to the sports pages first, which records people's accomplishments. The front page has nothing but man's failures.

63

Internal and external are ultimately one. When you no longer perceive the world as hostile, there is no more fear, and when there is no more fear, you think, speak and act differently. Love and compassion arise, and they affect the world.

64

But I have fun with the fright, work with it. You have to - that's your timing, that beat of excitement. And when I go on stage, it's just like taking a step into heaven. Poof, you know? Poof - and there I am.

65

Early and provident fear is the mother of safety.

66

The yielding of the weak is the concession to fear.

67

The fear of God is freedom, joy, and peace; And makes all ills that vex us here to cease.

68

Lord, I do fear Thou'st made the world too beautiful this year My soul is all but out of me-let fall No burning leaf; prithee, let no bird call.

69

He who does not believe in hell is in the greatest danger of landing there.

70

Fear is the only true enemy, born of ignorance and the parent of anger and hate.

71

In how large a proportion of creatures is existence composed of one ruling passion, the most agonizing of all sensations--fear.

72

An angel's arm can't snatch me from the grave; legions of angels can't confine me there.

73

One to destroy, is murder by the law; and gibbets keep the lifted hand in awe; to murder thousands, takes a specious name, 'War's glorious art', and gives immortal fame.

74

You can discover what your enemy fears most by observing the means he uses to frighten you.

75

Man staggers through life yapped at by his reason, pulled and shoved by his appetites, whispered to by fears, beckoned by hopes. Small wonder that what he craves most is self-forgetting.

76

A creative block is a fear about the future, a guess about the dangers dwelling in the dark computer and the locked studio.

77

Germans grew reluctant to stay in communal ski lodges, fearing they might talk in their sleep. They postponed surgeries because of the lip-loosening effects of anesthetic. Dreams reflected the ambient anxiety. One German dreamed that an SA man came to his home and opened the door to his oven, which then repeated every negative remark the household had made against the government.

78

I was as afraid as the next man in my time and maybe more so. But with the years, fear had come to be regarded as a form of stupidity to be classed with overdrafts, acquiring a venereal disease or eating candies. Fear is a child's vice and while I loved to feel it approach, as one does with any vice, it was not for grown men and the only thing to be afraid of was the presence of true and imminent danger in a form that you should be aware of and not be a fool if you were responsible for others.

79

See, they return; ah, see the tentative Movements, and the slow feet, The trouble in the pace and the uncertain Wavering! See, they return, one, and by one, With fear, as half-awakened; As if the snow should hesitate And murmur in the wind, and half turn back.

80

I never go to where's a risk. I'm frightened of dangers down to boredom.

81

Fear was absolutely necessary. Without it, I would have been scared to death.

82

Nothing is to be feared but fear.

83

There is no passion in the mind of man so weak, but it mates and masters the fear of death . . . Revenge triumphs over death; love slights it; honor aspireth to it; grief flieth to it.

84

It is a miserable state of mind to have few things to desire and many things to fear.

85

Necessity of action takes away the fear of the act, and makes bold resolution the favorite of fortune.

86

Fear is the mind-killer.

87

A storm is coming; our storm. Emperor - we come for you!

88

Try looking into that place where you dare not look! You'll find me there, staring out at you!

89

Fear is the enemy of logic.

90

No sign of pleasure greeted the announcement. The mood in the hall was leaden. My mood was livelier. Fright is livelier than lead.

91

The opposite of love is not hate. It is fear.

92

The whole secret of existence is to have no fear.

93

From craving arises sorrow, from craving arises fear, but he who is freed from craving has no sorrow and certainly no fear.

94

Giving up is the only sure way to fail.

95

I've got more energy now than when I was younger because I know exactly what I want to do.

96

Patriotism is a pernicious, psychopathic form of idiocy.

97

If you do not say a thing in an irritating way, you may as well not say it at all because people will not trouble themselves about anything that does not trouble them.

98

You are going to let the fear of poverty govern you life and your reward will be that you will eat, but you will not live.

99

A great lie is like a great fish on dry land; it may fret and fling and make a frightful bother, but it cannot hurt you. You have only to keep still, and it will die of itself.

100

You must mind and not lower the Church in people's eyes by seeming to be frightened about it for such a little thing.

More Fear quotes

This is the short list. The full fear quotes collection holds every quote on the subject in the archive, and the picture quotes are ready to share as images.

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