In our deepest moments of struggle, frustration, fear, and confusion, we are being called upon to reach in and touch our hearts. Then, we will know what to do, what to say, how to be. What is right is always in our deepest heart of hearts. It is from the deepest part of our hearts that we are capable of reaching out and touching another human being. It is, after all, one heart touching another heart.

- Roberta Sage Hamilton

There are only two tools available to the educator. The easy one is fear. Fear is easy to awake, easy to maintain, but ultimately toxic. Other tool is passion.
(Stop Stealing Dreams)

- Seth Godin

Nothing in life is to be feared. It is only to be understood. Now is the time to understand more, so that we may fear less.

- Marie Curie

To be furious, is to be frighted out of fear.

- William Shakespeare

And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our fear, our presence automatically liberates others.

- Marianne Williamson

The emotion of fear often works overtime. Even when there is no immediate threat, our body may remain tight and on guard, our mind narrowed to focus on what might go wrong. When this happens, fear is no longer functioning to secure our survival. We are caught in the trance of fear and our moment-to-moment experience becomes bound in reactivity. We spend our time and energy defending our life rather than living it fully.

- Tara Brach

For in the end, freedom is a personal and lonely battle; and one faces down fears of today so that those of tomorrow might be engaged.

- Alice Walker

It is not change that causes anxiety; it is the feeling that we are without defenses in the presence of what we see as danger that causes anxiety. (from Immunity to Change)

- Robert Kegan and Lisa Laskow Lahey

Too many people are thinking of security instead of opportunity. They seem to be more afraid of life than death

- James F. Bymes

He who is not everyday conquering some fear has not learned the secret of life.

- Ralph Waldo Emerson

The only thing we really have to fear is fearmongering itself.

- Maureen Dowd

I can't understand why people are frightened of new ideas. I'm frightened of the old ones.

- John Cage

Many of us are afraid to follow our passions, to pursue what we want most because it means taking risks and even facing failure. But to pursue your passion with all your heart and soul is success in itself. The greatest failure is to have never really tried.

- Robyn Allen

He is rich who owns the day, and no one owns the day who allows it to be invaded with fret and anxiety.

- Ralph Waldo Emerson

The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.

- Franklin D. Roosevelt

That "change makes us uncomfortable" is now one of the most widely promoted, widely accepted, and underconsidered half-truths around.... [I]t is not change by itself that makes us uncomfortable; it is not even change that involves taking on something very difficult. Rather, it is change that leaves us feeling defenseless before the dangers we "know" to be present that causes us anxiety. (from Immunity to Change)

- Robert Kegan and Lisa Laskow Lahey



When you say or do anything to please, get, keep, influence, or control anyone or anything, fear is the cause and pain is the result.

- Byron Katie



Fear is pain arising from the anticipation of evil.

- Aristotle



Scared and sacred are spelled with the same letters. Awful proceeds from the same root word as awesome. Terrify and terrific. Every negative experience holds the seed of transformation.

- Alan Cohen



We see daily that our lives are terrible and little, without continuity, buyable and salable at any moment, mere blips on a screen, that this is the way we live now. Memory marketed as nostalgia; terror reduced to mere suspense, to melodrama.

- Adrienne Rich



While your life is the true expression of your faith, whom can you fear?

- Julia Ward Howe



People are disturbed not by things, but by the view they take of them.

- Epictetus



Our fears are more numerous than our dangers, and we suffer more in our imagination than in reality.

- Seneca



Poetry is not only dream and vision; it is the skeleton architecture of our lives. It lays the foundations for a future of change, a bridge across our fears of what has never been before.

- Audre Lorde



For we have been socialized to respect fear more than our own needs for language and definition, and while we wait in silence for that final luxury of fearlessness, the weight of that silence will choke us.

- Audre Lorde



Feelings like disappointment, embarrassment, irritation, resentment, anger, jealousy, and fear, instead of being bad news, are actually very clear moments that teach us where it is that we're holding back. They teach us to perk up and lean in when we feel we'd rather collapse and back away. They're like messengers that show us, with terrifying clarity, exactly where we're stuck. This very moment is the perfect teacher, and, lucky for us, it's with us wherever we are.

- Pema Chodron



I'm not afraid to shake up the system, and government needs more shaking up than any other system I know.

- Ann Richards



Most people, after one success, are so cringingly afraid of doing less well that they rub all the edge off their subsequent work.

- Beatrix Potter



Do one thing every day that scares you.

- Eleanor Roosevelt



Freethinkers are those who are willing to use their minds without prejudice and without fearing to understand things that clash with their own customs, privileges, or beliefs.

- Leo Tolstoy



If people are good only because they fear punishment, and hope for reward, then we are a sorry lot indeed.

- Albert Einstein



Hate is a disease. It is fear's messenger and it makes us do terrible things in a shadow of our better selves, of what we could be.

- Colin Farrell



If you're are paralyzed with fear it's a good sign. It shows you what you have to do.

- Steven Pressfield



Do not be afraid of the past. If people tell you that it is irrevocable, do not believe them.

- Oscar Wilde



The robb'd that smiles steals something from the thief.

- William Shakespeare



Fear is the cheapest room in the house. I would like to see you living
In better conditions.

- Hafiz of Persia



If you banish fear, nothing terribly bad can happen to you.

- Margaret Bourke-White



I invite people to examine their lives without negativity, knowing that it's scary, but that not doing it is even scarier.

- Barbara De Angelis



We all have our moments of fear. I'm a human being and I have moments of fear. Fear is a very crippling emotion.

- Betty Williams



The ultimate aim of government is not to rule, or restrain, by fear, nor to exact obedience, but contrariwise, to free every man from fear, that he may live in all possible security; in other words, to strengthen his natural right to exist and work without injury to himself or others.

- Baruch Spinoza



Anything scares me, anything scares anyone but really after all considering how dangerous everything is nothing is really very frightening.

- Gertrude Stein



Every time we choose safety, we reinforce fear.

- Cheri Huber



Kindness trumps greed: it asks for sharing. Kindness trumps fear: it calls forth gratefulness and love. Kindness trumps even stupidity, for with sharing and love, one learns.

- Marc Estrin



Things which are accidentally the causes either of hope or fear are called good or evil omens.

- Baruch Spinoza



Everything I've ever done was out of fear of being mediocre.

- Chet Atkins