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Courage Quotes

The quotes worth a second look here are the quiet ones. In Dryden’s Amphitryon (1690) a character says he is “whistling to keep myself from being afraid”, which is still a fair description of how most courage works. Samuel Johnson, according to Boswell (1791), said courage is so necessary to virtue that it is respected even when it goes along with vice. Nassim Taleb, in The Bed of Procrustes (2010), has it the other way round from the usual advice: mental clarity is the child of courage, not the reverse. The psychologist Rollo May is the most-quoted modern writer here.

Two of the page’s better-known quotes are flagged as misattributed: the Churchill line about the courage to continue, which has no traceable source (see Success), and a passage on the courage of our questions that is credited to Carl Sagan.

Random quote on Courage

Most quoted on courage:

Who combats bravely is not therefore brave:
He dreads a death-bed like the meanest slave.

Alexander Pope

Be courageous. Be independent. Only remember where the true courage and independence come from.

Phillips Brooks

To do an evil action is base; to do a good action without incurring danger is common enough; but it is the part of a good man to do great and noble deeds, though he risks every thing.

Plutarch

Courage is the price that
Life exacts for granting peace.
The soul that knows it not, knows no release
From little things:
Knows not the livid loneliness of fear,
Nor mountain heights where bitter joy can hear
The sound of wings.

Amelia Earhart

Courage in danger is half the battle.

Plautus

The man who is just and resolute will not be moved from his settled purpose, either by the misdirected rage of his fellow citizens, or by the threats of an imperious tyrant.

Horace

Bravery never goes out of fashion.

William Makepeace Thackeray Four Georges (1860)

There's a brave fellow! There's a man of pluck!
A man who's not afraid to say his say,
Though a whole town's against him.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow Christus (1872)

The brave man seeks not popular applause,
Nor, overpower'd with arms, deserts his cause;
Unsham'd, though foil'd, he does the best he can,
Force is of brutes, but honor is of man.

John Dryden

Then rush'd to meet the insulting foe:
They took the spear, but left the shield.

Philip Morin Freneau

A man of courage is also full of faith.

Cicero

Such is the essence of valor: an unthinking moment, a spark along the spinal nerves, predetermined by the sum total of everything you have ever done, wished to do or not to do, and wish you had done, or hadn’t, and then comes the pain.

Roger Zelazny The Doors of His Face, The Lamps of His Mouth, and Other Stories (1971)

Tender-handed stroke a nettle,
And it stings you for your pains;
Grasp it like a man of mettle,
And it soft as silk remains. ’Tis the same with common natures:
Use ’em kindly, they rebel;
But be rough as nutmeg-graters,
And the rogues obey you well.

Aaron Hill

Brave men don't belong to any one country. I respect bravery wherever I see it.

Harry S. Truman Truman (1993)

Courage remains as important in the legal profession today as it was then. Throughout our history lawyers who have made the greatest mark on this country haven't done so because they were smarter or were born into better families or held more important positions; it was because they were willing to stand firm for justice in the face of immense pressure and often at grave personal costs.

Neil Gorsuch A Republic, If You Can Keep It (2019)

Every great work, every big accomplishment, has been brought into manifestation through holding to the vision, and often just before the big achievement, comes apparent failure and discouragement.

Florence Scovel Shinn The Game of Life and How to Play It (1925)

The best hearts are ever the bravest.

Laurence Sterne

...what really counts is not the immediate act of courage or of valor, but those who bear the struggle day in and day out — not the sunshine patriots but those who are willing to stand for a long period of time.

John F. Kennedy

Be scared. You can't help that. But don't be afraid. Ain't nothing in the woods going to hurt you unless you corner it, or it smells that you are afraid. A bear or a deer, too, has got to be scared of a coward the same as a brave man has got to be.

William Faulkner

Complete courage and absolute cowardice are extremes that very few men fall into. The vast middle space contains all the intermediate kinds and degrees of courage; and these differ as much from one another as men's faces or their humors do.

François de La Rochefoucauld

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