Courage Quotes

Most popular courage quotes

Be brave enough to break your own heart. - Cheryl Strayed quote.
Be brave enough to break your own heart.

how to live life

Bravery is acknowledging your fear and doing it anyway. - Cheryl Strayed quote.
Bravery is acknowledging your fear and doing it anyway.
True courage is like a kite: a contrary wind raises it higher. - Jean Antoine Petit-Senn quote.
True courage is like a kite: a contrary wind raises it higher.
I can't die but once. - Harriet Tubman quote.
I can't die but once.

African-Americans inspirational slavery abolition

One doesn't discover new lands without consenting to lose sight of the shore for a very long time. - André Gide quote.
One doesn't discover new lands without consenting to lose sight of the shore for a very long time.

discovery

To persevere, trusting in what hopes one has, is courage in a man. The coward despairs. - Euripides quote.
To persevere, trusting in what hopes one has, is courage in a man. The coward despairs.

hope

Courage is grace under pressure. - Ernest Hemingway quote.
Courage is grace under pressure.
Courage is like love; it must have hope for nourishment. - Napoleon quote.
Courage is like love; it must have hope for nourishment.
Courage is doing what you're afraid to do. There can be no courage unless you're scared.
Courage without conscience is a wild beast. - Robert Ingersoll quote.
Courage without conscience is a wild beast.
One man with courage makes a majority. - Andrew Jackson quote.
One man with courage makes a majority.
This is courage in a man to bear unflinchingly what heaven sends. - Euripides quote.
This is courage in a man to bear unflinchingly what heaven sends.
Courage is a kind of salvation. - Plato quote.
Courage is a kind of salvation.
Bravery never goes out of fashion. - William Thackeray quote.
Bravery never goes out of fashion.

bravery

Discretion is the better part of valor. - Euripides quote.
Discretion is the better part of valor.

famous

Fear always springs from ignorance. - Ralph Waldo Emerson quote.
Fear always springs from ignorance.

ignorance fear

Courage is like a muscle. We strengthen it with use. - Ruth Gordon quote.
Courage is like a muscle. We strengthen it with use.
Develop enough courage so that you can stand up for yourself and then stand up for somebody else. - Maya Angelou quote.
Develop enough courage so that you can stand up for yourself and then stand up for somebody else.
Have enough courage to love. - Maya Angelou quote.
Have enough courage to love.

love

If one has courage, nothing can dim the light which shines from within. - Maya Angelou quote.
If one has courage, nothing can dim the light which shines from within.
It is said that courage is the most important of all the virtues, because without courage you can't practice any other virtue with consistency. - Maya Angelou quote.
It is said that courage is the most important of all the virtues, because without courage you can't practice any other virtue with consistency.
I had long known that there were worlds of difference between males and men, as there were between females and women. Genitalia indicated sex, but work, discipline, courage, and love were needed for the creation of men and women. - Maya Angelou quote.
I had long known that there were worlds of difference between males and men, as there were between females and women. Genitalia indicated sex, but work, discipline, courage, and love were needed for the creation of men and women.

hard work discipline

Life shrinks or expands in proportion to one's courage.
— The Diary of Anaïs Nin, 1939–1944

life

Real courage is when you know you're licked before you begin, but you begin anyway and see it through no matter what. - Harper Lee quote.
Real courage is when you know you're licked before you begin, but you begin anyway and see it through no matter what.

inspirational

Courage is being scared to death—and saddling up anyway.

inspirational

Courage is the art of being the only one who knows you're scared to death. - Earl Wilson quote.
Courage is the art of being the only one who knows you're scared to death.
Facing it—always facing it—that's the way to get through. Face it! - Joseph Conard quote.
Facing it—always facing it—that's the way to get through. Face it!

advisory

Pain nourishes courage. You can't be brave if you've only had wonderful things happen to you.

adversity failure

Success is never final and failure never total. It's courage that counts.
— Success Unlimited

failure

Courage is the ladder on which all the other virtues mount. - Clare Booth Luce quote.
Courage is the ladder on which all the other virtues mount.
It's when you run away that you're most liable to stumble.
Curiosity will conquer fear even more than bravery will.

curiosity fear

Courage is often lack of insight, whereas cowardice in many cases is based on good information. - Peter Ustinov quote.
Courage is often lack of insight, whereas cowardice in many cases is based on good information.

courage and cowardice cowardice

There is a time to take counsel of your fears, and there is a time to never listen to any fear. - George S. Patton quote.
There is a time to take counsel of your fears, and there is a time to never listen to any fear.

fear

Keep your fears to yourself, but share your courage. - Robert Louis Stevenson quote.
Keep your fears to yourself, but share your courage.

fear

You can't test courage cautiously. - Annie Dillard quote.
You can't test courage cautiously.

caution risk-taking

Courage is not the towering oak that sees storms come and go; it is the fragile blossom that opens in the snow.
Courage is contagious. When a brave man takes a stand, the spines of others are stiffened. - Billy Graham quote.
Courage is contagious. When a brave man takes a stand, the spines of others are stiffened.
The way you overcome shyness is to become so wrapped up in something that you forget to be afraid. - Lady Bird Johnson quote.
The way you overcome shyness is to become so wrapped up in something that you forget to be afraid.
The heart is the toughest part of the body. Tenderness is in the hands.

kindness Giving

It's better to be a lion for a day than a sheep all your life.
What is more mortifying than to feel that you have missed the plum for want of courage to shake the tree? - Logan Pearsall Smith quote.
What is more mortifying than to feel that you have missed the plum for want of courage to shake the tree?

risk-taking

It takes as much courage to have tried and failed as it does to have tried and succeeded. - Anne Morrow Lindbergh quote.
It takes as much courage to have tried and failed as it does to have tried and succeeded.

failure

What I admire in Columbus is not his having discovered a world but his having gone to search for it on the faith of an opinion.

faith risk-taking

The test of courage comes when we are in the minority. The test of tolerance comes when we are in the majority.

tolerance

He was a bold man that first ate an oyster. - Jonathan Swift quote.
He was a bold man that first ate an oyster.
Nature loves courage. You make the commitment and nature will respond to that commitment by removing impossible obstacles. Dream the impossible dream and the world will not grind you under, it will lift you up. This is the trick. This is what all these teachers and philosophers who really counted, who really touched the alchemical gold, this is what they understood. This is the shamanic dance in the waterfall. This is how magic is done. By hurling yourself into the abyss and discovering it's a feather bed. - Terence McKenna quote.
Nature loves courage. You make the commitment and nature will respond to that commitment by removing impossible obstacles. Dream the impossible dream and the world will not grind you under, it will lift you up. This is the trick. This is what all these teachers and philosophers who really counted, who really touched the alchemical gold, this is what they understood. This is the shamanic dance in the waterfall. This is how magic is done. By hurling yourself into the abyss and discovering it's a feather bed.

determination entrepreneurship

It is better to die on your feet than to live on your knees.
Don't wish me happiness - I don't expect to be happy; it's gotten beyond that, somehow. Wish me courage and strength and a sense of humor - I will need them all. - Anne Morrow Lindbergh quote.
Don't wish me happiness - I don't expect to be happy; it's gotten beyond that, somehow. Wish me courage and strength and a sense of humor - I will need them all.

sense of humor happiness

Courage is not simply one of the virtues, but the form of every virtue at the testing point. - C. S. Lewis quote.
Courage is not simply one of the virtues, but the form of every virtue at the testing point.
The man who knows when not to act is wise. To my mind, bravery is forethought. - Euripides quote.
The man who knows when not to act is wise. To my mind, bravery is forethought.
To bear other people's afflictions, everyone has courage and enough to spare. - Benjamin Franklin quote.
To bear other people's afflictions, everyone has courage and enough to spare.
A coward is a hero with a wife, kids, and a mortgage.
If God wanted us to be brave, why did he give us legs?
Have the courage to act instead of react. - Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. quote.
Have the courage to act instead of react.
A timid person is frightened before a danger, a coward during the time, and a courageous person afterward.
None but a coward dares to boast that he has never known fear.
Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more;. Or close the wall up with our English dead. - William Shakespeare quote.
Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more;. Or close the wall up with our English dead.
The last thing a woman will consent to discover in a man whom she loves, or on whom she simply depends, is want of courage. - Joseph Conard quote.
The last thing a woman will consent to discover in a man whom she loves, or on whom she simply depends, is want of courage.

women

True bravery is shown by performing... True bravery is shown by performing without witness what one might be capable of doing before all the world. - François de La Rochefoucauld quote.
True bravery is shown by performing... True bravery is shown by performing without witness what one might be capable of doing before all the world.
Some have been thought brave because they were afraid to run away. - Thomas Fuller quote.
Some have been thought brave because they were afraid to run away.
Heroes may not be braver than anyone else. They're just braver five minutes longer. - Ronald Reagan quote.
Heroes may not be braver than anyone else. They're just braver five minutes longer.
Courage is very important. Like a muscle, it is strengthened by use. - Ruth Gordon quote.
Courage is very important. Like a muscle, it is strengthened by use.
It is a brave act of valor to contemn death; but where life is more terrible than death, it is then the truest valor to dare to live. - Sir Thomas Browne quote.
It is a brave act of valor to contemn death; but where life is more terrible than death, it is then the truest valor to dare to live.
No one can prove his courage when he has never been in danger. - François de La Rochefoucauld quote.
No one can prove his courage when he has never been in danger.
But screw your courage to the sticking place, and you'll not fail. - William Shakespeare quote.
But screw your courage to the sticking place, and you'll not fail.
What counts is not necessarily the size of the dog in the fight--it is the size of the fight in the dog. - Dwight D. Eisenhower quote.
What counts is not necessarily the size of the dog in the fight--it is the size of the fight in the dog.
A man of courage never needs weapons, but he may need bail. - Lewis Mumford quote.
A man of courage never needs weapons, but he may need bail.
What can't be cured must be endured. - Salman Rushdie quote.
What can't be cured must be endured.
Don't be afraid to take a big step if one is indicated. You can't cross a chasm in two small jumps. - David Lloyd George quote.
Don't be afraid to take a big step if one is indicated. You can't cross a chasm in two small jumps.
I have not yet begun to fight. (Sometimes quoted as "I have just begun to fight.")
If You can keep your head when all about you are losing theirs and blaming it on you,... you'll be a Man, my son. - Rudyard Kipling quote.
If You can keep your head when all about you are losing theirs and blaming it on you,... you'll be a Man, my son.
If you can keep your head when all about you are losing theirs, it's just possible you haven't grasped the situation.
The first and great commandment is, don't let them scare you.
If blood be shed, let it be our blood. Cultivate the quiet courage of dying without killing. For man lives freely only by his readiness to die, if need be, at the hands of his brother, never by killing him. - Mahatma Gandhi quote.
If blood be shed, let it be our blood. Cultivate the quiet courage of dying without killing. For man lives freely only by his readiness to die, if need be, at the hands of his brother, never by killing him.

Indian independence movement nonviolence

When the going gets tough, the tough get going.

motivational proverbs adversity

Anything worth having is worth fighting for.

motivational

Cowardice and courage are never without a measure of affectation. Nor is love. Feelings are never true. They play with their mirrors. - Jean Baudrillard quote.
Cowardice and courage are never without a measure of affectation. Nor is love. Feelings are never true. They play with their mirrors.

affectation courage and cowardice cowardice

If a grasshopper tries to fight a lawnmower, one may admire his courage but not his judgment. - Robert A. Heinlein quote.
If a grasshopper tries to fight a lawnmower, one may admire his courage but not his judgment.
Never grow a wishbone, daughter, where your backbone ought to be.

weakness

No phallic hero, no matter what he does to himself or to another to prove his courage, ever matches the solitary, existential courage of the woman who gives birth. - Andrea Dworkin quote.
No phallic hero, no matter what he does to himself or to another to prove his courage, ever matches the solitary, existential courage of the woman who gives birth.
Andrea Dworkin Our Blood: Prophecies and Discourses on Sexual Politics

birth

Always do the things you fear the most; courage is an acquired taste, like caviar. - Erica Jong quote.
Always do the things you fear the most; courage is an acquired taste, like caviar.
Courage charms us because it indicates that a man loves an idea better than all the 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.

ideas

Courage is caution overcome. - Lyman Abbott quote.
Courage is caution overcome.
Courage and perseverance have a magical talisman, before which difficulties disappear and obstacles vanish into air. - John Quincy Adams quote.
Courage and perseverance have a magical talisman, before which difficulties disappear and obstacles vanish into air.

obstacles perseverance

Courage makes a man more than himself; for he is then himself plus his valor.
Without courage, we cannot practice any other virtue with consistency.  We can't be kind, true, merciful, generous, or honest. - Maya Angelou quote.
Without courage, we cannot practice any other virtue with consistency.  We can't be kind, true, merciful, generous, or honest.
Until the day of his death, no man can be sure of his courage. - Jean Anouilh quote.
Until the day of his death, no man can be sure of his courage.
Courage is Fear
That has said its prayers.
No man was ever ruined from without; the final ruin comes from within, when you turn hopeless and lose courage. - Amelia E. Barr quote.
No man was ever ruined from without; the final ruin comes from within, when you turn hopeless and lose courage.

hopelessness

Courage is the thing.  All goes if courage goes. - J. M. Barrie quote.
Courage is the thing.  All goes if courage goes.
True courage is in facing danger when you are afraid, and that kind of courage you have in plenty. - Frank L. Baum quote.
True courage is in facing danger when you are afraid, and that kind of courage you have in plenty.
The weak in courage is strong in cunning. - William Blake quote.
The weak in courage is strong in cunning.
But how cool, how quiet is true courage! - Fanny Burney quote.
But how cool, how quiet is true courage!
Fanny Burney Evelina, or A Young Lady’s Entrance Into the World
The paradox of courage is that a man must be a little careless of his life even in order to keep it. - G. K. Chesterton quote.
The paradox of courage is that a man must be a little careless of his life even in order to keep it.
Courage is rightly esteemed the first of human qualities, because, as has been said, it is the quality which guarantees all others. - Winston Churchill quote.
Courage is rightly esteemed the first of human qualities, because, as has been said, it is the quality which guarantees all others.
The Red Badge of Courage. - Stephen Crane quote.
The Red Badge of Courage.
Courage and grace is a formidable mixture.  The only place to see it is the bullring. - Marlene Dietrich quote.
Courage and grace is a formidable mixture.  The only place to see it is the bullring.

grace

Courage is the price that Life exacts for granting peace,
The soul that knows it not, knows no release
From little things.
It sometimes requires courage to fly from danger. - Maria Edgeworth quote.
It sometimes requires courage to fly from danger.
Any coward can fight a battle when he's sure of winning; but give me the man who has pluck to fight when he's sure of losing. - George Eliot quote.
Any coward can fight a battle when he's sure of winning; but give me the man who has pluck to fight when he's sure of losing.
What a new face courage puts on everything! - Ralph Waldo Emerson quote.
What a new face courage puts on everything!
This is courage in a man:
to bear unflinchingly what heaven sends.
Either life entails courage, or it ceases to be life. - Edward Forster quote.
Either life entails courage, or it ceases to be life.
Many of our fears are tissue-paper-thin, and a single courageous step would carry us clear through them.

fear

Life is mostly froth and bubble,
Two things stand like stone,
Kindness in another's trouble,
Courage in your own.

kindness

Courage is very important.  Like a muscle, it is strengthened by use.
Courage is contagious. When a brave man takes a stand, the spines of others are often stiffened.
Courage has need of reason, but it is not reason's child; it springs from deeper strata. - Hermann Hesse quote.
Courage has need of reason, but it is not reason's child; it springs from deeper strata.
The greatest test of courage on the earth is to bear defeat without losing heart. - Robert Ingersoll quote.
The greatest test of courage on the earth is to bear defeat without losing heart.
My definition of courage is never letting anyone define you.
Courage is a quality so necessary for maintaining virtue, that it is always respected, even when it is associated with vice. - Samuel Johnson quote.
Courage is a quality so necessary for maintaining virtue, that it is always respected, even when it is associated with vice.

vice & virtue

Courage is the only Magick worth having. - Erica Jong quote.
Courage is the only Magick worth having.
Erica Jong Fanny: Being the True History of the Adventures of Fanny Hackabout-Jones
Without belittling the courage with which men have died, we should not forget those acts of courage with which men...have lived. - John F. Kennedy quote.
Without belittling the courage with which men have died, we should not forget those acts of courage with which men...have lived.
In whatever arena of life one may meet the challenge 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. - John F. Kennedy quote.
In whatever arena of life one may meet the challenge 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.
We must constantly build dikes of courage to hold back the flood of fear. - Martin Luther King Jr. quote.
We must constantly build dikes of courage to hold back the flood of fear.

fear

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 quote.
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.

courage and cowardice cowardice

Perfect courage is to do without witnesses what one would be capable of doing with the world looking on. - François de La Rochefoucauld quote.
Perfect courage is to do without witnesses what one would be capable of doing with the world looking on.
I wanted you to see what real courage is, instead of getting the idea that courage is a man with a gun in his hand.  It's when you know you're licked before you begin but you begin anyway and you see it through no matter what. - Harper Lee quote.
I wanted you to see what real courage is, instead of getting the idea that courage is a man with a gun in his hand.  It's when you know you're licked before you begin but you begin anyway and you see it through no matter what.
It isn't for the moment you are struck that you need courage but for the long uphill climb back to sanity and faith and security. - Anne Morrow Lindbergh quote.
It isn't for the moment you are struck that you need courage but for the long uphill climb back to sanity and faith and security.

losing our way

Courage is not a virtue or value among other personal values like love or fidelity.  It is the foundation that underlies and gives reality to all other virtues and personal values. - Rollo May quote.
Courage is not a virtue or value among other personal values like love or fidelity.  It is the foundation that underlies and gives reality to all other virtues and personal values.
It is highly significant, and indeed almost a rule, that moral courage has its source in identification through one's own sensitivity with the suffering of one's fellow human beings. - Rollo May quote.
It is highly significant, and indeed almost a rule, that moral courage has its source in identification through one's own sensitivity with the suffering of one's fellow human beings.
Courage can't see around corners, but goes around them anyway.
Courage cannot be counterfeited. It is one virtue that escapes hypocrisy. - Napoleon quote.
Courage cannot be counterfeited. It is one virtue that escapes hypocrisy.
Napoleon Napoleon in His Own Words
The difference between a mongrel and a thoroughbred, whether brute or man, is not in swiftness, beauty, or endurance, but in courage. - Austin O'Malley quote.
The difference between a mongrel and a thoroughbred, whether brute or man, is not in swiftness, beauty, or endurance, but in courage.
Courage doesn't always roar.  Sometimes courage is the quiet voice at the end of the day saying, I will try again tomorrow.
Courage does not always march to airs blown by a bugle.
You gain strength, courage, and confidence by every experience in which you really stop to look fear in the face. - Eleanor Roosevelt quote.
You gain strength, courage, and confidence by every experience in which you really stop to look fear in the face.

fear

There are all kinds of courage.  It takes a great deal of bravery to stand up to our enemies, but just as much to stand up to our friends. - J. K. Rowling quote.
There are all kinds of courage.  It takes a great deal of bravery to stand up to our enemies, but just as much to stand up to our friends.
Why are we inspired by another person's courage?  Maybe because it gives us the sweet and genuine surprise of discovering some trace, at least, of the same courage in ourselves.
It is courage, courage, courage that raises the blood of life to crimson splendor. - George Bernard Shaw quote.
It is courage, courage, courage that raises the blood of life to crimson splendor.
A great deal of talent is lost to the world for the want of a little courage.

talent

Courage, the footstool of the Virtues, upon which they stand. - Robert Louis Stevenson quote.
Courage, the footstool of the Virtues, upon which they stand.
Clear thinking requires courage rather than intelligence. - Thomas Szasz quote.
Clear thinking requires courage rather than intelligence.

thinking

Courage is the willingness to play even when you know the odds are against you. - Thomas Szasz quote.
Courage is the willingness to play even when you know the odds are against you.
There is a seed of courage hidden (often deeply, it is true) in the heart of the fattest and most timid hobbit, waiting for some final and desperate danger to make it grow. - J. R. R. Tolkien quote.
There is a seed of courage hidden (often deeply, it is true) in the heart of the fattest and most timid hobbit, waiting for some final and desperate danger to make it grow.
Courage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear—not absence of fear. - Mark Twain quote.
Courage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear—not absence of fear.

fear

'Tisn't life that matters! 'Tis the courage you bring to it.
Courage is a moral quality; it is not a chance gift of nature like an aptitude for games.  It is a cold choice between two alternatives.
Courage is a muscle in your brain, and everyday you exercise it makes it stronger.
It is the fear of being called a coward that makes most men courageous in a crisis; but real courage, which is rare, consists in doing what you know is right, regardless of what men may call you. - Sydney Harris quote.
It is the fear of being called a coward that makes most men courageous in a crisis; but real courage, which is rare, consists in doing what you know is right, regardless of what men may call you.

courage and cowardice cowardice

Courage and cowardice are antithetical.  Courage is an inner resolution to go forward in spite of obstacles and frightening situations; cowardice is a submissive surrender to circumstance. - Martin Luther King Jr. quote.
Courage and cowardice are antithetical.  Courage is an inner resolution to go forward in spite of obstacles and frightening situations; cowardice is a submissive surrender to circumstance.

courage and cowardice cowardice

It is stupidity rather than courage to refuse to recognize danger when it is close upon you. - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle quote.
It is stupidity rather than courage to refuse to recognize danger when it is close upon you.

stupidity

It takes vision and courage to create—it takes faith and courage to prove.

faith vision

Better to have beasts that let themselves be killed than men who run away. - Jean-Paul Sartre quote.
Better to have beasts that let themselves be killed than men who run away.
I learned that courage was not the absence of fear, but the triumph over it. The brave man is not he who does not feel afraid, but he who conquers that fear. - Nelson Mandela quote.
I learned that courage was not the absence of fear, but the triumph over it. The brave man is not he who does not feel afraid, but he who conquers that fear.
It takes moral courage to grieve; it takes religious courage to be joyful. - Søren Kierkegaard quote.
It takes moral courage to grieve; it takes religious courage to be joyful.

religion joy