Quotes about courage
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Edgar Cayce photo

“Encouraging the weak and the faint; giving strength and courage to those who have faltered.”

Edgar Cayce (1877–1945) Purported clairvoyant healer and psychic

Many Mansions Chapter 20 - A Philosophy of Vocational Choice
When a woman of forty-nine asks: What is my true life work?
On Vocational Choices

János Esterházy photo
John McCain photo

“What our enemies have sought to destroy is beyond their reach. It cannot be taken from us. It can only be surrendered.
My friends, we are again met on the field of political competition with our fellow countrymen. It is more than appropriate, it is necessary that even in times of crisis we have these contests, and engage in spirited disagreement over the shape and course of our government.
We have nothing to fear from each other. We are arguing over the means to better secure our freedom, and promote the general welfare. But it should remain an argument among friends who share an unshaken belief in our great cause, and in the goodness of each other.
We are Americans first, Americans last, Americans always. Let us argue our differences. But remember we are not enemies, but comrades in a war against a real enemy, and take courage from the knowledge that our military superiority is matched only by the superiority of our ideals, and our unconquerable love for them.
Our adversaries are weaker than us in arms and men, but weaker still in causes. They fight to express a hatred for all that is good in humanity.
We fight for love of freedom and justice, a love that is invincible. Keep that faith. Keep your courage. Stick together. Stay strong.
Do not yield. Do not flinch. Stand up. Stand up with our President and fight.
We're Americans.
We're Americans, and we'll never surrender.
They will.”

John McCain (1936–2018) politician from the United States

2000s, 2004, Speech at the Republican National Convention (2004)

John Galsworthy photo
Damian Pettigrew photo
Thomas Jefferson photo
Stephen R. Donaldson photo
Ben Carson photo
Benjamin Harrison photo

“The colored people did not intrude themselves upon us. They were brought here in chains and held in the communities where they are now chiefly found by a cruel slave code. Happily for both races, they are now free. They have from a standpoint of ignorance and poverty—which was our shame, not theirs—made remarkable advances in education and in the acquisition of property. They have as a people shown themselves to be friendly and faithful toward the white race under temptations of tremendous strength. They have their representatives in the national cemeteries, where a grateful Government has gathered the ashes of those who died in its defense. They have furnished to our Regular Army regiments that have won high praise from their commanding officers for courage and soldierly qualities and for fidelity to the enlistment oath. In civil life they are now the toilers of their communities, making their full contribution to the widening streams of prosperity which these communities are receiving. Their sudden withdrawal would stop production and bring disorder into the household as well as the shop. Generally they do not desire to quit their homes, and their employers resent the interference of the emigration agents who seek to stimulate such a desire.”

Benjamin Harrison (1833–1901) American politician, 23rd President of the United States (in office from 1889 to 1893)

First State of the Union Address (1889)

Victor Davis Hanson photo
Evelyn Underhill photo
Giovanni Gentile photo

“The merit of Fascism was that it courageously and vigorously opposed itself to the prejudices of contemporary liberalism—to affirm that the liberty proposed by liberalism serves neither the people nor the individual.”

Giovanni Gentile (1875–1944) Italian neo-Hegelian Idealist philosopher and politician

Orgini e dottrina del fascismo, Rome: Libreria del Littorio, (1929). Origins and Doctrine of Fascism, A. James Gregor, translator and editor, Transaction Publishers (2003) p. 31

Nassim Nicholas Taleb photo
Carl von Clausewitz photo
Jalal Talabani photo

“The building of this site would not be possible without the courageous decision by President Bush to liberate Iraq. This building is not only a compound for the embassy but a symbol of the deep friendship between the two peoples of Iraq and America.”

Jalal Talabani (1933–2017) Iraqi politician

On the United States building a new embassy in the Green Zone of Iraq — reported in Chelsea J. Carter, Associated Press (January 6, 2009) "U.S. inaugurates $700 million new embassy in Iraq Mammoth new building called symbol of new era", Charleston Gazette, p. P3A.

Shandi Finnessey photo
Ezra Pound photo
Alfred de Zayas photo

“It would be preferable to teach that honour and glory can also be won through civil courage and working for social justice.”

Alfred de Zayas (1947) American United Nations official

Report of the Independent Expert on the promotion of a democratic and equitable international order exploring the adverse impacts of military expenditures on the realization of a democratic and equitable international order http://www.ohchr.org/EN/Issues/IntOrder/Pages/Reports.aspx.
2015, Report submitted to the UN Human Rights Council

Hilda Solis photo
W.E.B. Du Bois photo

“We make progress in society only if we stop cursing and complaining about its shortcomings and have the courage to do something about them.”

Elisabeth Kübler-Ross (1926–2004) American psychiatrist

As quoted in Voyage of Purpose : Spiritual Wisdom from Near-Death Back to Life (2011) by David Bennett and Cindy Griffith-Bennett, p. 6; also at the official site of the Elisabeth Kübler-Ross Foundation http://www.ekrfoundation.org/quotes/

Theodore Van Kirk photo
Douglas MacArthur photo
Wilfred Thesiger photo
Sinclair Lewis photo
Bhakti Tirtha Swami photo
Henry D. Moyle photo

“This great principle does not deny to the needy nor to the poor the assistance they should have. The wholly incapacitated, the aged, the sickly are cared for with all tenderness, but every able-bodied person is enjoined to do his utmost for himself to avoid dependence, if his own efforts can make such a course possible; to look upon adversity as temporary; to combine his faith in his own ability with honest toil; to rehabilitate himself and his family to a position of independence; in every case to minimize the need for help and to supplement any help given with his own best efforts. We believe [that] seldom [do circumstances arise in which] men of rigorous faith, genuine courage, and unfaltering determination, with the love of independence burning in their hearts, and pride in their own accomplishments, cannot surmount the obstacles that lie in their paths. We know that through humble, prayerful, industrious, God-fearing lives, a faith can be developed within us by the strength of which we can call down the blessings of a kind and merciful Heavenly Father and literally see our handicaps vanish and our independence and freedom established and maintained.”

Henry D. Moyle (1889–1963) Member of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles

Conference Report, Apr. 1948, p. 5, and quoted in The Celestial Nature of Self-reliance http://lds.org/portal/site/LDSOrg/menuitem.b12f9d18fae655bb69095bd3e44916a0/?vgnextoid=2354fccf2b7db010VgnVCM1000004d82620aRCRD&locale=0&sourceId=0b3ac5e8b4b6b010VgnVCM1000004d82620a____&hideNav=1|
Quotes as an apostle

James A. Garfield photo

“Indeed, we can find no more instructive lesson on the whole question of suffrage than the history of its development in the British empire. For more than four centuries, royal prerogative and the rights of the people of England have waged perpetual warfare. Often the result has appeared doubtful, often the people have been driven to the wall, but they have always renewed the struggle with unfaltering courage. Often have they lost the battle, but they have always won the campaign. Amidst all their reverses, each generation has found them stronger, each half-century has brought them its year of jubilee, and has added strength to the bulwark of law and breadth to the basis of liberty. This contest has illustrated again and again the saying that 'eternal vigilance is the price of liberty'. The growth of a city, the decay of a borough, the establishment of a new manufacture, the enlargement of commerce, the recognition of a new power, have, each in its turn, added new and peculiar elements to the contest. Hallam says: 'It would be difficult, probably, to name any town of the least consideration in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, which did not, at some time or other, return members to Parliament. This is so much the case, that if, in running our eyes along the map, we find any seaport, as Sunderland or Falmouth, or any inland town, as Leeds or Birmingham, which has never enjoyed the elective franchise, we may conclude at once that it has emerged from obscurity since the reign of Henry VIII.'”

James A. Garfield (1831–1881) American politician, 20th President of the United States (in office in 1881)

Constitutional History of England, Chap. XIII
1860s, Oration at Ravenna, Ohio (1865)

“I would guess it didn't exactly represent a profile in courage for the vice president to wander over there to the F-word network for a sit down with Brit Hume. I mean, that's a little like Bonnie interviewing Clyde, ain't it?”

Jack Cafferty (1942) American journalist

On Brit Hume of Fox News Network interviewing Dick Cheney after he accidentally shooting Harry Whittington.
[The Washington Post, Caustic Commentator, 27 February 2006, http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/02/26/AR2006022601486_2.html]
2006

Denis Healey photo
Joshua Fernandez photo
Emily Brontë photo
Rollo May photo

“No praise could be sufficient for those courageous musicians whom we left behind. They were heroes to a man.”

Steve Turner (1949) British writer

Source: The Band That Played On (Thomas Nelson, 2011), p. 153

“His fiction – radical, satirical, polyvalent, sexually courageous, global – extended the mainstream novel, and led it somewhere else. Still not fully recognized, he was one of Britain's greatest late-twentieth-century writers.”

Angus Wilson (1913–1991) british author

Malcolm Bradbury, in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/50701
Criticism

Alfred P. Sloan photo
Henry Campbell-Bannerman photo
Susan Cain photo

“The world needs you and it needs the things you carry. So I wish you the best of all possible journeys and the courage to speak softly.”

Susan Cain (1968) self-help writer

"Susan Cain: Quiet revolutionary" speaker profile at TED.com, February 2012 (est.)

Franklin D. Roosevelt photo
Francis Escudero photo
Ella Wheeler Wilcox photo
Howard Hodgkin photo

“I never think that anything I do is courageous.”

Howard Hodgkin (1932–2017) British artist

As quoted in "Howard Hodgkin: the later, greater Hodgkin" by Karen Wright, in The Telegraph (5 April 2008)

Sydney Smith photo

“Have the courage to be ignorant of a great number of things, in order to avoid the calamity of being ignorant of everything.”

Sydney Smith (1771–1845) English writer and clergyman

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

John Steinbeck photo
Orson Scott Card photo

“May the day when you need courage never come.
Even as she said it, though, she knew the day would come.”

Orson Scott Card (1951) American science fiction novelist

Homecoming saga, Earthfall (1995)

Saddam Hussein photo
John Buchan photo
Thich Nhat Tu photo

“Achievement: Believe in yourself, plan wisely to set attainable goals, move forward courageously, solve the problems effectively and achievement will be yours.”

Thich Nhat Tu (1969) Vietnamese philosopher

Inner Freedom: A Spiritual Journey for Prison Inmates (2008)

Hillary Clinton photo
Johann Kaspar Lavater photo

“Happy the heart to whom God has given enough strength and courage to suffer for Him, to find happiness in simplicity and the happiness of others.”

Johann Kaspar Lavater (1741–1801) Swiss poet

Reported in Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), p. 246

Alan Keyes photo
Alexander Pope photo

“The stoic husband was the glorious thing.
The man had courage, was a sage, 'tis true,
And lov'd his country.”

Alexander Pope (1688–1744) eighteenth century English poet

Epilogue to Rowe's Jane Shore (1714).

Khushwant Singh photo
Albert Camus photo
George S. Patton photo

“I find that moral courage is the most valuable and most usually absent characteristic.”

George S. Patton (1885–1945) United States Army general

In a letter to Beatrice (22 August 1943), published in The Patton Papers 1940-1945 (1996) edited by Martin Blumenson https://books.google.com/books?id=eV2pRL7arKkC&pg=PT239&dq=Moral+courage+is+the+most+valuable+and+usually+the+most+absent+characteristic+in+men.&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjPrbHtvsXVAhXBRyYKHUz6CAw4ChDoAQhCMAU#v=onepage&q=Moral%20courage%20is%20the%20most%20valuable%20and%20usually%20the%20most%20absent%20characteristic%20in%20men.&f=false

Thornton Wilder photo
Edith Hamilton photo
Alan Hirsch photo

“But the standard churchy spirituality doesn’t require any real action, courage, or sacrifice from its attendees.”

Alan Hirsch (1959) South African missionary

Source: The Faith of Leap (2011), p. 92

Wilfred Thesiger photo
Albrecht Thaer photo
G. K. Chesterton photo

“There is only one thing that it requires real courage to say, and that is a truism.”

G. K. Chesterton (1874–1936) English mystery novelist and Christian apologist

G.F. Watts http://books.google.com/books?id=PLpLAAAAMAAJ&q="There+is+only+one+thing+that+it+requires+real+courage+to+say+and+that+is+a+truism"&pg=PA17#v=onepage (1904)

Meher Baba photo

“To gulp down anger is the most courageous act one can perform. One who does it becomes humble.”

Meher Baba (1894–1969) Indian mystic

5:1857.
Lord Meher (1986)

Frederick Douglass photo
George Bird Evans photo

“Everybody wants to know about it. Even now. But look at what else I have accomplished since then which must have taken courage. Far more than what it took to streak. But because it's more immediate you think you could even do this. But you can't build a dance institute out of barren land.”

Protima Bedi (1948–1998) Indian model and dancer

On her steaking and the Nritygarma, the dance institute she established in Bangalore quoted in I have been a hippie all my life, 22 August 1998, 14 january 2014, Rediff.com http://www.rediff.com/news/1998/aug/22bedi.htm,

F. Scott Fitzgerald photo
Norodom Sihanouk photo
Ferdinand Marcos photo
Steve Jobs photo
Louis Brandeis photo
Boris Johnson photo

“People are made of flesh and blood and a miracle fiber called courage.”

Mignon McLaughlin (1913–1983) American journalist

The Complete Neurotic's Notebook (1981), Unclassified

Wendell Berry photo
Robert P. George photo
P.G. Wodehouse photo
Samuel Beckett photo

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

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

"Gnome" in Dublin Magazine Vol. 9 (1934), p. 8

John Byrne photo
Peter Weiss photo

“Only in his poetry did he have the courage to love.”

Peter Weiss (1916–1982) Swedish-German playwright and author

Dante (written 1963, published 2003)

Kamisese Mara photo
George Holmes Howison photo

“To him, the one Absolute Conscience, in every moral disaster our conscience turns for assured refuge and certain renewal of moral courage and strength. That is the real act and infallible function of Prayer.”

George Holmes Howison (1834–1916) American philosopher

Source: The Limits of Evolution, and Other Essays, Illustrating the Metaphysical Theory of Personal Ideaalism (1905), Appendix B: The System in its Ethical Necessity and its Practical Bearings, p.403

George W. Bush photo
Hendrik Verwoerd photo
Henry Adams photo
Michel De Montaigne photo

“It is the part of cowardice, not of courage, to go and crouch in a hole under a massive tomb, to avoid the blows of fortune.”

Book II, Ch. 3. A Usage of the Island of Cea http://books.google.com/books?id=eQt-AAAAIAAJ&q="It+is+the+part+of+cowardice+not+of+courage+to+go+and+crouch+in+a+hole+under+a+massive+tomb+to+avoid+the+blows+of+fortune"
Essais (1595), Book II

Wilhelm II, German Emperor photo
Nathalia Crane photo
Helen Keller photo