Courage Quotes

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I cannot believe – and I say this with all the emphasis of which I am capable – that there can ever be any good excuse for refusing to face the evidence in favour of something unwelcome. It is not by delusion, however exalted, that mankind can prosper, but only by unswerving courage in the pursuit of truth.

Bertrand Russell

In times of difficulty we must not lose sight of our achievements, must see the bright future and must pluck up our courage.

Just as courage is the danger of life, so is fear its safeguard.

Leonardo da Vinci

I met [Meyerbeer] at the performance of my "Battle." Most of the composers then in Vienna were kind enough to undertake something or other in my orchestra, and the young man played the big drum. Ha! ha! ha! (a peal of laughter). I had reason not to be very well satisfied with him. He was always behindhand, and I had to give it him roundly. (New peal of laughter.) He must have felt mortified by my observations; but there is no reliance to be placed in him; he has not the courage to raise his arm at the proper moment.

Ludwig van Beethoven

He recognised its voice. It was the young hound which even a year ago had had no judgment and which, by the lights of the other hounds anyway, still had none. Maybe that's what courage is, he thought.

William Faulkner

One cannot judge the value of an opinion simply by the amount of courage that is required in holding it.

Each reaching and aspiration is an instinct with which all nature consists and cöoperates, and therefore it is not in vain. But alas! each relaxing and desperation is an instinct too. To be active, well, happy, implies courage. To be ready to fight in a duel or a battle implies desperation, or that you hold your life cheap.

Henry David Thoreau

A man of great common sense and good taste, meaning thereby a man without originality or moral courage.

George Bernard Shaw

That dependable courage, which in spite of the most sudden circumstances, nevertheless allows freedom of mind, of judgment and of decision, is exceedingly rare.

Napoleon I of France

A woman cannot live in the light of intellect. Society forbids it. Those conventional frivolities, which are called her 'duties', forbid it. Her 'domestic duties', high-sounding words, which, for the most part, are but bad habits (which she has not the courage to enfranchise herself from, the strength to break through), forbid it.

Florence Nightingale

Resistance through violence and killing is wrong and does not succeed. For centuries, black people in America suffered the lash of the whip as slaves and the humiliation of segregation. But it was not violence that won full and equal rights. It was a peaceful and determined insistence upon the ideals at the centre of America's founding. This same story can be told by people from South Africa to South Asia; from Eastern Europe to Indonesia. It's a story with a simple truth: violence is a dead end. It is a sign of neither courage nor power to shoot rockets at sleeping children, or to blow up old women on a bus. That is not how moral authority is claimed; that is how it is surrendered.

Thank you, Poland — thank you for your courage. Thank you for reminding the world that no matter how brutal the crackdown, no matter how long the night, the yearning for liberty and dignity does not fade away. It will never go away. Thank you, Poland, for your iron will and for showing that, yes, ordinary citizens can grab the reins of history, and that freedom will prevail — because, in the end, tanks and troops are no match for the force of our ideals.

It's a liberation to know that an act of spontaneous courage is yet possible in this world. An act that has something of unconditional beauty.

Never again will you be capable of ordinary human feeling. Everything will be dead inside you. Never again will you be capable of love, or friendship, or joy of living, or curiosity, or courage, or integrity. You will be hollow. We shall squeeze you empty and then we shall fill you with ourselves.

The great epochs of our life come when we gain the courage to rechristen our evil as what is best in us.

Friedrich Nietzsche

Sometimes my courage fails me and I think I ought to stop working, live in the country and devote myself to gardening. But I am held by a thousand bonds, and I don't know when I shall be able to arrange things otherwise. Nor do I know whether, even by writing scientific books, I could live without the laboratory.

There is plenty of courage among us for the abstract but not enough for the concrete.

Why, courage then! what cannot be avoided
'Twere childish weakness to lament or fear.

William Shakespeare

Faced with what is right, to leave it undone shows a lack of courage.

It's a release to know that in spite of everything a premeditated act of courage is still possible.

True love is love that causes us pain, that hurts, and yet brings us joy. That is why we must pray to God and ask Him to give us the courage to love

Self-knowledge is no guarantee of happiness, but it is on the side of happiness and can supply the courage to fight for it.

Simone de Beauvoir

There is need of a sound body, and even more need of a sound mind. But above mind and above body stands character-the sum of those qualities which we mean when we speak of a man's force and courage, of his good faith and sense of honor.

Theodore Roosevelt

The onward march of the human race requires that the heights around it constantly blaze with noble lessons of courage. Deeds of daring dazzle history and form one of man's guiding lights.

A Catholic is a person who has plucked up courage to face the incredible and inconceivable idea that something else may be wiser than he is.

G. K. Chesterton