Courage Quotes

There are many faces to war. There is the face of courage, of bravery, of fellowship. There is the face of fear. Above all, there is love of country.
– Barbara Boxer
Those who won our independence... valued liberty as an end and as a means. They believed liberty to be the secret of happiness and courage to be the secret of liberty.
– Louis D. Brandeis
I think the Iraqi people have shown extraordinary patience and courage in the last few months. They have really put a political system on the way to success, to a real democracy here.
– Paul Bremer
Our boldness and Christian suffering, they call obstinacy and pertinacity, though half as much, if among themselves, they would account Christian courage, and nobility. And though thus by their envy they strive to read all, relating to us, backwards, counting these things vices in us, which in themselves they would extol as virtues, yet hath the strength of Truth extorted this confession often from them, that we are generally a pure and clean people as to the outward conversation.
– Robert Barclay
Each of us has an inner dream that we can unfold if we will just have the courage to admit what it is. And the faith to trust our own admission. The admitting is often very difficult.
– Julia Cameron
Inaction breeds doubt and fear. Action breeds confidence and courage. If you want to conquer fear, do not sit home and think about it. Go out and get busy.
– Dale Carnegie
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.
– Pablo Casals
At the bottom of not a little of the bravery that appears in the world, there lurks a miserable cowardice. Men will face powder and steel because they have not the courage to face public opinion.
– Edwin Hubbel Chapin
Failure is unimportant. It takes courage to make a fool of yourself.
– Charlie Chaplin
Success is not final, failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts.
– Sir Winston Churchill
A man of courage is also full of faith.
– Marcus Tullius Cicero
If our fellow men could be aware of our opinions about them, love, friendship, and devotion would be forever erased from the dictionaries; and if we had the courage to confront the doubts we timidly conceive about ourselves, none of us would utter an 'I' without shame.
– Emile M. Cioran
Two qualities are indispensable: first, an intellect that, even in the darkest hour, retains some glimmerings of the inner light which leads to truth; and second, the courage to follow this faint light wherever it may lead.
– Karl Von Clausewitz
No matter what you think about the Iraq war, there is one thing we can all agree on for the next days - we have to salute the courage and bravery of those who are risking their lives to vote and those brave Iraqi and American soldiers fighting to protect their right to vote.
– Hillary Clinton
It takes a lot of courage to release the familiar and seemingly secure, to embrace the new. But there is no real security in what is no longer meaningful. There is more security in the adventurous and exciting, for in movement there is life, and in change there is power.
– Alan Cohen
The sea - this truth must be confessed - has no generosity. No display of manly qualities - courage, hardihood, endurance, faithfulness - has ever been known to touch its irresponsible consciousness of power.
– Joseph Conrad
Golf is an open exhibition of overweening ambition, courage deflated by stupidity, skill soured by a whiff of arrogance.
– Alistair Cooke
I am personally convinced that one person can be a change catalyst, a transformer in any situation, any organization. Such an individual is yeast that can leaven an entire loaf. It requires vision, initiative, patience, respect, persistence, courage, and faith to be a transforming leader.
– Stephen Covey
It takes courage to grow up and become who you really are.
– e. e. cummings
It was my job to interest them in everything that was happening, to make the arrival of the Daily Express each morning an event, to show them the world outside Bolton and Bacup, to give them courage and confidence to overcome the drabness of their lives.
– Arthur Christiansen
Have the courage to live. Anyone can die.
– Robert Cody
Whatever choice Elizabeth Bouvia may ultimately make, I can only hope that her courage, persistence and example will cause our society to deal realistically with the plight of those unfortunate individuals to whom death beckons as a welcome respite from suffering.
– Lynn Compton
President Bush has demonstrated tremendous courage and resolve in the past year. He has been the decisive leader these times have required.
– Jim DeMint
All our dreams can come true, if we have the courage to pursue them.
– Walt Disney
Courage is clearly a readiness to risk self-humiliation.
– Nigel Dennis
How banal, yet irrefutable, is the assertion that [a person] is a mixture of the 'angelic' and the 'demonic.' ... A true politician... can be neither... 'an angel' nor 'a demon... .' [Politicians] cannot be so if [they are] to... negotiate with courage and skill on the razor's edge between victory and defeat, life and death.
– Milovan Djilas
Courage follows action.
– Mack R. Douglas
In the face of a rapidly changing world, the people of our beloved country have once again demonstrated a commitment to hard work and courage. It is now evident that everything that occurs beyond our borders can have a profound impact upon how we live, the problems with which we have to grapple and the quality of life, which our people will enjoy.
– Denzil Douglas
Courage is the price that life exacts for granting peace.
– Amelia Earhart
Nothing gives a fearful man more courage than another's fear.
– Umberto Eco
I have never looked upon ease and happiness as ends in themselves - such an ethical basis I call more proper for a herd of swine. The ideals which have lighted me on my way and time after time given me new courage to face life cheerfully, have been Truth, Goodness, and Beauty.
– Albert Einstein
A great part of courage is the courage of having done the thing before.
– Ralph Waldo Emerson
Courage consists in the power of self-recovery.
– Ralph Waldo Emerson
You don't develop courage by being happy in your relationships everyday. You develop it by surviving difficult times and challenging adversity.
– Epicurus
To dream anything that you want to dream. That's the beauty of the human mind. To do anything that you want to do. Tha is the strength of the human will. To trust yourself to test your limits. That is the courage to succeed.
– Bernard Edmonds
He who has faith has... an inward reservoir of courage, hope, confidence, calmness, and assuring trust that all will come out well - even though to the world it may appear to come out most badly.
– B. C. Forbes
He who knows no hardships will know no hardihood. He who faces no calamity will need no courage. Mysterious though it is, the characteristics in human nature which we love best grow in a soil with a strong mixture of troubles.
– Harry Emerson Fosdick
The valor and courage of our young women and men in the armed services are a shining example to all of the world, and we owe them and their families our deepest respect.
– Bill Frist
Courage has never been known to be a matter of muscle; it is a matter of the heart. The toughest muscle has been known to tremble before an imaginary fear. It was the heart that set the muscle atrembling.
– Mahatma Gandhi
Leaders come in many forms, with many styles and diverse qualities. There are quiet leaders and leaders one can hear in the next county. Some find strength in eloquence, some in judgment, some in courage.
– John W. Gardner
Little boldness is needed to assail the opinions and practices of notoriously wicked men; but to rebuke great and good men for their conduct, and to impeach their discernment, is the highest effort of moral courage.
– William Lloyd Garrison
The courage of a soldier is found to be the cheapest and most common quality of human nature.
– Edward Gibbon
While President Bush likes to project an image of strength and courage, the real truth is that in the presence of his large financial contributors, he is a moral coward.
– Al Gore
There's an appreciation, not unlike that for dancers or tightrope walkers, of the body undergoing tests and coming through them by courage and technique; a desire for clean results.
– Richard Gilman
Courage, in the final analysis, is nothing but an affirmative answer to the shocks of existence.
– Kurt Goldstein
Life is mostly froth and bubble, two things stand like stone, iindness in another's trouble, courage in your own.
– Adam Lindsay Gordon
Courage is always the surest wisdom.
– Sir Wilfred Grenfell
Buddhism has helped me toward gaining control over my own destiny, and given me the courage to follow directions I believe in.
– Herbie Hancock
So to answer your question more directly, I think it's very important, in order not to have a boring life, to continue to have a sense of exploration, and the courage to take risks, in order to utilize and expand your sense of creativity.
– Herbie Hancock
With the courage which only comes of justified self-confidence, he dared to rest his case upon its strongest point, and so avoided that appearance of weakness and uncertainty which comes of a clutter of arguments. Few lawyers are willing to do this; it is the mark of the most distinguished talent.
– Learned Hand
Patience, that blending of moral courage with physical timidity.
– Thomas Hardy
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 acknowledged - 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.
– Carolyn Heilbrun
I declare that civil war is inevitable and is near at hand. When it comes the descendants of the heroes of Lexington and Bunker Hill will be found equal in patriotism, courage and heroic endurance with the descendants of the heroes of Cowpens and Yorktown. For this reason I predict the civil war which is now at hand will be stubborn and of long duration.
– Sam Houston
Have courage for the great sorrows of life and patience for the small ones; and when you have laboriously accomplished your daily task, go to sleep in peace.
– Victor Hugo
To ask brave soldiers to go into the inferno of Afghanistan and Iraq and by virtue of their skill and courage, under the televised scrutiny of a global audience, end the rule of murderers was not easy. Nor was staying on to help the helpless. Yes, the truly frightening alternative was the blustering inaction that we have seen for the past 20 years that led to September 11 and the real quagmire in the Middle East.
– Victor Davis Hanson
Courage doesn't always roar. Sometimes courage is the little voice at the end of the day that says... I'll try again tomorrow.
– Mary Anne Radmacher-Hershey
We need men with moral courage to speak and write their real thoughts, and to stand by their convictions, even to the very death.
– Robert Green Ingersoll
Patriotism - is defined as love and devotion to one's country. But, oftentimes, it takes as much, if not more courage to speak out against our government. It is that love of country that compel some to speak out and oppose our government's actions.
– Daniel Inouye
It takes more courage to reveal insecurities than to hide them, more strength to relate to people than to dominate them, more 'manhood' to abide by thought-out principles rather than blind reflex. Toughness is in the soul and spirit, not in muscles and an immature mind.
– Alex Karras
Courage is a peculiar kind of fear.
– Charles Kennedy
A nation which has forgotten the quality of courage which in the past has been brought to public life is not as likely to insist upon or regard that quality in its chosen leaders today - and in fact we have forgotten.
– John F. Kennedy
The courage of life is often a less dramatic spectacle than the courage of a final moment; but it is no less a magnificent mixture of triumph and tragedy.
– John F. Kennedy
I saw courage both in the Vietnam War and in the struggle to stop it. I learned that patriotism includes protest, not just military service.
– John F. Kerry
It wasn't a matter of courage or dreams, but something a whole lot simpler. A pilot would call it ground orientation. I'd spent a long time circling above the clouds, looking for life, while Hallie was living it.
– Barbara Kingsolver
Courage is never to let your actions be influenced by your fears.
– Arthur Koestler
Today's Poland has courage to look into the eyes of the truth about a nightmare which gloomed one of the chapters in its history.
– Aleksander Kaasniewski
Failure is only postponed success as long as courage 'coaches' ambition. The habit of persistence is the habit of victory.
– Herbert Kaufman
I'm sure it took a lot of courage for the legislators back then to give African Americans the right to legally marry and to protect their children. For my sake, and the sake of hundreds of children like me, I trust you will have that kind of courage today.
– Sol Kelley-Jones
Some people think only intellect counts: knowing how to solve problems, knowing how to get by, knowing how to identify an advantage and seize it. But the functions of intellect are insufficient without courage, love, friendship, compassion and empathy.
– Dean Koontz
America is neither free nor brave, but a land of tight, iron-clanking little wills, everybody trying to put it over everybody else, and a land of men absolutely devoid of the real courage of trust, trust in life's sacred spontaneity. They can't trust life until they can control it.
– David Herbert Lawrence
Don't wish me happiness-I don't expect to be happy it's gotten beyond that, somehow. Wish me courage and strength and a sense of humor-I will need them all.
– Anne Morrow Lindbergh
Is he alone who has courage on his right hand and faith on his left hand?
– Charles Lindbergh
A man can be as great as he wants to be. If you believe in yourself and have the courage, the determination, the dedication, the competitive drive and if you are willing to sacrifice the little things in life and pay the price for the things that are worthwhile, it can be done.
– Vince Lombardi
Good character is more to be praised than outstanding talent. Most talents are to some extent a gift. Good character, by contrast, is not given to us. We have to build it piece by piece by thought, choice, courage and determination.
– John Luther
This is the art of courage: to see things as they are and still believe that the victory lies not with those who avoid the bad, but those who taste, in living awareness, every drop of the good.
– Victoria Lincoln
Courage is the complement of fear. A man who is fearless cannot be courageous.
– Lazarus Long
Because a fellow has failed once or twice or a dozen times, you don't want to set him down as a failure till he's dead or loses his courage.
– George Horace Lorimer
Success is that old ABC - ability, breaks, and courage.
– Charles Luckman
Last, but by no means least, courage-moral courage, the courage of one's convictions, the courage to see things through. The world ;is in a constant conspiracy against the brave. It's the age-old struggle-the roar of the crowd on one side and the voice of your ;conscience on the other.
– General Douglas MacArthur
We are bound no longer by the straitjacket of the past and nowhere is the change greater than in our profession of arms. What, you may well ask, will be the end of all of this? I would not know! But I would hope that our beloved country will drink deep from the chalice of courage.
– General Douglas MacArthur
Often the difference between a successful man and a failure is not one's better abilities or ideas, but the courage that one has to bet on his ideas, to take a calculated risk, and to act.
– Maxwell Maltz
Count your blessings. Once you realize how valuable you are and how much you have going for you, the smiles will return, the sun will break out, the music will play, and you will finally be able to move forward the life that God intended for you with grace, strength, courage, and confidence.
– Og Mandino
Success is not measured by what you accomplish, but by the opposition you have encountered, and the courage with which you have maintained the struggle against overwhelming odds.
– Orison Swett Marden
There can be no great courage where there is no confidence or assurance, and half the battle is in the conviction that we can do what we undertake.
– Orison Swett Marden
Morale is the state of mind. It is steadfastness and courage and hope. It is confidence and zeal and loyalty. It is elan, esprit de corps and determination.
– George C. Marshall
It requires greater courage to preserve inner freedom, to move on in one's inward journey into new realms, than to stand defiantly for outer freedom. It is often easier to play the martyr, as it is to be rash in battle.
– Rollo May
Eccentricity has always abounded when and where strength of character had abounded; and the amount of eccentricity in a society has generally been proportional to the amount of genius, mental vigor, and courage which it contained.
– John Stuart Mill
The amount of eccentricity in a society has generally been proportional to the amount of genius, mental vigor, and moral courage it contained. That so few now dare to be eccentric marks the chief danger of the time.
– John Stuart Mill
Whenever a taboo is broken, something good happens, something vitalizing. Taboos after all are only hangovers, the product of diseased minds, you might say, of fearsome people who hadn't the courage to live and who under the guise of morality and religion have imposed these things upon us.
– Henry Miller
War alone brings up to their highest tension all human energies and imposes the stamp of nobility upon the peoples who have the courage to make it.
– Benito Mussolini
Confidence is courage at ease.
– Daniel Maher
Courage is to feel the daily daggers of relentless steel and keep on living.
– Douglas Malloch
Often the difference between a successful person and a failure is not one has better abilities or ideas, but the courage that one has to bet on one's ideas, to take a calculated risk - and to act.
– Andre Malraux
The world is not perishing for the want of clever or talented, or well-meaning men. It is perishing for the want of men of courage and resolution.
– Robert J. McCracken
Courage is a moral quality; it is not a chance gift of nature like an aptitude for games. It is a cold choice between two alternatives, the fixed resolve not to quit; an act of renunciation which must be made not once but many times by the power of the will. Courage is willpower.
– Lord Moran
You learn you can do your best even when it's hard, even when you're tired and maybe hurting a little bit. It feels good to show some courage.
– Joe Namath
To exercise power costs effort and demands courage. That is why so many fail to assert rights to which they are perfectly entitled - because a right is a kind of power but they are too lazy or too cowardly to exercise it. The virtues which cloak these faults are called patience and forbearance.
– Friedrich Nietzsche
God grant me the courage not to give up what I think is right even though I think it is hopeless.
– Chester W. Nimitz
As for courage and will - we cannot measure how much of each lies within us, we can only trust there will be sufficient to carry through trials which may lie ahead.
– Andre Norton
To create one's own world in any of the arts takes courage.
– Georgia O'Keeffe