Education Quote by Shirin Ebadi

Ebadi’s move is to strip fear of its drama. She refuses the macho fantasy that courage is the absence of fear and replaces it with something more inconvenient: fear is as biological, predictable, and nonnegotiable as hunger. That comparison does two things at once. It normalizes fear so it can’t be weaponized against you, and it denies tyrants the moral high ground of “keeping people safe.” If fear is an instinct, then living under threat isn’t proof that you’re guilty or weak; it’s proof you’re alive.

The pointed question - “How can you defy fear?” - is less a request for advice than a rebuke to simplistic hero narratives. Ebadi is a lawyer, and you can hear the cross-examination in the phrasing: the premise (“defy fear”) is flawed. What you can do is train. “Train myself” reframes bravery as discipline, not personality. It suggests routines: showing up in court, signing documents, speaking publicly, accepting consequences. The subtext is that fear doesn’t disappear; it gets managed, compartmentalized, metabolized.

Context matters because Ebadi’s life has been defined by institutional intimidation: a woman in Iran pressing human rights claims in a system built to deter them. The line “live with this fear” is quiet, almost domestic, and that’s the point. Authoritarian power thrives on making fear feel like an exceptional event. Ebadi shrinks it back down to a daily condition, the kind you can plan around. That’s a blueprint for resistance that doesn’t require invincibility - only persistence.