Quotes About Courage

Having courage does not mean that we are unafraid. Having courage and showing courage mean we face our fears. We are able to say, 'I have fallen, but I will get up.'

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

Summoning up the courage to take action is always the same regardless of how seemingly big or small the challenge. What may look like a small act of courage is courage nonetheless. The important thing is to be willing to take a step forward.

You've got to follow your passion. You've got to figure out what it is you love--who you really are. And have the courage to do that. I believe that the only courage anybody ever needs is the courage to follow your own dreams.

I have reached the conclusion that those who have physical courage also have moral courage. Physical courage is a great test.

If you want to develop courage, then simply act courageously when it's called for. If you do something over and over again, you develop a habit. Some people develop the habit of courage. Some people develop the habit of non-courage.

Successful or not, acts of physical courage always bring honor. It is the smaller forms of valor - standing up for principle at the risk of social disapproval, economic loss or injury to career - that require the greatest moral will power. Since there is usually little upside to winning and a significant and often lasting downside to losing, moral courage often requires as much character as physical bravery.

True courage is being afraid, and going ahead and doing your job anyhow, that's what courage is.

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.

What we call our destiny is truly our character and that character can be altered. The knowledge that we are responsible for our actions and attitudes does not need to be discouraging, because it also means that we are free to change this destiny. One is not in bondage to the past, which has shaped our feelings, to race, inheritance, background. All this can be altered if we have the courage to examine how it formed us. We can alter the chemistry provided we have the courage to dissect the elements.

Fear is not the opposite of courage. Fear is the catalyst of courage.

Courage is defined as: the ability to face danger, difficulty, uncertainty, or pain without being overcome by fear or being deflected from a chosen course of action. Many of today's world leaders have great courage: I wonder... would we be better off with cowardice?

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.

We have dreamt of every woman there is, and dreamt too of the miracle that would bring us the pleasure of being a woman, for women have all the qualities - courage, passion, the capacity to love, cunning - whereas all our imagination can do is naively pile up the illusion of courage.

Courage stands halfway between cowardice and rashness, one of which is a lack, the other an excess of courage.

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."

People who thought of my journey as a physical ordeal or an act of courage... missed the point. Courage and physical endurance were no more than useful items of equipment for me, like facility with languages or immunity to hepatitis. The goal was comprehension, and the only way to comprehend the world was by making myself vulnerable to it so that it could change me. The challenge was to lay myself open to everybody and everything that came my way. The prize was to change and grow big enough to feel one with the whole world.

Courage and confidence are practical necessities . . . courage is the practical form of being true to existence, of being true to truth, and confidence is the practical form of being true to one’s own consciousness.

The best weapons against the infamies of life are courage, wilfulness and patience. Courage strenthens, wilfulness is fun and patience provides tranquility.

That was the tragedy. Not that one man had the courage to be evil. But that millions had not the courage to be good.

The highest result of education is tolerance. Long ago men fought and died for their faith; but it took ages to teach them the other kind of courage, - the courage to recognize the faiths of their brethren and their rights of conscience.

That is at bottom the only courage that is demanded of us: to have courage for the most strange, the most singular, and the most inexplicable that we may encounter.

You cannot carry out fundamental change without a certain amount of madness. In this case, it comes from nonconformity, the courage to turn your back on the old formulas, the courage to invent the future. It took the madmen of yesterday for us to be able to act with extreme clarity today. I want to be one of those madmen. We must dare to invent the future.

Courage is what preserves our liberty, safety, life, and our homes and parents, our country and children. Courage comprises all things.

Courage is a decision you make to act in a way that works through your own fear for the greater good as opposed to pure self-interest. Courage means putting at risk your immediate self-interest for what you believe is right.

Courage doesn't always involve physical heroism in the face of death. It doesn't always require giant leaps worthy of celebration. Sometimes, courage is the willingness to speak the truth about what you see and to own what you say.

Putting my hand in someone else’s has always been my definition of happiness. Before I fall asleep, often - in that small struggle not to lose consciousness and go into the greater world - often, before I get up the courage to go into the vastness of sleep, I pretend that someone has my hand in theirs, and then I go, go to that enormous absence of form that is sleep. And when even after that I don’t have courage, I dream.

He thought that it was loneliness which he was trying to escape and not himself. But the street ran on: catlike, one place was the same as another to him. But in none of them could he be quiet. But the street ran on in its moods and phases, always empty: he might have seen himself as in numberless avatars, in silence, doomed with motion, driven by the courage of flagged and spurred despair; by the despair of courage whose opportunities had to be flagged and spurred.

Women, I believe, search for fellow beings who have faced similar struggles, conveyed them in ways a reader can transform into her own life, confirmed desires the reader had hardly acknowledge-desires that now seem possible. Women catch courage from the women whose lives and writings they read, and women call the bearer of that courage friend. [p. 138]

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 one thing I learned the most about acting is it takes a tremendous amount of courage to go there and stand still. It takes courage and guts to step out of your mind frame and depict something.

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.

I found something! Courage--just that; courage as a rule of life and something to cling to always.

An act of heroism, of extraordinary courage, the grandeur of it, won't easily inspire us to act in imitation, but it can inspire us to emulate its author. For that, we should learn what we can of the whole experience of the subject, the hero's life, as it was before and after, and believe that trying to emulate the character it reveals is one tried way to prepare for the tests that might await us and gain hope that our courage will not be wanting in the moment.

It hurts to care; the courage to care is the profoundest courage there is.

Write every day, line by line, page by page, hour by hour. Do this despite fear. For above all else, beyond imagination and skill, what the world asks of you is courage, courage to risk rejection, ridicule and failure. As you follow the quest for stories told with meaning and beauty, study thoughtfully but write boldly. Then, like the hero of the fable, your dance will dazzle the world.

Have the courage to say no. Have the courage to face the truth. Do the right thing because it is right. These are the magic keys to living your life with integrity.

It takes a lot of courage to be happy (after the death of a spouse), but I've got courage, so I think I will be happy again.

It takes moral courage to grieve; it requires religious courage to rejoice.

Courage is the most important thing...Wake up yourselves and others. Control your mind and have firm determination... Be firm like a rock, deep and serious like the sea. Think of the earth as a mother. Have great courage and patience - and be not afraid of water, fire or great storms - face them bravely. Face the fire and it will turn to ice. This requires control of mind and a firm determination.

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.

My work is to be honest. My work is to try to think clearly, then have the courage to make sure that what I say is the truth.

Patient acceptance is often considered a weak and passive response to problems that we do not have the power or courage to solve. In reality, however, being patient is far from being passive. There is nothing strong or courageous in reacting to hardship or insults with anger - all we are doing is being defeated by our delusions.

Let him who has courage in his mind and love in his heart come with me. I want none else.

Remarkable contributions are typically spawned by a passionate commitment to transcendent values such as beauty, truth, wisdom, justice, charity, fidelity, joy, courage and honor.

The greatest gift for an individual or a nation... was abhaya, fearlessness, not merely bodily courage but absence of fear from the mind.

Courage means willing to risk everything.

Life without the courage to die is slavery.