Your carrier probably installed lots of "bloatware" for you. These apps cannot be removed without rooting the phone. Without rooting the phone you can disable these apps and/or hide them from your desktop.
Welcome to Android Central! And for apps that can be disabled (in the App Manager), it's safe to do so. If disabling an app causes problems, you can always go back to the App Manager and re-enable it.
One might consider using Opera max as an alternate means of blocking apps instead of removing them. I've systematically uninstalled or disabled apps which my Android came with. So it is possible if one knows what one is doing.