Quotes About Courage

Without courage, you cannot practice any other virtue. You have to have courage - courage of different kinds: first, intellectual courage, to sort out different values and make up your mind about which is the one which is right for you to follow. You have to have moral courage to stick up to that - no matter what comes in your way, no matter what the obstacle and the opposition is.

Life's journey is not traveled on a freeway devoid of obstacles, pitfalls, and snares. Rather, it is a pathway marked by forks and turnings. Decisions are constantly before us. To make them wisely, courage is needed: the courage to say, 'No,' the courage to say, 'Yes.' Decisions do determine destiny. The call for courage comes constantly to each of us. It has ever been so, and so shall it ever be.

I have, I believe, the courage to doubt everything; I have, I believe, the courage to fight against everything; but I do not have the courage to acknowledge anything, the courage to possess, to own anything.

In those who rest on their unshakable faith, pharisaism and fanaticism are the unmistakable symptoms of doubt which has been repressed. Doubt is not overcome by repression but by courage. Courage does not deny that there is doubt, but it takes the doubt into itself as an expression of its own finitude and affirms the content of an ultimate concern. Courage does not need the safety of an unquestionable conviction. It includes the risk without which no creative life is possible.

There is nothing to compare with the courage of ordinary people whose names are unknown and whose sacrifices pass unnoticed. The courage that dares without recognition, without the protection of media attention, is a courage that humbles and inspires and reaffirms our faith in humanity.

Courage was America's watchword, but a courage of the body rather than of the soul - physical courage, not moral.

To have faith requires courage, the ability to take a risk, the readiness even to accept pain and disappointment. Whoever insists on safety and security as primary conditions of life cannot have faith; whoever shuts himself off in a system of defense, where distance and possession are his means of security, makes himself a prisoner. To be loved, and to love, need courage, the courage to judge certain values as of ultimate concern – and to take the jump and to stake everything on these values.

Do you know what courage is? I guess you don't. Do you know that the courage it took at that moment - to actually blow yourself away - was more than enough courage to keep on living?

I many times encountered courage, real courage. Undeniable courage. I've heard it said that that was the highest quality of the human animal. I encountered that many times, in unexpected places. And I have learned to recognize it when I see it.

Take courage and work on. Patience and steady work - this is the only way. Go on; remember - patience and purity and courage and steady work. . . . So long as you are pure, and true to your principles, you will never fail.

It is an error to suppose that courage means courage in everything.

Courage, the original definition of courage, when it first came into the English language -- it's from the Latin word "cor," meaning "heart" - and the original definition was to tell the story of who you are with your whole heart.

People think I have courage. The courage in my family are my wife Pam, my three daughters, here, Nicole, Jamie, LeeAnn, my mom, who's right here too.

We live in the kind of world where courage is the most essential of virtues; without courage, the other virtues are useless.

I can see in the acorn the oak tree. I see the growth, the rebuilding, the restoring. I see that is the American psyche. There is so much we can draw understanding from. One of the lessons is the development of courage. Because without courage, you can't practice any of the other virtues consistently.

The most alarming sign of the state of our society now is that our leaders have the courage to sacrifice the lives of young people in war but have not the courage to tell us that we must be less greedy and wasteful.

There is only one courage and that is the courage to go on dying to the past, not to collect it, not to accumulate it, not to cling to it. We all cling to the past and because we cling to the past we become unavailable to the present.

It is easy enough to praise men for the courage of their conviction. I wish I could teach the sad young of this mealy generation the courage of their convictions.

There's always time. . .to own up to things you're ashamed of, to change them. There's always time to start. And I think the starting is the most important thing. It takes courage. It takes a lot more courage than any vain feat of arms, let me tell you. It takes a lifetime to become a fool, and only a moment to begin to become wise.

We must never forget that today's legendary achievements-awesome as they may seem-were yesterday's risky adventures. Courage is not the capacity never to be afraid; as Karl Barth reminds us, "Courage is fear that has said its prayers."

The simple truth is that being a creative artist takes courage; it’s not a job for the faint of heart. It takes courage each and every time you put a book or poem or painting before the public, because it is, in fact, enormously revealing.

The arts can open the door to the imagination, pushing the envelope of how peace can be created. It takes courage to take this kind of risk, and courage is what we all need to create a better world.

Courage is about learning how to function despite the fear, to put aside your instincts to run or give in completely to the anger born from fear. Courage is about using your brain and your heart when every cell of your body is screaming at your to fight or flee - and then following through on what you believe is the right thing to do.

Even within the last three or four years, I have a greater ability to communicate, I think. I have more courage to show the stuff... And it does take courage.

Acquire the courage to believe in yourself. Many of the things that you have been taught were at one time the radical ideas of individuals who had the courage to believe what their own hearts and minds told them was true, rather than accept the common beliefs of their day.

Courage is the human virtue that counts most-courage to act on limited knowledge and insufficient evidence. That's all any of us have.

Why are we inspired by another person's courage? Maybe because it gives us the sweet and genuine surprise of discovering some trace, at least, of the same courage in ourselves.

[Courage] always bigger than what you think you can handle, but you're never going to be given something you can't handle. So you say, "Okay, when you tell me what it is that I'm supposed to do, please give me the courage to do it."

For the far higher task of teaching fortitude and patience I was never fool enough to suppose myself qualified, nor have I anything to offer my readers except my conviction that when pain is to be borne, a little courage helps more than much knowledge, a little human sympathy more than much courage, and the least tincture of the love of God more than all.

Whereas moral courage is the righting of wrongs, creative courage, in contrast, is the discovering of new forms, new symbols, new patterns on which a new society can be built.

Courage, contrary to popular belief, is not the absence of fear. Courage is the wisdom to act in spite of fear.

Give us our parliament in Scotland. We will start with no traditions. We will start with ideals. We will start with purpose, with courage. We will start with the aim and object that there will be 134 men and women, pledged to 134 Scottish constituencies, to spend their whole brain power, their whole courage and their whole soul in making Scotland into a country in which we can take people from all the nations of the earth and say: this is our land, this is our Scotland, these are our people, these are our men, our works, our women and children: can you beat it?

The new school of art and thought does indeed wear an air of audacity, and breaks out everywhere into blasphemies, as if it required any courage to say a blasphemy. There is only one thing that it requires real courage to say, and that is a truism.

Recognize that you have the courage within you to fulfill the purpose of your birth. Summon forth the power of your inner courage and live the life of your dreams.

I believe that the only courage anybody ever needs is the courage to follow your own dreams.

The courage of New England was the courage of conscience. It did not rise to that insane and awful passion, the love of war for itself.

We need courage and strength, a kind of warrior spirit. But the place for this warrior strength is in the heart. We need energy, commitment, and courage not to run from our life nor to cover it over with any philosophy-mate rial or spiritual. We need a warrior’s heart that lets us face our lives directly, our pains and limitations, our joys and possibilities.

There is too much animal courage in society and not sufficient moral courage.

Each person has inside a basic decency and goodness. If he listens to it and acts on it, he is giving a great deal of what it is the world needs most. It is not complicated but it takes courage. It takes courage for a person to listen to his own goodness and act on it.

One isn't necessarily born with courage, but one is born with potential. Without courage, we cannot practice any other virtue with consistency. We can't be kind, true, merciful, generous, or honest.

It seemed incredible to me, that physical courage should be so commonplace and revered, while moral courage . . . is so rare and despised.

A very popular error: having the courage of one's convictions; rather it is a matter of having the courage for an attack on one's convictions.

Anyone can support a team that is winning - it takes no courage. But to stand behind a team to defend a team when it is down and really needs you, that takes a lot of courage.

Living isn't courage, knowing that you're living, that's courage

But mayn't desertion be a brave thing? A fine thing? To desert a thing we've gone beyond - to have the courage to desert it and walk right off from the dead thing to the live thing - ?

Let us pray for the many Christians in the world who still suffer persecution and violence. May God grant them the courage of fidelity.

Courage is the discovery that you may not win, and trying when you know you can lose.

In America, the traditional routes to black identity have hardly been normal. Suicide (disappearance by imitation, or willed extinction), violence (hysterical religiosity, crime, armed revolt), and exemplary moral courage; none of these is normal.