Robert G Ingersoll - Tyrtaeus - William Shakespeare - Adam Lindsay Gordon - Carl Sagan - Thucydides - Aung San Suu Kyi - Coco Chanel - John F Kennedy - Daniel Ellsberg - C S Lewis - Joseph Conrad - Anais Nin - Alan Cohen - Horace Walpole - Baltasar Gracian - Anthony Trollop - Eleanor Roosevelt - Erich Fromm - Keshavan Nair - Charles Reade - Winston Churchill - Ralph Waldo Emerson - Napoleon I - Henry David Thoreau - Theodore Roosevelt - Martin Luther King - Ralph W Sockman - Deuteronomy 31:6 - Mark Twain - e e cummings - Harper Lee - Ambrose Redmoon - Jane Austen - Nelson Mandela - Christopher Paolini - J R R Tolkien - Rick Riordan - L Frank Baum & The Wizard of Oz 1939 - Aristotle - Albert Camus - Friedrich Nietzsche - Carl Sagan - Muhammad Ali - Thomas Jefferson - Socrates - Victor Hugo - Charlie Chaplin - Plato - Vincent van Gogh - Pael Tillich - Saint Francis de Sales - William Tecumseh Sherman - Dale Carnegie - Horace - Rollo May - W B Yeats - David Hume - Ovid - Tariq Ali - Peter Paul Rubens - Star Trek: The Next Generation TV - Elizabeth II - Gerben Wagenar - Douglas Malloch - Epicurus - Robert Kennedy - Edge of Tomorrow 2014 - Spartan mother - Woody Allen & Manhattan 1979 - Daniel Ellsberg - Grin Without a Cat aka The Base of the Air is Red 1977 - Henri Matisse - Fyodor Dostoyevsky - Abraham Lincoln - Walt Disney - Anthony Lewis - Benito Mussolini - Orison Swett Marden - Robert Fisk TV - London Can Take It, short 1940
Fear believes – courage doubts. Fear falls upon the earth and prays – courage stands erect and thinks. Fear is barbarism – courage is civilization. Fear believes in witchcraft, in devils and in ghosts. Fear is religion, courage is science. Robert G Ingersoll
Courage without conscience is a wild beast. Robert Ingersoll
The greatest test of courage on the Earth is to bear defeat without losing heart. Robert Ingersoll
Here is courage, mankind’s finest possession, here is the noblest prize that a young man can endeavour to win. Tyrtaeus
Gloucester, ’tis true that we are in great danger;
The greater therefore should our courage be ...
There is some soul of goodness in things evil,
Would men observingly distil it out –
For our bad neighbour makes us early stirrers,
Which is both beautiful and good husbandry,
Besides, there are our outward consciences,
And preachers to us all, admonishing
That we should dress us fairly for our end.
Thus may we gather honey from the weed
And make a moral of the devil himself. William Shakespeare, Henry V IV i 1-14, King Harry to Gloucester
Hold, hold, my heart;
And you, my sinews, grow not instant old,
But bear me stiffly up. William Shakespeare, Hamlet I v 92-94
But screw your courage to the sticking-place
And we’ll not fail. William Shakespeare, The Tragedy of Macbeth I vii 60-61, Lady Macbeth
Life is mostly froth and bubble,
Two things stand like stone,
Kindness in another’s trouble,
Courage in your own. Adam Lindsay Gordon, Ye Wearie Wayfarer, 1866
Science is based on experiment, on a willingness to challenge old dogma, on an openness to see the universe as it really is. Accordingly, science sometimes requires courage – at the very least the courage to question the conventional wisdom. Carl Sagan
Happiness depends on being free, and freedom depends on being courageous. Thucydides
Within a system which denies the existence of basic human rights, fear tends to be the order of the day. Fear of imprisonment, fear of torture, fear of death, fear of losing friends, family, property or means of livelihood, fear of poverty, fear of isolation, fear of failure. A most insidious form of fear is that which masquerades as common sense or even wisdom, condemning as foolish, reckless, insignificant or futile the small, daily acts of courage which help to preserve man’s self-respect and inherent human dignity. It is not easy for a people conditioned by fear under the iron rule of the principle that might is right to free themselves from the enervating miasma of fear. Yet even under the most crushing state machinery courage rises up again and again, for fear is not the natural state of civilized man. Aung San Suu Kyi, Freedom from Fear
The most courageous act is still to think for yourself. Aloud. Coco Chanel
Efforts and courage are not enough without purpose and direction. John F Kennedy
The courage of life is often a less dramatic spectacle than the courage of a final moment; but it is no less a magnificent mixture of triumph and tragedy. A man does what he must – in spite of personal consequences, in spite of obstacles and dangers, and pressures – and that is the basis of all human morality. In whatever area in life one may meet the challenges of courage, whatever may be the sacrifices he faces if he follows his conscience – the loss of his friends, his fortune, his contentment, even the esteem of his fellow men – each man must decide for himself the course he will follow. The stories of past courage can define that ingredient – they can teach, they can offer hope, they can provide inspiration. But they cannot supply courage itself. For this each man must look into his own soul. John F Kennedy
The courage we need is not the courage, the fortitude, to be obedient in the service of an unjust war, to help conceal lies, to do our job by a boss who has usurped power and is acting as an outlaw government, it is the courage at last to face honestly the truth and reality of what we are doing in the world, and act responsibly to change it. Daniel Ellsberg
Courage is not simply one of the virtues but the form of every virtue at the testing point. C S Lewis
Facing it, always facing it, that’s the way to get through – face it. Joseph Conrad
Life shrinks or expands in proportion to one’s courage. Anais Nin
It takes a lot of courage to release the familiar and seemingly secure, to embrace the new. But there is no real security in what is no longer meaningful. There is more security in the adventurous and exciting, for in movement there is life, and in change there is power. Alan Cohen
Perhaps those, who, trembling most, maintain a dignity in their fate, are the bravest: resolution on reflection is real courage. Horace Walpole
Without courage, wisdom bears no fruit. Baltasar Gracian
Those who have courage to love should have courage to suffer. Anthony Trollop, The Bertrams, 1859
You gain strength, courage and confidence by every experience in which you really stop to look fear in the face. You must do the thing which you think you cannot do. Eleanor Roosevelt
Creativity requires the courage to let go of certainties. Erich Fromm
With courage you will dare to take risks, have the strength to be compassionate and the wisdom to be humble. Courage is the foundation of integrity. Keshavan Nair
Take courage, my friend, the devil is dead! Charles Reade, The Cloister and the Hearth, 1861
Courage is going from failure to failure without losing enthusiasm. Winston Churchill, misattributed
Success is not final, failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts. Winston Churchill, misattributed
Courage is what it takes to stand up and speak; courage is also what it takes to sit down and listen. Winston Churchill, misattributed
When a resolute young fellow steps up to the great bully, the World, and takes him boldly by the beard, he is often surprised to find it comes off in his hand, and that it was only tied on to scare away the timid adventurers. Ralph Waldo Emerson
Whatever you do, you need courage. Whatever course you decide upon, there is always someone to tell you that you are wrong. There are always difficulties arising that tempt you to believe your critics are right. To map out a course of action and follow it to an end requires some of the same courage that a soldier needs. Peace has its victories, but it takes brave men and women to win them. Ralph Waldo Emerson
Courage charms us, because it indicates that a man loves an idea better than all things in the world, that he is thinking neither of his bed, nor his dinner, nor his money, but will venture all to put in act the invisible thought of his mind. Ralph Waldo Emerson
It is plain that there is no separate essence called courage, no cup or cell in the brain, no vessel in the heart containing drops or atoms that make or give this virtue; but it is the right or healthy state of every man, when he is free to do that which is constitutional to him to do. Ralph Waldo Emerson