“Clear thinking requires courage rather than intelligence.”

— Thomas Szasz

Last update Oct. 29, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "Clear thinking requires courage rather than intelligence." by Thomas Szasz?

Thomas Szasz photo

Thomas Szasz70

Hungarian psychiatrist 1920–2012

Related quotes

“She confused wit with intelligence, and made people laugh rather than lightening their hearts or making them think.”

E. Lockhart book We Were Liars

Source: We Were Liars

“Fundamentalism is terrifying because it is based purely on emotion, rather than intelligence. It prevents followers from thinking as individuals and about the good of the world.”

Tenzin Gyatso (1935) spiritual leader of Tibet

Daily Telegraph interview (2006)

“Ofttimes the test of courage becomes rather to live than to die.”

Vittorio Alfieri Oreste

Spesso è da forte,
Più che il morire, il vivere.
Oreste, IV, 2; reported in Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), p. 440.

“It often requires more courage to dare to do right than to fear to do wrong.”

Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865) 16th President of the United States

“We have come out of the time when obedience, the acceptance of discipline, intelligent courage and resolution were most important, into that more difficult time when it is a man's duty to understand his world rather than simply fight for it.”

Ernest Hemingway (1899–1961) American author and journalist

Introduction to Treasury of the Free World (1946)

“Determination in a single instance is an expression of courage; if it becomes characteristic, a mental habit. But here we are referring not to physical courage but to courage to accept responsibility, courage in the face of a moral danger. This has often been called courage d'esprit, because it is created by the intellect. That, however, does not make it an act of the intellect: it is an act of temperament. Intelligence alone is not courage; we often see that the most intelligent people are irresolute. Since in the rush of events a man is governed by feelings rather than by thought, the intellect needs to arouse the quality of courage, which then supports and sustains it in action.
Looked at in this way, the role of determination is to limit the agonies of doubt and the perils of hesitation when the motives for action are inadequate.”

Carl von Clausewitz book On War

Source: On War (1832), Book 1, Chapter 3.

“Come back again, old heart! Ah me!
Methinks in those thy coward fears
There might, perchance, a courage be,
That fails in these the manlier years;
Courage to let the courage sink,
Itself a coward base to think,
Rather than not for heavenly light
Wait on to show the truly right.”

Arthur Hugh Clough (1819–1861) English poet

The Higher Courage http://whitewolf.newcastle.edu.au/words/authors/C/CloughArthurHugh/verse/poemsproseremains/highercourage.html, st. 7 (1840).

“It is stupidity rather than courage to refuse to recognize danger when it is close upon you.”

Arthur Conan Doyle book The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes

Source: The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes

“Courage is not the absence of fear, but rather the judgment that something else is more important than fear.”

James Neil Hollingworth (1933–1996) talent manager

Quoted in K. Patrick Malone, Inside a Haunted Mind (2008) p. 167

“Cowards fear to die; but courage stout,
Rather than live in snuff, will be put out.”

Walter Raleigh (1554–1618) English aristocrat, writer, poet, soldier, courtier, spy, and explorer

On the snuff of a candle the night before he died; Raleigh's Remains, p. 258, ed. 1661

Related topics