Courage Quotes

500+ Sourced quotes

This country was founded and built by people with great dreams and the courage to take great risks.

Endurance means that failures have to be both accepted and refused: accepted as a sign that fresh efforts now need to be made, and refused as a signal that we may now desist from effort altogether. … Courage means that the external risks and adversities we face (as distinct from or own moral and spiritual failures) are to be assessed at their true importance: that is, for the patrician, as being in themselves of no importance, as objects not of fear but of disdain.

R. W. K. Paterson

Nothing fosters courage like a clear grasp of grace... & nothing fosters fear like an ignorance of mercy

The movement of the Spirit of God in the hearts of men and women often calls them to act against the spirit of their times or causes them to anticipate a spirit which is yet in the making. In a moment of dedication they are given wisdom and courage to dare a deed that challenges and to kindle a hope that inspires.

It is naive to think that self-assertiveness is easy. To live self-assertively—which means to live authentically—is an act of high courage. That is why so many people spend the better part of their lives in hiding—from others and also from themselves.

Nathaniel Branden

'So then at forty-six years of age I came here to learn to live by cliches,' is what Day says to Charlotte Treat right after Randy Lenz asked what time it was, again, at 0825. 'To turn my will and life over to the care of cliches. One day at a time. Easy does it. First things first. Courage is fear that has said its prayers. Ask for help. Thy will not mine be done. It works if you work it. Grow or go. Keep coming back.' [...] I walk around with my arms out straight in front of me and recite these cliches. In a monotone. No inflection necessary. Could that be one? Could that be added to the cliche-pool? "No inflection necessary"? Too many syllables, probably.'

David Foster Wallace

She has turned her face, more than once, to the Outer Radiance and simply seen nothing there. And so each time taken a little more of the Zero into herself. It comes down to courage, at worst an amount of self-deluding that's vanishingly small: he has to admire it, even if he can't accept her glassy wastes, her appeals to a day not of wrath but of final indifference....

Fear is a poison produced by the mind, and courage is the antidote stored always ready in the soul

Discipline is, in a manner, nothing else but the art of inspiring the soldiers with greater fear of their officers than of the enemy. This fear has often the effect of courage: but it cannot prevail against the fierce and obstinate valor of people animated by fanaticism, or warm love of their country.

Claude Adrien Helvétius

A man writes to throw off the poison which he has accumulated because of his false way of life. He is trying to recapture his innocence, yet all he succeeds in doing is to inoculate the world with a virus of his disillusionment. No man would set a word down on paper if he had the courage to live out what he believed in....

If a grasshopper tries to fight a lawnmower, one may admire his courage but not his judgment.

Robert A. Heinlein

Ah! Those strange people who have the courage to be unhappy! Are they unhappy, by-the-way?

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.

The universe conspires to reveal the truth and to make your path easy if you have the courage to follow the signs.

There were worse things than death, as she'd discovered. Sometimes living took far more courage. Facing another day. Enduring. Those things took strength. Far more than dying.

Recently a courageous group of Arab and Muslim intellectuals wrote me a letter. In it, they said this: "The shore of reform is the only one on which any lights appear, even though the journey demands courage and patience and perseverance." The United Nations was created to make that journey possible. Together we must support the dreams of good and decent people who are working to transform a troubled region — and by doing so, we will advance the high ideals on which this institution was founded.

The world has improved mostly because unorthodox people did unorthodox things. Not surprisingly, they had the courage and daring to think they could make a difference.

We are fed up with fudging and mudging, with mush and slush. We need courage, conviction, and hard work.

The next time you encounter fear, consider yourself lucky. This is where the courage comes in. Usually we think that brave people have no fear. The truth is that they are intimate with fear. When I was first married, my husband said I was one of the bravest people he knew. When I asked him why, he said because I was a complete coward but went ahead and did things anyhow.

We are both burdened and blessed by the great responsibility of the will - the power of choice. Our future is determined, in large part, by the choices we make now. We cannot always control our circumstances, but we can and do choose our response to whatever arises. Reclaiming the power of choice, we find the courage to live fully in the world.

You do not need to know precisely what is happening, or exactly where it is all going. What you need is to recognize the possibilities and challenges offered by the present moment, and to embrace them with courage, faith and hope.

I'm honored to take on this responsibility at a vital time for our country. What makes the United Kingdom great is our fundamental belief in freedom, in enterprise, and in fair play. Our people have shown grit, courage and determination time and time again.

Spend the years of learning squandering
Courage for the years of wandering
Through a world politely turning
From the loutishness of learning.

Bravely overcoming one small fear gives you the courage to take on the next.

The Valkyries are symbols not only of courage but of intelligence; they represent the human spirit snatching its opportunity while the going is good, and one of them even finds time to love. Bruennhilde's last song hymns the recurrence of love, and since it is the privilege of art to exaggerate she goes even further, and proclaims the love which is eternally triumphant, and feeds upon freedom and lives.