Quotes about courage
page 10

“Churchill must not forget that the Italians have nothing more to lose and they possess a courage of despair.”

Alessandro Pavolini (1903–1945) Italian politician and writer

Quoted in "New Invasion Fear In Italy Reported" - "New York Times" article - June 3, 1943.

“In a man like Friedrich von Schlegel the courage to be as an individual self produced complete neglect of participation, but it also produced, in reaction to the emptiness of this self-affirmation, the desire to return to a collective. Schlegel, and with him many extreme individualists in the last hundred years, became Roman Catholics. The courage to be as oneself broke down, and one turned to an institutional embodiment of the courage to be as a part.”

Paul Tillich book The Courage to Be

Source: The Courage to Be (1952), p. 117

Parting

“To see what is right and not to do it is want of courage.”

James Legge (1815–1897) missionary in China

Bk. 2, Ch. 24 (p. 23)
Translations, The Confucian Analects

Courageous

“If the representatives of the people betray their constituents, there is then no recourse left but in the exertion of that original right of self-defense which is paramount to all positive forms of government, and which against the usurpations of the national rulers may be exerted with infinitely better prospect of success than against those of the rulers of an individual State. In a single State, if the persons entrusted with supreme power become usurpers, the different parcels, subdivisions, or districts of which it consists, having no distinct government in each, can take no regular measures for defense. The citizens must rush tumultuously to arms, without concert, without system, without resource; except in their courage and despair.”

Alexander Hamilton Federalist Papers

No. 28
The Federalist Papers (1787–1788)

People, Success, Personality, Despair

“In citizens like these, we see the best of our country – resilient and hopeful, caring and strong. These virtues give me an unshakable faith in America. We have faced danger and trial, and there is more ahead. But with the courage of our people and confidence in our ideals, this great Nation will never tire … never falter … and never fail.”

George W. Bush (1946) 43rd President of the United States

2000s, 2009, Farewell speech to the nation (January 2009)

People, Faith, Hope, Confidence

“It was an experience of great interest to me to meet Premier Stalin … It is very fortunate for Russia in her agony to have this great rugged war chief at her head. He is a man of massive outstanding personality, suited to the sombre and stormy times in which his life has been cast; a man of inexhaustible courage and will-power and a man direct and even blunt in speech, which, having been brought up in the House of Commons, I do not mind at all, especially when I have something to say of my own. Above all, he is a man with that saving sense of humour which is of high importance to all men and all nations, but particularly to great men and great nations. Stalin also left upon me the impression of a deep, cool wisdom and a complete absence of illusions of any kind. I believe I made him feel that we were good and faithful comrades in this war – but that, after all, is a matter which deeds not words will prove.”

Winston S. Churchill book The Second World War

Speech in the House of Commons, September 8, 1942 "War Situation" http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/commons/1942/sep/08/war-situation#column_95. The Second World War (1939–1945)

Life, Wisdom, Men, War

“There is no evidence that a majority of Israelis want a two-state formula. In fact, if we add up votes won by all parties implicitly or explicitly opposed to the two-state formula, we will have a whopping 75 per cent of Israelis. Thus what Netanyahu mastered enough courage to say aloud is what most Israelis think in silence. The picture is hardly different on the Palestinian side. To start with, the Palestinians are divided in at least three camps. In one camp we have Fatah and its allies who have never formally committed to a two-state formula but have dropped hints that they might accept such a solution as a first step toward liberating the rest of historic Palestine, that is to say, what is now Israel, later. The second camp is dominated by Hamas, which is committed to the destruction of Israel in no uncertain terms. However, Hamas does not want a Palestinian state either. As the Palestinian branch of the Muslim Brotherhood, Hamas is a pan-Islamist group dedicated to fighting for the creation of a global caliphate. In the third camp, there are more radical Palestinian groups, including the Islamic Jihad for the Liberation of Palestine, now the favored protégé of the Islamic Republic in Tehran. The IJLP leadership has repeatedly declared its support for a one-state formula sponsored by Iranian “Supreme Guide” Ali Khamenei.”

Amir Taheri (1942) Iranian journalist

Who wants a two-state solution, anyway? http://nypost.com/2015/03/20/who-wants-a-two-state-solution-anyway/, New York Post (March 20, 2015). New York Post

Support, Thinking, Silence, Fight

“Without once compromising his artistic integrity, Fellini imagined a body of work -- as opposed to a suite of spin-offs, remakes, potboilers and so on -- where each production can be ranked as among the finest of experimental films ever to reach and influence an international public. There is a breathtaking scope to that achievement and great courage in the process: surmounting unbelievable resistance from producers, enemies of all kinds and jealous colleagues, career reversals, and poor health, Fellini held true to his own vision of cinema forged in the smithy of his soul.”

Damian Pettigrew Canadian filmmaker

On Fellini's artistic integrity, in Indiewire (April, 2003)

Health, Soul, Imagination

“Rohde became more and more firmly bound to the bourgeois world, its institutions and accepted opinions. … The contrast between the two natures makes Rohde and Nietzsche exemplary representatives of two distinctive worlds. In their youth they both live in the realm of boundless possibilities and feel an affinity through the exuberance of their noble aspirations. Subsequently they go in opposite directions. Nietzsche remains young, leaving concrete reality as his task assumes existential import. Rohde grows old, bourgeois, stable, and skeptical. Hence courage is a fundamental trait in Nietzsche, plaintive self-irony in Rohde. … Rohde retained the interests but not the attitudes of his youth; he looked to the world of the Greeks for the object of his contemplation rather than the norm of obligation.”

Karl Jaspers (1883–1969) German psychiatrist and philosopher

Source: Nietzsche (1946), pp. 61-62

Youth, World, Feeling, Nature

“Yet Moore is a silly and shady man who does not recognize courage of any sort even when he sees it because he cannot summon it in himself. To him, easy applause, in front of credulous audiences, is everything … If Michael Moore had had his way, Slobodan Milosevic would still be the big man in a starved and tyrannical Serbia. Bosnia and Kosovo would have been cleansed and annexed. If Michael Moore had been listened to, Afghanistan would still be under Taliban rule, and Kuwait would have remained part of Iraq. And Iraq itself would still be the personal property of a psychopathic crime family, bargaining covertly with the slave state of North Korea for WMD. You might hope that a retrospective awareness of this kind would induce a little modesty. To the contrary, it is employed to pump air into one of the great sagging blimps of our sorry, mediocre, celeb-rotten culture.”

Christopher Hitchens (1949–2011) British American author and journalist

2004-06-21
Unfairenheit 9/11
Slate
1091-2339
http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/fighting_words/2004/06/unfairenheit_911.html: On Michael Moore
2000s, 2004

Family, Hope, Way, Parting

“With mankind the differences between the sexes are greater than in most species of Quadrumana, but not so great as in some, for instance, the mandrill. Man on an average is considerably taller, heavier, and stronger than woman, with squarer shoulders and more plainly-pronounced muscles. … Man is more courageous, pugnacious, and energetic than woman, and has a more inventive genius. His brain is absolutely larger, but whether relatively to the larger size of his body, in comparison with that of woman, has not, I believe been fully ascertained. In woman the face is rounder; the jaws and the base of the skull smaller; the outlines of her body rounder, in parts more prominent; and her pelvis is broader than in man; but this latter character may perhaps be considered rather as a primary than a secondary sexual character. She comes to maturity at an earlier age than man.”

Charles Darwin book The Descent of Man, and Selection in Relation to Sex

volume II, chapter XIX: "Secondary Sexual Characters of Man", pages 316-317 http://darwin-online.org.uk/content/frameset?pageseq=333&itemID=F937.2&viewtype=image The Descent of Man (1871)

Age, Sex, Parting

“Comfortless was my religion, anxiety of the anxieties, for I believed God was not love, but courage. Love came only as a reward.”

Norman Mailer book An American Dream

Stephen Rojack, in Ch. 7
An American Dream (1965)

Love, God, Religion

“A hallmark of sanity, Alex, is the courage to face even unpleasant points of view.”

David Brin book Earth

Part I (p. 40)
Earth (1990)

“I do not believe that history is writ clear and unchallengeable. It doesn't just happen. History is made by people: its movement depends on small currents as well as great tides, on ideas, perceptions, will and courage, the ability to sense a trend, the will to act on understanding and intuition. It is up to us to give intellectual content and political direction to these new dissatisfactions with socialism in practice, with its material and moral failures, we must convert disillusion into understanding. If we fail, the tide will be lost. But if it is taken, the last quarter of our century can initiate a new renaissance matching anything in our island's long and outstanding history.”

Margaret Thatcher (1925–2013) British stateswoman and politician

Speech to the Zurich Economic Society “The New Renaissance” (14 March 1977) http://www.margaretthatcher.org/document/103336 Leader of the Opposition

People, History, Idea, Failure

“In my view, only those who have had the courage to work through Lacan's anti-philosophy without faltering deserve to be called 'contemporary philosophers.”

Alain Badiou (1937) French writer and philosopher

From Vérité: forçage et innomable, translated as Truth: Forcing and the Unnameable in Theoretical Writings. London: Continuum, 2004. ISBN 0826461468.

“In one point, and that too of more importance than is generally attached to it, the puritans of the two epochs bear a critical resemblance, namely, their hostility to rural and athletic sports: to those sports, which string the nerves and strengthen the frame, which excite an emulation in deeds of hardihood and valour, and which imperceptibly instill honour, generosity, and a love of glory, into the mind of the clown. Men thus formed are pupils unfit for the puritanical school; therefore it is, that the sect are incessantly labouring to eradicate, fibre by fibre, the last poor remains of English manners. And, sorry I am to tell you, that they meet with but too many abettors, where they ought to meet with resolute foes. Their pretexts are plausible: gentleness and humanity are the cant of the day. Weak men are imposed on, and wise men want the courage to resist. Instead of preserving those assemblages and those sports, in which the nobleman mixed with his peasants, which made the poor man proud of his inferiority, and created in his breast a personal affection for his lord, too many of the rulers of this land are now hunting the common people from every scene of diversion, and driving them to a club or a conventicle, at the former of which they suck in the delicious rudiments of earthly equality, and, at the latter, the no less delicious doctrine, that there is no lawful king but King Jesus.”

William Cobbett (1763–1835) English pamphleteer, farmer and journalist

Political Register (27 February 1802).

Love, Men, Hostility, People

“But the challenge must be faced squarely. I believe we can overcome it through our own efforts. We must do so. They key is our national power. Take courage from our national pride and traditions, no matter how thorny the road to independence may be.”

Park Chung-hee (1917–1979) Korean Army general and the leader of South Korea from 1961 to 1979

As quoted in Toward Peaceful Unification: Selected Speeches & Interviews https://books.google.com/books?id=nNc2AzJmwPoC&pg=PA3&dq=%22There+was+little,+if+any,+feeling+of+loyalty+toward+the+abstract+concept+of+Korea+as+a+nation-state%22&hl=en&sa=X&ei=IOkhVebpAYqWsAWOgILoCQ&ved=0CCgQ6AEwAg#v=onepage&q&f=false (1978), Kwangmyong Publishing Company, pp. 47-48. 1970s

Effort

“As a little girl, I would always ask my grandmother what it would take to be successful in life. … She said all you need are the three bones: the wishbone, the jawbone, and the backbone. The wishbone would keep you hoping and praying because hope is the motivator, but the dream is the driver. The jawbone will give you courage to speak truth to power, lift your voice — it should matter that you’re in the room, that you’re in that space with that voice. The backbone … will give you courage to stand through all of your trials and tribulations.”

Nina Turner (1967) American politician

"Nina Turner: Leader of the American Progressive Movement," Democracy in Color, June 30, 2016 https://democracyincolor.com/nina-turner-leader-of-the-american-progressive-movement-c822ea458204#.wg5lytrc9

Life, Truth, Dreams, Hope

“I constructed a machine that I imagined was capable of taking me as high as I wanted to go. I launched myself into the air from the edge of a cliff. But I had miscalculated, and I crashed into the valley below.
I returned to my room, quite rumpled but not discouraged. I took some beef marrow and slathered it all over my body, which was bruised from head to toe. I fortified my courage with a bottle of cordial and went back for my machine.”

Cyrano de Bergerac (1619–1655) French novelist, dramatist, scientist and duelist

The Other World (1657)

Imagination

“I'd also like to thank President Jones for his support, Justice Johnson for your strength and your courage and you stick-to-it-tivity, Judge Bailey - who I thought I had gotten into a mess, but having had dinner with him, he got me into a mess — but I have enjoyed your company and the opportunity to learn from you, to get to know you, and perhaps to develop a friendship over the years. And I would like to thank the other members of the Judicial Council for the National Bar Association who have been so courageous and forthright and kind to invite me to join you this afternoon.”

Clarence Thomas (1948) Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States

1990s, I Am a Man, a Black Man, an American (1998)

Friendship, Justice, Support, Learning

“In 1945 a Mississippi sergeant, Jake Lindsey, was honored by an unusual joint session of the Congress. I close therefore, with this appeal to the students of the University, the people who are most concerned. You have a great tradition to uphold, a tradition of honor and courage won on the field of battle and on the gridiron as well as the University campus. You have a new opportunity to show that you are men of patriotism and integrity. For the most effective means of upholding the law is not the State policeman or the marshals or the National Guard. It is you. It lies in your courage to accept those laws with which you disagree as well as those with which you agree.”

John F. Kennedy (1917–1963) 35th president of the United States of America

Radio and Television Report to the Nation on the Situation at the University of Mississippi (30 September 1962)
1962

Men, People, Law, Universe

“The memory came faint and cold of the story I might have told, a story in the likeness of my life, I mean without the courage to end or the strength to go on.”

Samuel Beckett (1906–1989) Irish novelist, playwright, and poet

The End (1946)

Life, Memory

“A great deal of talent is lost to the world for the want of a little courage. Every day sends to their graves a number of obscure men who have only remained obscure because their timidity has prevented them from making a first effort.”

Sydney Smith (1771–1845) English writer and clergyman

Lecture IX : On the Conduct of the Understanding
Elementary Sketches of Moral Philosophy (1849)

Men, World, Effort

“.. wherever you are, you find the sun, a blade of grass, the spirals of the dragonfly. Courage consists of staying at home, close to nature, which could not care less about our disasters. Each grain of dust contains the soul of something marvellous.”

Joan Miró (1893–1983) Catalan painter, sculptor, and ceramicist

Miró admonished art-critic w:Georges Duthuit
1915 - 1940
Source: 'Où allez-vous Miró?' (Where do you go, Miró), Georges Duthuit in Cahiers d'Art 11, nos. 8-10, 1936

Art, Home, Soul, Nature

“His flight was a tremendous statement about tenacity, courage and brilliance. He crawled on top of that rocket that had never before flown into space with a person aboard, and he did it. That was an unbelievable act of courage.”

Alan Shepard (1923–1998) American astronaut

NASA Administrator Daniel Goldin — reported in Mark Carreau (July 23, 1998) "Alan Shepard, first American in space, is dead at 74 - Space Age pioneer succumbs to lengthy illness in California", Houston Chronicle, p. A1.
About

Personality

“Let us be courageous in the face of life's disappointments - all the while knowing we are a step closer toward our goal as we grow in determination.”

Danny Yamashiro (1967) American radio evangelist

From Building Blocks for Better Living, pages 65

Life, Disappointment

“History knew a midnight, which we may estimate at about the year 1000 A. D., when the human race lost the arts and sciences even to the memory. The last twilight of paganism was gone, and yet the new day had not begun. Whatever was left of culture in the world was found only in the Saracens, and a Pope eager to learn studied in disguise in their unversities, and so became the wonder of the West. At last Christendom, tired of praying to the dead bones of the martyrs, flocked to the tomb of the Saviour Himself, only to find for a second time that the grave was empty and that Christ was risen from the dead. Then mankind too rose from the dead. It returned to the activities and the business of life; there was a feverish revival in the arts and in the crafts. The cities flourished, a new citizenry was founded. Cimabue rediscovered the extinct art of painting; Dante, that of poetry. Then it was, also, that great courageous spirits like Abelard and Saint Thomas Aquinas dared to introduce into Catholicism the concepts of Aristotelian logic, and thus founded scholastic philosophy. But when the Church took the sciences under her wing, she demanded that the forms in which they moved be subjected to the same unconditioned faith in authority as were her own laws. And so it happened that scholasticism, far from freeing the human spirit, enchained it for many centuries to come, until the very possibility of free scientific research came to be doubted. At last, however, here too daylight broke, and mankind, reassured, determined to take advantage of its gifts and to create a knowledge of nature based on independent thought. The dawn of the day in history is know as the Renaissance or the Revival of Learning.”

Carl Gustav Jacob Jacobi (1804–1851) German mathematician

"Über Descartes Leben und seine Methode die Vernunft Richtig zu Leiten und die Wahrheit in den Wissenschaften zu Suchen," "About Descartes' Life and Method of Reason.." (Jan 3, 1846) C. G. J. Jacobi's Gesammelte werke Vol. 7 https://books.google.com/books?id=_09tAAAAMAAJ&pg=PA309 p.309, as quoted by Tobias Dantzig, Number: The Language of Science (1930).

Life, World, Faith, Law

“All free peoples are deeply impressed by the courage and steadfastness of the Greek nation.”

Franklin D. Roosevelt (1882–1945) 32nd President of the United States

Letter to King George of Greece (5 December 1940)
1940s

People

“Had optical perception not evolved into something more than sensory perception, into super-sensory perception, then the present period would never have had the courage to discover the spiritual in matter. There would have been no fundamental difference between a painting by Picasso [from Picasso's so-called 'abstract' period] and one by Paulus Potter”

Theo van Doesburg (1883–1931) Dutch architect, painter, draughtsman and writer

Dutch painter from the 17th century, famous for his painting of cows
Quote from 'Painting: from composition towards counter-composition'; in 'Painting and plastic art', 'De Stijl' – Theo van Doesburg, series XIII, 1 73-4, 1926, pp. 17–18
1926 – 1931

Painting

“Security is a thing to be earned rather than bestowed. It should be the reward of adventure and effort…. So our education, if it is to inspire our youth to face life with courage and happiness, must concern itself with the ideals of duty and service rather than with securing an easy shelter from all risks.”

Hugh Macmillan, Baron Macmillan (1873–1952) British judge

Source: A Man of Law's Tale (1952), In London, p. 293

Life, Happiness, Youth, Education

“Find something you really love and make it your career. Don't let anyone discourage you or tell you it's not practical. I have loved the Middle East since I was a little girl. I read my first book about ancient Egypt when I was 10, and I've been hooked ever since... I have been blessed to have had great, strong women mentors, beginning with my mother. I have also met incredibly impressive women in the Arab world. They are demonstrating enormous courage as they work to expand women's rights and human freedom in their countries. I am inspired to work harder every time I spend time with them.”

Elizabeth Cheney (1966) American lawyer

Barbara Kantrowitz and Holly Peterson, "What I Learned: Whether they're running universities, political campaigns or major corporations, these 11 remarkable women have found their own ways of overcoming obstacles," Newsweek, October 15, 2007.

Love, Women, Books, World

“Catilina in particular was one of the most nefarious men in that nefarious age. His villanies belong to the criminal records, not to history; but his very outward appearance - the pale countenance, the wild glance, the gait by turns sluggish and hurried - betrayed his dismal past. He possessed in a high degree the qualities which are required in the leader of such a band - the faculty of enjoying all pleasures and of bearing all privations, courage, military talent, knowledge of men, the energy of a felon, and that horrible mastery of vice which knows how to bring the weak to fall, and how to train the fallen to crime.”

Theodor Mommsen (1817–1903) German classical scholar, historian, jurist, journalist, politician, archaeologist and writer

Vol. 4, Pt. 1, Translated by W.P. Dickson
On the Praetor Lucius Catilina
The History of Rome - Volume 4: Part 1

Men, Pleasure, Age, History

“Our young people are helping us lead the way. Not long ago, in Oakland, California, I was asked by a group of children what to do if they were offered drugs, and I answered, "Just say no." Soon after that, those children in Oakland formed a Just Say No club, and now there are over 10,000 such clubs all over the country. Well, their participation and their courage in saying no needs our encouragement. We can help by using every opportunity to force the issue of not using drugs to the point of making others uncomfortable, even if it means making ourselves unpopular.”

Nancy Reagan (1921–2016) actress and first lady of the United States

Just Say No (1986)

Children, People, Way, Help

“Courage, mon ami, le diable est mort! / Take courage, my friend, the devil is dead!”

Charles Reade book The Cloister and the Hearth

Source: The Cloister and the Hearth (1861), CHAPTER XXIII

Dead

“The historical cycle seems to be: From bondage to spiritual faith; from spiritual faith to courage; from courage to liberty; from liberty to abundance, from abundance to selfishness; from selfishness to apathy, from apathy to dependency; and from dependency back to bondage once more.”

Alexander Fraser Tytler (1747–1813) Scottish advocate, judge, writer and historian

This quotation was actually by Henning W. Prentis, Jr., president of the Armstrong Cork Company and former president of the National Association of Manufacturers, in a February 1943 address entitled " The Cult of Competency http://ergo-sum.net/literature/CultOfCompetency.pdf" delivered at a Mid-Year Convocation of the General Alumni Society of the University of Pennsylvania (The General Magazine and Historical Chronicle, Vol. XLV, Numb. III, April 1943, pp. 272-73). This quotation sometimes appears joined with the above one, most notably as part of a longer piece which began circulating on the Internet shortly after the 2000 U.S. Presidential Election ( "The Fall of the Athenian Republic," http://www.snopes.com/politics/quotes/tyler.asp Urban Legends Reference Pages): ::A democracy is always temporary in nature; it simply cannot exist as a permanent form of government. A democracy will continue to exist up until the time that voters discover that they can vote themselves generous gifts from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates who promise the most benefits from the public treasury, with the result that every democracy will finally collapse due to loose fiscal policy, which is always followed by a dictatorship. The average age of the world's greatest civilizations from the beginning of history has been about 200 years. During those 200 years, these nations always progressed through the following sequence: ::* From bondage to spiritual faith; ::* From spiritual faith to great courage; ::* From courage to liberty; ::* From liberty to abundance; ::* From abundance to complacency; ::* From complacency to apathy; ::* From apathy to dependence; ::* From dependence back into bondage. Attributed

Faith, Dependency, Selfishness

“Gentlemen, if ever a generation will come after us which is so weak and soft-hearted that it doesn't understand our task, then indeed the whole of National Socialism has been in vain. To the contrary, in my opinion one should bury bronze plates on which it is recorded that we have had the courage to carry out this great and so necessary work.”

Odilo Globocnik (1904–1945) SS officer

To Kurt Gerstein, 17 August 1942. Quoted in "God, Greed, and Genocide: The Holocaust through the Centuries" - Page 101 - by Arthur Grenke - 2005.

Understanding, Heart

“You see by what has happened that we are superior to you in intelligence, in size of army, and in number of supporters. Surely you were easily trapped, captured without a struggle. It is in my power to do with you what I wish when I wish. Helpless and prostrate, you lie before us now, victims of our might. But if one looks for a punishment equal to the crimes you have committed, it is impossible to find a suitable one. You murdered your revered and benevolent old emperor, the man whom it was your sworn duty to protect. The empire of the Roman people, eternally respected, which our forefathers obtained by their valiant courage or inherited because of their noble birth, this empire you shamefully and disgracefully sold for silver as if it were your personal property. But you were unable to defend the man whom you yourselves had chosen as emperor. No, you betrayed him like the cowards you are. For these monstrous acts and crimes you deserve a thousand deaths, if one wished to do to you what you have earned. You see clearly what it is right you should suffer. But I will be merciful. I will not butcher you. My hands shall not do what your hands did. But I say that it is in no way fit or proper for you to continue to serve as the emperor's bodyguard, you who have violated your oath and stained your hands with the blood of your emperor and fellow Roman, betraying the trust placed in you and the security offered by your protection. Still, compassion leads me to spare your lives and your persons. But I order the soldiers who have you surrounded to cashier you, to strip off any military uniform or equipment you are wearing, and drive you off naked. 9. And I order you to get yourselves as far from the city of Rome as is humanly possible, and I promise you and I swear it on solemn oath and I proclaim it publicly that if any one of you is found within a hundred miles of Rome, he shall pay for it with his head.”

Septimius Severus (145–211) Emperor of Ancient Rome

Herodian, Book II.

Death, People, Lie, Way

“I'm constitutionally incapable of it. There's a special extra quality you need that is indefinable, and I know I don't have it. There's an equanimity, an impermeability and a courage that you need. There are some things in life you know it's better not to try.”

Michael Gove (1967) British politician

Quoted in Standpoint magazine http://www.standpointmag.co.uk/features-march-12-will-gove-go-all-the-way-to-no-10-iain-martin-michael-gove-conservatives-david-cameron (March 2012) 2012

Life

“My generation of radicals and breakers-down never found anything to take the place of the old virtues of work and courage and the old graces of courtesy and politeness.”

F. Scott Fitzgerald (1896–1940) American novelist and screenwriter

Letter to his daughter Frances Scott Fitzgerald (July 1938)
Quoted, Letters

“The green beret' is again becoming a symbol of excellence, a badge of courage, a mark of distinction in the fight for freedom. I know the United States Army will live up to its reputation for imagination, resourcefulness, and spirit as we meet this challenge.”

John F. Kennedy (1917–1963) 35th president of the United States of America

"Letter to the United States Army" (11 April 1962) http://www.jfklibrary.org/Research/Research-Aids/Ready-Reference/JFK-Quotations.aspx; Box 5, President's Outgoing Executive Correspondence, White House Central Chronological Files, Papers of John F. Kennedy, John F. Kennedy Presidential Library 1962

Imagination, Freedom, Fight

“The truth is made worse by the reality that no one--really no one--anywhere on the political spectrum has the courage to speak out about the madness of unleashed guns and what they do to American life.”

Adam Gopnik (1956) American journalist

One More Massacre, The New Yorker (2012)

Life, Truth, Reality, Madness

“If a marker were to be erected today, it might read, in homage to his scientific courage: “He preferred the hard truth to his dearest illusions.””

Carl Sagan book Cosmos

On the character of Johannes Kepler, p. 67
Cosmos (1980)

Truth, Reading

“In this year, that is AH 412, Sultan Mahmud learnt that the people of Hindustan had turned against the Raja of Qanauj' Nand, the Raja of Kalinjar attacked Qanauj because Raja Kuwar (of Qanauj) had surrendered to Sultan Mahmud. As a result of this attack Raja Kuwar was killed. When Sultn Mahmud learnt it, he collected a large army and started towards Hindustam with a view to take revenge upon Raja Nanda. As the army of Musalmams reached the Jumna, the son of Raja Anand Pal stood in the way of Mahmud. The river of Jumna was in spate at this time and it became very difficult for the army to get across. But as chance would have it, eight royal guards of Mahmud showed courage and crossed the river they attacked the army of the Hindis and dispersed it, the son of anand Pal ran away with his chiefs. All the eight royal guards entered a city nearby and they plundered it to their heart's content. They demolished the temples in that place.”

Mahmud of Ghazni (971–1030) Sultan of Ghazni

Tarikh-i-Firishta, by Muhammad Qasim Hindu Shah Firishta, Translated from the Urdu version of Tarikh-i-Firishta by Abdul Hai Khwajah, Deoband, 1983, pt. I, p. 125. In Goel S.R. Hindu temples What Happened to them
Quotes from Muslim medieval histories

People, Way, Revenge, Chance

“The courage to be as oneself within the atmosphere of Enlightenment is the courage to affirm oneself as a bridge from a lower to a higher state of rationality. It is obvious that this kind of courage to be must become conformist the moment its revolutionary attack on that which contradicts reason has ceased, namely in the victorious bourgeoisie.”

Paul Tillich book The Courage to Be

Source: The Courage to Be (1952), p. 116

Victory

“Once he saw a youth blushing, and addressed him, "Courage, my boy! that is the complexion of virtue."”

Diogenes Laërtius (180–240) biographer of ancient Greek philosophers

Diogenes, 6.
The Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers (c. 200 A.D.), Book 6: The Cynics

Youth, Boy

“To call war the soil of courage and virtue is like calling debauchery the soil of love.”

George Santayana (1863–1952) 20th-century Spanish-American philosopher associated with Pragmatism

Source: The Life of Reason: The Phases of Human Progress (1905-1906), Vol. II, Reason in Society, Ch. III: Industry, Government, and War

Love, War

“Laura is a free spirit. She's also a great student and a dedicated artist – and there aren't very many people I call artists. But the entire cast of this film, they're all true artists, dedicated to their own inner truth, and they have the courage to share that. You don't find that very often.”

Sandra Seacat (1936) American acting teacher and actress

As quoted in "Laura Dern: a Hollywood old-timer at 37" http://articles.baltimoresun.com/2004-08-23/features/0408230242_1_laura-dern-blue-velvet-citizen-ruth by John Anderson, in The Baltimore Sun (August 23, 2004)

People, Truth

“You nominate yourself to be the one who will courageously do what you think ought to be done, even if everyone is pressing you to do something else.”

Eric Maisel (1947) American writer

Source: The Atheist’s Way (2009), p. 65

Thinking

“I discovered then that religion had to become real to me and I had to know God for myself. And I bowed down over that cup of coffee — I never will forget it. And oh yes, I prayed a prayer and I prayed out loud that night. I said, "Lord, I'm down here trying to do what's right. I think I'm right; I think the cause that we represent is right. But Lord, I must confess that I'm weak now; I'm faltering; I'm losing my courage. And I can't let the people see me like this because if they see me weak and losing my courage, they will begin to get weak." I wanted tomorrow morning to be able to go before the executive board with a smile on my face. And it seemed at that moment that I could hear an inner voice saying to me, "Martin Luther, stand up for righteousness, stand up for justice, stand up for truth. And lo I will be with you, even until the end of the world." And I'll tell you, I've seen the lightning flash. I've heard the thunder roll. I felt sin-breakers dashing, trying to conquer my soul. But I heard the voice of Jesus saying still to fight on. He promised never to leave me, never to leave me alone. No, never alone. No, never alone. He promised never to leave me, never to leave me alone.”

Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929–1968) American clergyman, activist, and leader in the American Civil Rights Movement

1960s, Why Jesus Called A Man A Fool (1967)

God, People, Truth, World

“We often have need of a profound philosophy to restore to our feelings their original state of innocence, to find our way out of the rubble of things alien to us, to begin to feel for ourselves and to speak ourselves, and I might almost say to exist ourselves. Even if my philosophy does not extend to discovering anything new, it does nevertheless possess the courage to regard as questionable what has long been thought true.”

Georg Christoph Lichtenberg (1742–1799) German scientist, satirist

B 49
Aphorisms (1765-1799), Notebook B (1768-1771)

Way, Feeling, Question

“The man who in times of popular excitement boldly and unflinchingly resists hot-tempered clamor for an unnecessary war, and thus exposes himself to the opprobrious imputation of a lack of patriotism or of courage, to the end of saving his country from a great calamity, is, as to "loving and faithfully serving his country," at least as good a patriot as the hero of the most daring feat of arms, and a far better one than those who, with an ostentatious pretense of superior patriotism, cry for war before it is needed, especially if then they let others do the fighting.”

Carl Schurz (1829–1906) Union Army general, politician

"About Patriotism," Harper’s Weekly (16 April 1898)

Love, War, Time, Fight

“Firefighters across the country have no greater friend than Rudy Giuliani. Those of us who have worked with Rudy Giuliani know he has always been a strong and consistent supporter of firefighters and first responders. On September 11th and the days that followed Mayor Giuliani once again demonstrated his commitment to the safety and well being of our firefighters and his respect for their extraordinary courage and sacrifice.”

Howard Safir (1941)

A statement by Safir posted on JoinRudy2008.com, Rudy Giuliani's official presidential campaign website
[Howard Safir, http://www.joinrudy2008.com/news/pr/417/, MAYOR GIULIANI’S RECORD OF SUPPORT FOR NEW YORK’S BRAVEST, Rudy Giuliani Presidential Committee, Inc., 2007-07-09, 2007-12-20]

Support, Strong, Country

“May we have the courage to face the eventual doom of our civilization as we have the courage to face the certainty of our personal doom. The simple faith in progress is not a conviction belonging to strength, but one belong to acquiescence and hence to weakness.”

Norbert Wiener book The Human Use of Human Beings

II. Progress and Entropy. p. 47
The Human Use of Human Beings (1950)

Faith, Personality

“In an autobiography, I will have to write the truth, I should not hide anything. Just to avoid people’s feelings, I should not be hiding things. If I don’t present events as they happened, truthfully, it is not an autobiography at all. I have read Mahatma Gandhi’s autobiography and if I can muster up the kind of courage that he had, I will write one.”

Rajinikanth (1950) Indian actor

Naman Ramachandran, in Rajinikanth: The Definitive Biography (15 January 2014) http://books.google.co.in/books?id=3mzyPGSfwKMC&printsec=frontcover#v=onepage&q&f=false, page before preface.

People, Truth, Feeling, Reading

“It is true that in thus giving his love to fragile beings man becomes more vulnerable. He who passionately loves a woman, children, or his country gives hostages to fortune. He will be tortured from then on, though he be in good health, put down though he be powerful, forced to ask for mercy though he be courageous and hardened to suffering. Fortune has him in her grasp. He is forced to watch with burning anxiety the sickness of those he love tenderly - a suffering far worse than that caused by any malady of his own, because his physical powers are intact. He wants to help, but feels utterly useless. He would like to surrender himself instead of his precious hostages, and sickness - arrogant and tyrannical - chooses its victims relentlessly. In spite of himself he feels like a coward and a traitor, because he has escaped. This is the cruellest of all human torments.”

André Maurois (1885–1967) French writer

Un Art de Vivre (The Art of Living) (1939), The Art of Happiness

Love, Children, Health, Feeling

“"New order of the ages" did they say?
If it looks none too orderly today,
'Tis a confusion it was ours to start
So in it have to take courageous part.
No one of honest feeling would approve
A ruler who pretended not to love
A turbulence he had the better of.”

Robert Frost (1874–1963) American poet

1960s, Dedication (1960)

Love, Age, Feeling, Parting

“Optimism is true moral courage.”

Ernest Shackleton (1874–1922) Anglo-Irish polar explorer

Quoted in South with Shackleton (1949) by L. D. A. Hussey; also in The National Geographic Magazine (1998), Vol. 194, p. 90 https://books.google.com/books?id=RflKAAAAYAAJ&q=%22Optimism+is+true+moral+courage%22&dq=%22Optimism+is+true+moral+courage%22&hl=en&sa=X&ei=uPISVYCTK8_loAT_kYDIBw&ved=0CNABEOgBMCA

Optimism

“The individual under this kind of life, with no rights, has absolutely no power in this land. How can they even ask you for creativity? Or imagination, or courage or passion?”

Ai Weiwei (1957) Chinese concept artist

“ House Arrest in China: Orwell, Kafka, and Ai Weiwei http://www.economist.com/blogs/analects/2012/04/house-arrest-china.” Economist, April 13, 2012 2010-, 2012

Life, Imagination, Passion

““Why don’t you leave?” the woman in the poem asked herself. We need to stop asking that question and begin to understand why she is staying. From understanding comes the ability to reach, to touch and to change. And if we help even just one woman to take that courageous first step out of violence, we have achieved a lot.”

Mary, Crown Princess of Denmark (1972) Crown Princess of Denmark

Conference on domestic violence, http://www.maryfonden.dk/en/washington-world-conference-speech (27 February 2012)

Understanding, Question, Change, Help

“(…) Now people with courage are needed. It is better to die, facing life with courage. To live as a coward is shameful – it is better that the coward drown himself in the river. (…) Awake! Arise! Be brave!”

Haidakhan Babaji teacher in northern India

Courage and alertness
Source: The Teachings of Babaji, 5 July 1983.

Life, People

“They [women] cannot march as far or as fast as men, or endure the front-line ordeal as well, or drive a bayonet into an enemy with the same force, or tackle bare-handed an opponent far more muscular and brutal than they are. Some may be trained to shoot well, but whether they will do so in action with male callousness (and eagerness) is doubtful. Courage doesn't come into it. Women are if anything braver than men, but the notion of a female teenager fighting hand-to-hand with a Panzer Grenadier or a Japanese White Tiger - or a Royal Marine - is ludicrous.”

George MacDonald Fraser (1925–2008) English-born author of Scottish descent

The Defeat of the British Army. p. 181-182.
The Light's On At Signpost (2002)

Women, Men, Fight, Training

“We are not people apart; there is no reason in the world why we shouldn't fight for the preservation of a chance to live freely; no reason why we shouldn't suffer to uphold that which we want to endure than it is anyone else. And it is a matter of self-preservation right this very minute…May God give me courage to do my duty and not falter.”

Nile Kinnick (1918–1943) College football player

Letter to his parents regarding World War II (April 25, 1941)

God, People, World, Suffering

“Those who want to burn books are either afraid of the ideas contained within the covers or they haven't the courage to stand up for the views which they themselves profess to hold.”

Tommy Douglas (1904–1986) Scottish-born Canadian politician

Speech, Saskatchewan Legislature, February 17, 1954.

Books, Idea

“You want to shut up every Negro who has the courage to stand up and fight for the rights of his people, for the rights of workers, and I have been on many a picket line for the steelworkers too.”

Paul Robeson (1898–1976) American singer and actor

Source: Paul Robeson Speaks (1978), p. 46

People, Fight

“The difference between him as he was then and as he was now was great … Then he was a courageous, free man, before whom opened endless possibilities; now he felt himself caught in the tenets of a stupid, idle, aimless, miserable life, from which there was no escape; aye, from which, for the most part, he would not escape. He remembered how he once had prided himself upon his rectitude; how he always made it a rule to tell the truth, and was in reality truthful, and how he was now steeped in falsehood—falsehood which was recognized as truth by all those around him.”

Leo Tolstoy book Resurrection

Source: Resurrection (1899), Ch. 28

Life, Truth, Stupidity, Reality

“If we commit ourselves to one person for life this is not, as many people think, a rejection of freedom; rather, it demands the courage to move into all the risks of freedom, and the risk of love which is permanent; into that love which is not possession but participation.”

Madeleine L'Engle (1918–2007) American writer

The Crosswicks Journal, The Irrational Season (1977)

Love, Life, People, Thinking

“(…) I live on courage. Courage is my essence, which is love of life. I am free of memories and anticipations, unconcerned with what I am and what I am not. (…) I have the courage to be as nothing and to see the world as it is: nothing. It sounds simply, just try it!”

Nisargadatta Maharaj (1897–1981) Indian guru

Courage
Source: "I am That." P.105.

Love, Life, World, Memory

“I think we judge talent wrong. What do we see as talent? I think I have made the same mistake myself. We judge talent by people’s ability to strike a cricket ball. The sweetness, the timing. That’s the only thing we see as talent. Things like determination, courage, discipline, temperament, these are also talent.”

Rahul Dravid (1973) Indian cricketer

People, Thinking, Time

“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 book The Artist's Way

The Artist's Way (1992)

Faith, Dreams

“Most Nobel Laureates have carried out our work in safety, but there are others who have acted with great personal courage. None has provided more vivid reminders of the dangers of peacemaking than two of my friends, Anwar Sadat and Yitzhak Rabin, who gave their lives for the cause of peace in the Middle East.”

Jimmy Carter (1924) American politician, 39th president of the United States (in office from 1977 to 1981)

Post-Presidency, Nobel lecture (2002)

Peace, Personality

“People say to me all the time, "You have no fear." I tell them, "No, that's not true. I'm scared all the time. You have to have fear in order to have courage. I'm a courageous person because I'm a scared person."”

Ronda Rousey (1987) American judoka, mixed martial artist, professional wrestler and actress

"Ronda Rousey: What I've Learned", in Esquire.com (26 December 2012) http://www.esquire.com/entertainment/interviews/a17607/ronda-rousey-mma-quotes-0113/

People, Fear, Time, Personality

“No quality of human nature is more remarkable, both in itself and in its consequences, than that propensity we have to sympathize with others, and to receive by communication their inclinations and sentiments, however different from, or even contrary to our own. This is not only conspicuous in children, who implicitly embrace every opinion propos’d to them; but also in men of the greatest judgment and understanding, who find it very difficult to follow their own reason or inclination, in opposition to that of their friends and daily companions. To this principle we ought to ascribe the great uniformity we may observe in the humours and turn of thinking of those of the same nation; and ’tis much more probable, that this resemblance arises from sympathy, than from any influence of the soil and climate, which, tho’ they continue invariably the same, are not able to preserve the character of a nation the same for a century together. A good-natur’d man finds himself in an instant of the same humour with his company; and even the proudest and most surly take a tincture from their countrymen and acquaintance. A chearful countenance infuses a sensible complacency and serenity into my mind; as an angry or sorrowful one throws a sudden dump upon me. Hatred, resentment, esteem, love, courage, mirth and melancholy; all these passions I feel more from communication than from my own natural temper and disposition. So remarkable a phaenomenon merits our attention, and must be trac’d up to its first principles.”

David Hume book A Treatise of Human Nature

Part 1, Section 11
A Treatise of Human Nature (1739-40), Book 2: Of the passions

Love, Men, Children, Feeling

“Those who have courage to love should have courage to suffer.”

Anthony Trollope (1815–1882) English novelist (1815-1882)

The Bertrams (1859), Ch. 5 http://books.google.com/books?id=BKwxAQAAMAAJ&q=%22Those+who+have+courage+to+love+should+have+courage+to+suffer%22&pg=PA77#v=onepage

Love, Suffering

“The desire to force others to bend or break to her will was always there, usually hidden deeply enough that she could forget she had that wish within her, but occasionally surfacing to dangle the ripe fruit of power just out of her reach. She knew, as few others did, that the power to coerce depended entirely on the fear or weakness of other human beings. It was possible to use coercion, yes, but in the end you found yourself surrounded only by the weak and fearful, with all those of courage and strength arrayed against you.”

Orson Scott Card (1951) American science fiction novelist

Source: The Tales of Alvin Maker, Heartfire (1998), Chapter 6.

Fear, Dependency, Forgetting

“The ground breaking production of the company, and the point at which the cross-cultural casting began to bite, was Brecht’s anti-war play Mother Courage. Just one comment in a review by critic Malcolm Hay jolted us into the realisation that we were making history: Why is an Indian actor playing the Pastor?”

Angelique Rockas South African actress and founder of Internationalist Theatre, London

The South African Interview (August 8, 2011)

War, History

“…the turns of the screw that Sophocles administered throughout the play [Oedipus Tyrannos] must have been received with sharp pain… because these cocky, princely, Oedipal Greeks were being made to feel acutely the limitations of human society—in which no political leader, no matter how gifted or courageous, can remain a savior forever, in which every man must come to know that he is no hero but essentially a flawed and luckless figure and that "the pains we inflict upon ourselves hurt most of all."”

Thomas Cahill (1940) American scholar and writer

Source: Sailing the Wine-Dark Sea: Why the Greeks Matter (2003), Ch.IV The Politician and the Playwright: How to Rule

Pain, Feeling, Hurt

“This world materialist, hedonist and exhibitionist it doesn't even thrill me; and, considering that he reads me, you/he/she should know him/it. But I would want to know the system that you have in mind, and don't have the courage or the ability to propose. A Franciscan world? Beautiful: but looked around you, and tell me if you see a saio. A revised and correct communism? It would make the end of the other, even if he/she won't succeed in repeating its disasters. Believe me G.: the only acceptable social and economic system today, in West, it is that based on the market: a checked capitalism and moderate, to intend us. It is desirable that it may also correct: and not this always happens, it is true. The trouble is that the capitalism is served as the capitalists - and those, must admit, they are often difficult to be digested. You don't try to confuse me the ideas, therefore. You won't succeed us. I probably have three times his/her years, and I have seen where they conduct these generic pulls against "the multinationals": sooner or later, someone will depose the bar and he/she will take the gun. I forgot: I sign my opinions, she throws the stone and it hides the hand. All brave ones so, you boys of Seattle?”

Indro Montanelli (1909–2001) Italian journalist

Corriere della Sera, 9 June 2001.
2000s - 2010s

World, Beauty, Boy, Communication

“Injustice we worship; all that lifts us out of the miseries of life is the sublime fruit of injustice. Every immortal deed was an act of fearful injustice; the world of grandeur, of triumph, of courage, of lofty aspiration, was built up on injustice. Man would not be man but for injustice.”

George Moore (novelist) (1852–1933) Irish novelist, short-story writer, poet, art critic, memoirist and dramatist

Source: Confessions of a Young Man http://www.gutenberg.org/files/12278/12278-h/12278-h.htm (1886), Ch. 10.

Life, World, Fear

“That these ideas will ultimately triumph, I have no doubt. Nor is it open to question that by the combined efforts of the peace-loving peoples they can be made to triumph now, before Europe has been again plunged into a fresh bloodbath.
May Heaven grant that the statesmen of the world may realize this before it is too late and, by the exertion of the needed courage and prudence, restore again to the position of authority which it had only a few years ago, that great institution for the maintenance of peace on which the future of civilization so largely depends. I mean, of course, the League of Nations.”

Robert Cecil, 1st Viscount Cecil of Chelwood (1864–1958) lawyer, politician and diplomat in the United Kingdom

The Future of Civilization (1938)

Love, People, World, Peace

“I heard the comments of the crowd in front of the painting of 'Burial at Ornans', I had the courage to read the nonsense that was printed regarding this picture and I wrote this article.. [in Le Messager de l'Assemblée]”

Gustave Courbet (1819–1877) French painter

Quote from an article in 'Le Messager de l'Assemblée' (25th & 26th February 1851); as cited in 'Posterity', Musée-dOrsay http://www.musee-orsay.fr/en/collections/courbet-dossier/biography.html 1840s - 1850s

Reading, Painting

“The task which lies ahead is adventure as well as duty, and I am anxious to get at it. I feel better in mind and body than I have for ten years and am quite certain I can meet the foe confident and unafraid…Truly, we have shared to the full life, love, and laughter. Comforted in the knowledge that your thought and prayer go with us every minute, and sure that your faith and courage will never falter, no matter the outcome, I bid you au revoir.”

Nile Kinnick (1918–1943) College football player

Letter to his parents (April 24, 1943)

Love, Life, Faith, Feeling

“I will outline some of the specific goals that I have set and describe some of the means we are employing to achieve them, but firstly let me make a couple of things abundantly clear. I am not doing this to win plaudits or to satisfy a personal magnanimous desire. I am doing this out of love for the Australian Army and for the men and women who serve in its ranks. As the Chief of the Army I ultimately set the tone for the organisation and exemplify its values. Those values – Courage, Initiative and Teamwork, allied with respect for our institution and each other are noble when they are lived as intended.”

David Morrison (1956) Australian army general

Address at the International Women's Day Conference (2013)

Love, Women, Men, Personality

“He has a clear style and has had much courage – as in his poem "Babi Yar", a memorial to the Jews murdered by the Nazis. But he is no more than a talented poetaster – which is quite obvious to all but Western journalists – and it would be foolish to consider him as more than a skilful publicist.”

Yevgeny Yevtushenko (1932–2017) Russian poet, film director, teacher

Martin Seymour-Smith, Guide to Modern World Literature (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1975) vol. 4, pp. 240-1.
Criticism

Memory, Baby

“In spite of several plus points to their credit – like the wisdom, courage, and sagacity of Draupadi, Tara and Damayanti, the keen and lively interest they evinced in their surroundings and also the part played by the former two in the management of their respective realms, the strong sense of duty, love and loyalty to their respective husbands as shown by Kunti, Mandodari and Shakuntala, the carving for knowledge as expressed by Maitreyi – none of them is a model for Hindu women.”

Kunti character from Indian epic Mahabharata

Prabhati Mukherjee in:"Hindu Women: Normative Models", p. 49.

Love, Wisdom, Women, Knowledge

“[The "liberal media"] love to be denounced from the right, and the right loves to denounce them, because that makes them look like courageous defenders of freedom and independence while, in fact, they are imposing all of the presuppositions of the propaganda system.”

Noam Chomsky (1928) american linguist, philosopher and activist

Interview by Ira Shorr, February 11, 1996 http://www.chomsky.info/interviews/19960211.htm Quotes 1990s, 1995-1999

Love, Freedom

“What nation on earth could have maintained the semblance of civilization, the spirit or the customs of their forefathers, during so many centuries of overwhelming depression, but one of such singular character as the Rajpoot?... Rajast’han exhibits the sole example in the history of mankind, of a people withstanding every outrage barbarity could inflict, or human nature sustain, from a foe whose religion commands annihilation; and bent to the earth, yet rising buoyant from the pressure, and making calamity a whetstone to courage.... Not an iota of their religion or customs have they lost....”

James Tod (1782–1835) 1782-1835, English officer of the British East India Company and an Oriental scholar

Annals and Antiquities of Rajasthan by James Tod

People, Religion, History, Nature

“…some one has to speak in favor of the right when so speaking is unpopular. The more unpopular, the greater the necessity; … The Republican party has done much for this country. It has often created and preserved prosperity by fighting crazes. For the first time in its history, it is yielding to one. If it would only say "we have made this prosperity, it is our child, and shall have our protection," and stand to its guns, it will beat Bryanism to death as it always has. But with its leader caring more for popularity than principle, courageous, as he is uninformed, I, myself, am convinced that it will have to go out of power in order that it may return chastened and more trusted than ever.”

George Howard Earle, Jr. (1856–1928) American lawyer

Letter to Samuel W. Pennypacker by George H. Earle, Jr. (16 May 1906)

Death, History, Time, Fight

“I want to say to the elite of this country—the elite news media, the liberal academic elite, the liberal political elite: I accuse you in Littleton and I accuse you in Kosovo of being afraid to talk about the mess you have made, and being afraid to take responsibility for things you have done, and instead foisting upon the rest of us pathetic banalities because you don't have the courage to look at the world you have created.”

Newt Gingrich (1943) Professor, Speaker of the United States House of Representatives

1999-05-12
Gingrich blasts administration, media and Hollywood on Kosovo and Littleton
Karla
Crosswhite-Chigbue
CNN
http://www.cnn.com/ALLPOLITICS/stories/1999/05/12/gingrich/
regarding the 1999 Columbine High School massacre and Kosovo War
1990s

World, Country

“Some may find these conclusions frightening, and perhaps that's an appropriate reaction. But then again, maybe it’s not. For it is certainly possible to frame an ethic consistent with the Darwinian view of the world. Such an ethic might emphasize the virtue of being honest enough and courageous enough to acknowledge unflinchingly that there is probably no God, no afterlife, and no soul; that there is no objective basis to morality or higher purpose behind our suffering; that we are insignificant in a vast and impersonal cosmos; that existence is ultimately without purpose or meaning; and that the effects of our actions will ultimately fade away without trace. It is admirable to acknowledge these uncongenial truths, yet to struggle on as if life were meaningful and strive to make the world a better place anyway, without promise of eternal reward or hope of ultimate victory, and indeed for no good reason at all.”

Steve Stewart-Williams (1971)

Source: Darwin, God and the Meaning of Life: How Evolutionary Theory Undermines Everything You Think You Know (2010), p. 308

Life, God, Truth, World

“Paul Tillich wrote that all institutions, including the church, are inherently demonic. Reinhold Niebuhr asserted that no institution could ever achieve the morality of the individual. Institutions, he warned, to extend their lives when confronted with collapse, will swiftly betray the stances that ostensibly define them. Only individual men and women have the strength to hold fast to virtue when faced with the threat of death. And decaying institutions, including the church, when consumed by fear, swiftly push those endowed with this moral courage and radicalism from their ranks, rendering themselves obsolete.”

Chris Hedges (1956) American journalist

"The Suicide of the Liberal Church", January 24, 2016 http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/the_suicide_of_the_liberal_church_20160124

Death, Women, Men, Fear

“Success can come to you by courageous Devotion to the task lying in front of you I can assert with out fear of contradiction that quality of the Indian mind is equal to the quality of any Teutonic, Nordic, or Anglo-Saxon mind. What we lack is perhaps courage, what we lack is driving force which takes one any where. We have I think, developed an inferiority complex. I think what is needed in India today is the destruction of that defeatist spirit.”

C. V. Raman (1888–1970) Indian physicist

This is from his address to the young graduates in 1969 quoted in [Kalam, A P J Abdul, Ignited Minds: Unleashing The Power Within India, http://books.google.com/books?id=_PdboDsin90C&pg=PA28, 1 September 2010, Pearson Education India, 978-81-317-2960-1, 28–29]

Fear, Lying, Thinking, Success

“What we really need the poet's and orator's I help to keep alive in us is not, then, the common and gregarious courage which Robert Shaw showed when he marched with you, men of the Seventh Regiment. It is that more lonely courage which he showed when he dropped his warm commission in the glorious Second to head your dubious fortunes, negroes of the Fifty-fourth. That lonely kind of courage (civic courage as we call it in times of peace) is the kind of valor to which the monuments of nations should most of all be reared.”

William James (1842–1910) American philosopher, psychologist, and pragmatist

Robert Gould Shaw: Oration upon the Unveiling of the Shaw Monument http://www.holycross.edu/departments/english/sluria/wjspeech.htm (31 May 1897) 1910s, Memories and Studies (1911)

Men, Peace, Time, Help

“I'll tell you what harms the vast majority of Muslims that love freedom and hate terror: Muslim theocracy does. Muslim intolerance does. Wahabism does. Salafism does. Islamism does. Jihadism does. Sharia law does. The mere conservatism of traditional Islam does. We're not talking about only jihadists hating homosexuals and thinking they should die, we're talking about conservative Muslims. The percentage of British Muslims polled who said that homosexuality was morally acceptable was zero. Do you realize what it takes to say something so controversial in a poll that not even 1% of those polled would agree with it? There's almost no question that extreme that you will ever see in a poll that gets a zero, but ask British Muslims whether homosexuality is morally acceptable, and that's what you get. And the result is more or less the same in dozens of other countries. It's zero in Cameroon, zero in Ethiopia. 1% in Nigeria, 1% in Tanzania, 1% in Mali, 2% in Kenya, 2% in Chad. 1% in Lebanon, 1% in Egypt, 1% in the Palestinian territories, 1% in Iraq, 2% in Jordan, 2% in Tunisia, 1% in Pakistan. But 10% in Bangladesh. Bangladesh: that bright spot in the Muslim world where they are regularly hunting down and butchering secular writers with machetes. The people who suffer under this belief system are Muslims themselves. The next generation of human beings born into a Muslim community who could otherwise have been liberal, tolerant, well-educated, cosmopolitan productive people are to one or another degree being taught to aspire to live in the Middle Ages, or to ruin this world on route to some fictional paradise after death. That's the thing we have to get our heads around. And yes, some of what I just said applies with varying modifications to other religions and other cults. But there is nothing like Islam at this moment for generating this kind of intolerance and chaos. And if only a right wing demagogue will speak honestly about it, then we will elect right wing demagogues in the West more and more in response to it. And that will be the price of political correctness: that's when this check will finally get cashed. That will be the consequence of this persistent failure we see among liberals to speak and think and act with real moral clarity and courage on this issue. The root of this problem is that liberals consistently fail to defend liberal values as universal human values. Their political correctness, their multiculturalism, their moral relativism has led them to rush to the defense of theocrats and to abandon the victims of theocracy and to vilify anyone who calls out this hypocrisy for what it is as a bigot. And to be clear, and this is what liberals can't seem to get, is that speaking honestly about the ideas that inspire Islamism and jihadism, beliefs about martyrdom, and apostasy and blasphemy and paradise and honour and women, is not an expression of hatred for Muslims. It is in fact the only way to support the embattled people in the Muslim community: The reformers and the liberals and the seculars and the free thinkers and the gays and the Shiia in Sunni-majority context and Sufis and Ahmadiyyas, and as Maajid Nawaz said, the minorities within the minority, who are living under the shadow, and sword rather often, under theocracy. […] If you think that speaking honestly about the need for reform within Islam will alienate your allies in the Muslim community, then you don't know who your allies are.”

Sam Harris (1967) American author, philosopher and neuroscientist

Sam Harris, "Waking Up with Sam Harris Podcast #38 — The End of Faith Sessions 2" (15 June 2016) https://www.samharris.org/podcast/item/the-end-of-faith-sessions-2 2010s

Love, Death, Women, Hate

“M. Révérony said immediately: "Most Holy Father, this is a child who wants to enter Carmel at fifteen, but the superiors are considering the matter at this moment." (The good pope is so old that one would say he is dead; I would never have pictured him like this.) The Holy Father said simply:"If God wills it, you will enter." [-]I was crying a lot when writing this letter; my heart is heavy. However, God cannot give me trials that are above my strength. He has given me the courage to bear this trial. I am the Child Jesus' little ball; if He wishes to break His toy, He is free. Yes, I will all that He wills.”

Thérèse of Lisieux (1873–1897) French Discalced Carmelite nun

Thérèse's account of the papal audience, November 20,1887
General Correspondence

God, Heart, Cry, Dead

“Had we lived, I should have had a tale to tell of the hardihood, endurance, and courage of my companions which would have stirred the heart of every Englishman. These rough notes and our dead bodies must tell the tale, but surely, surely, a great rich country like ours will see that those who are dependent on us are properly provided for.”

Robert Falcon Scott (1868–1912) Royal Navy officer and explorer

Journal, 29 March 1912 http://www.spri.cam.ac.uk/museum/diaries/scottslastexpedition/; final words, quoted in Scott's Last Expedition (1913) vol.1, ch.20

Heart, Dependency, Dead, Country

“White: You give up the world line by line. Stoically. And then one day you realize that your courage is farcical. It doesnt mean anything. You've become an accomplice in your own annihilation and there is nothing you can do about it. Everything you do closes a door somewhere ahead of you. And finally there is only one door left.”

Cormac McCarthy The Sunset Limited

The Sunset Limited (2006)

World

“Character, courage, industry and perseverance are the four pillars on which the whole edifice of human life can be built and failure is a word unknown to me.”

Muhammad Ali Jinnah (1876–1948) Founder and 1st Governor General of Pakistan

As quoted in Mohammad Ali Jinnah : A Political Study (1962) by M. H. Saiyid, p. 9

Life, Failure, Perseverance

“I want a world of brave and courageous people. Indeed, those who work hard and are agnostics are more acceptable, for a time, than lazy spiritual hypocrites.”

Haidakhan Babaji teacher in northern India

The Teachings of Babaji. (1983, 1984, 1988). Haidakhan, U.P.: Haidakhandi Samaj.
Source: The Teachings of Babaji, 17 August 1982.

People, World, Time

“I marveled at the Hezbollah resistance to Israel... It was a marvel of organization, of courage and bravery.”

James Abourezk (1931) United States Senator

“Don't cry, Alfred! I need all my courage to die at twenty.”

Évariste Galois (1811–1832) French mathematician, founder of group theory

Ne pleure pas, Alfred ! J'ai besoin de tout mon courage pour mourir à vingt ans !
Quoted in: Léopold Infeld (1978) Whom the gods love: the story of Évariste Galois. p. 299.

Cry

Quotes about courage page 10

Quotes about courage
page 10