Courageous quotes
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“Remember that failure is an event, not a person.”
“Courage is going from failure to failure without losing enthusiasm.”
“Without courage, wisdom bears no fruit.”
“With enough courage, you can do without a reputation.”
“Money lost -- little lost. Honour lost -- much lost. Pluck lost -- all lost.”
Raffles: The Amateur Cracksman
Variant: the courage it took to get out of bed each
morning
to face the same things
over and over
was
enormous.
Source: You Get So Alone At Times That It Just Makes Sense
“To be or not to be. That's not really a question.”
As quoted in The Ring of Truth (2004) by Joseph O'Day
“Your attitude determines your altitude.”
Zig Ziglar
200 Motivational and inspirational Quotes That Will Inspire Your Success
Variant: Your attitude determines your altitude. - Zig Ziglar
Talk is Cheap Volume 1 (1998)
Source: Talk is Cheap: Volume 1
“What would life be if we had no courage to attempt anything?”
Strength to Love, p. 25
1960s, Strength to Love (1963)
Context: The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy. The true neighbor will risk his position, his prestige and even his life for the welfare of others.
“Fear is a reaction. Courage is a decision.”
“Courage is being the only only one who knows how terrified you are.”
Source: Red Rabbit
Special Message to the Congress: The President's First Economic Report (1947)
Source: https://www.trumanlibrary.gov/library/public-papers/4/special-message-congress-presidents-first-economic-report
“Act as if it were impossible to fail.”
“The willingness to show up changes us, It makes us a little braver each time.”
Source: Daring Greatly: How the Courage to Be Vulnerable Transforms the Way We Live, Love, Parent, and Lead
“The Brave man is not he who does not feel afraid, but he who conquers that fear”
Source: How to Fall in Love
"Gzowski on FM".
Conversations with Robertson Davies (1989)
Source: The Diary of Anaïs Nin, Vol. 1: 1931-1934
“Creativity requires the courage to let go of certainties.”
“Courage starts with showing up and letting ourselves be seen.”
Variant: There’s nothing more daring than showing up, putting ourselves out there and letting ourselves be seen.
Source: Daring Greatly: How the Courage to Be Vulnerable Transforms the Way We Live, Love, Parent, and Lead
“Nothing gives a fearful man more courage than another's fear.”
Variant: Nothing gives a fearful man more courage than another's fear.”" -
Source: The Name of the Rose
“To dare is to lose one's footing momentarily. Not to dare is to lose oneself.”
Variant: Pride is holding your head up high when everyone around you has theirs bowed. Courage is what makes you do it.
Source: The Power of One
“Write it on your heart that every day is the best day in the year.”
Works and Days
1870s, Society and Solitude (1870)
“Your attitude determines your altitude”
The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People: Powerful Lessons in Personal Change
“Vulnerability sounds like truth and feels like courage.”
Source: Daring Greatly: How the Courage to Be Vulnerable Transforms the Way We Live, Love, Parent, and Lead
Variant: You have passed through the two hardest tests on the spiritual road: the patience to wait for the right moment and the courage not to be disappointed with what you encounter.
Source: Veronika Decides to Die
“There is no failure except in no longer trying.”
“Stories make us more alive, more human, more courageous, more loving.”
“He who jumps into the void owes no explanation to those who stand and watch.”
“All serious daring starts from within.”
Source: On Writing (2002)
Living, Loving, and Learning (1982)
Variant: Risks must be taken because the greatest hazard in life is to risk nothing.
Source: Living Loving and Learning
Context: To love is to risk not being loved in return. To hope is to risk pain. To try is to risk failure, but risks must be taken, because the greatest hazard in life is to risk nothing.
“Do the thing you fear and the death of fear is certain.”
“Life is not meant to be easy, my child but take courage: it can be delightful.”
Pt. V; see also the later phrasing of Malcolm Fraser, "life wasn't meant to be easy"
1920s, Back to Methuselah (1921)
Pt. 1, ch. 11
Atticus Finch
Variant: Courage is not a man with a gun in his hand. It's knowing you're licked before you begin but you begin anyway and you see it through no matter what. You rarely win, but sometimes you do.
Source: To Kill a Mockingbird (1962)
Context: I wanted you to see what real courage is, instead of getting the idea that courage is a man with a gun in his hand. It's when you know you're licked before you begin, but you begin anyway and see it through no matter what. You rarely win, but sometimes you do.
“A hero is no braver than an ordinary man, but he is brave five minutes longer.”
“It takes courage to make a fool of yourself.”
Variant: Failure is unimportant. It takes courage to make a fool of yourself
“Just because you fail once doesn't mean you're gonna fail at everything.”
“What we know matters but who we are matters more.”
Source: Daring Greatly: How the Courage to Be Vulnerable Transforms the Way We Live, Love, Parent, and Lead
“Courage is very important. Like a muscle, it is strengthened by use.”
“Have enough courage to trust love one more time and always one more time.”
Speech at the Democratic National Convention (26 August 1996) http://www.chrisreevehomepage.com/sp-dnc1996.html
“Live out of your imagination, not your history.”
As quoted in Wake-up Calls : You Don't Have to Sleepwalk through your Life, Love, or Career! (1992) by Eric Allenbaugh, p. 65
Source: David and Goliath: Underdogs, Misfits, and the Art of Battling Giants
“Courage originally meant "To speak one's mind by telling all one's heart.”
Source: The Gifts of Imperfection: Let Go of Who You Think You're Supposed to Be and Embrace Who You Are
“Clear thinking requires courage rather than intelligence.”
“Those who dare to fail miserably can achieve greatly.”
“I have not ceased being fearful, but I have ceased to let fear control me.”
“Vulnerability is our most accurate measurement of courage.”
“Curiosity will conquer fear even more than bravery will.”
The Crock of Gold (Charleston: BiblioBazaar, [1912] 2006) p. 13.
“What separates the winners from the losers is how a person reacts to each new twist of fate.”
Trump: Surviving at the Top (1990), p. 3; https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/550046337547665409
“Be brave. Take risks. Nothing can substitute experience.”
“Courage is contagious. When a brave man takes a stand, the spines of others are often stiffened.”
"A Time for Moral Courage", Reader’s Digest (July 1964)
Variant: Courage is contagious. When a brave man takes a stand, the spines of others are often stiffened.
Source: The War of Art (2002), p. 13
As quoted in USA Today (5 March 1988)
Variant:
Courage is the most important of all the virtues, because without courage you can't practice any other virtue consistently. You can practice any virtue erratically, but nothing consistently without courage.
As quoted in Diversity : Leaders Not Labels (2006) by Stedman Graham, p. 224
“Everyone has talent. What's rare is the courage to follow it to the dark places where it leads.”
“Faced with what is right, to leave it undone shows a lack of courage.”
“God grant me the courage not to give up what I think is right even though I think it is hopeless.”
Appended to a variant of the Serenity Prayer in The Armed Forces Prayer Book (1951)
“The strangest, most generous, and proudest of all virtues is true courage.”
Attributed
“The ideal man bears the accidents of life
With dignity and grace, the best of circumstances.”
Act V, scene i.
Cato, A Tragedy (1713)
Many quoters, including Bartlett's Familiar Quotations (1919), have "in our own" instead of "in your own".
Source: "Finis Exoptatus (A metaphysical Song)" (24 November 1866), Fytte 8 of Ye Wearie Wayfarer: Hys Ballad in Eight Fyttes, as published in Sea Spray and Smoke Drift http://books.google.com/books?id=xZUuAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA47 (1867).
Helen Schucman in A Course in Miracles (1976) by Helen Schucman and William Thetford, Ch. 16 The Forgiveness of Illusions, p. 338,#6.
Misattributed
“All our dreams can come true — if we have the courage to pursue them.”
Source: How to Be Like Walt : Capturing the Magic Every Day of Your Life (2004), Ch. 3 : Imagination Unlimited, p. 63; Unsourced variant: All your dreams can come true if you have the courage to pursue them.
“Is he alone who has courage on his right hand and faith on his left hand?”
As quoted in 1927 (2000) by Robert P. Fitton
“To see what is right and not to do it is want of courage.”
Bk. 2, Ch. 24 (p. 23)
Translations, The Confucian Analects
“In dreams and in love there are no impossibilities.”
As quoted in Dictionary of Quotations from Ancient and Modern, English and Foreign Sources (1893) by James Wood, p. 11
“There's no such thing as not being afraid.”
What I've Learned
“Necessity makes even the timid brave.”
Necessitas etiam timidos fortes facit.
Source: Bellum Catilinae (c. 44 BC), Chapter LVII
“To have courage for whatever comes in life — everything lies in that.”
As quoted in The Little Lamp (1981) by Eknath Easwaran, p. 80
“True courage is being afraid, and going ahead and doing your job.”
As quoted in General H. Norman Schwarzkopf Jr. Interview with the American Academy of Achievement Source: [General H. Norman Schwarzkopf Jr. Interview, www.achievement.org, "Academy of Achievement", https://achievement.org/achiever/general-h-norman-schwarzkopf/#interview] As quoted in Pocket Patriot : Quotes from American Heroes (2005) by Kelly Nickell, p. 53
“No one knows what he can do till he tries.”
Maxim 786
Sentences, The Moral Sayings of Publius Syrus, a Roman Slave
In Young India (2 March 1922). Quoted in The Essential Gandhi: An Anthology of His Writings on His Life, Work, and Ideas edited by Louis Fischer (2002), p. 160 http://books.google.com/books?id=gz6l-vCVgxQC&lpg=PP1&pg=PA160#v=onepage&q&f=false.
1920s
“There was no future and no past. The present was eternity.”
Statement about perceptions he experienced in early clinical experiments with LSD. How Do We Know Who We Are? : A Biography of the Self (1997)
Americans who tell the truth http://www.americanswhotellthetruth.org/pgs/portraits/Jim_Hightower.html, portrait.