“Courage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear, not absence of fear.”
Courage is not the absence of fear — that line shows up here more than once, and for good reason. These quotes explore bravery in all its forms: physical, moral, emotional, and the quiet kind that shows up when you simply refuse to quit.
“You want to shut up every Negro who has the courage to stand up and fight for the rights of his people, for the rights of workers, and I have been on many a picket line for the steelworkers too.”
“Courage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear, not absence of fear.”
“Man cannot discover new oceans unless he has the courage to lose sight of the shore.”
“Courage is a kind of salvation.”
“Overcoming the Cold War required courage from the people of Central and Eastern Europe and what was then the German Democratic Republic, but it also required the steadfastness of Western partner over many decades when many had long lost hope of integration of the two Germanys and Europe.”
“At the bottom of not a little of the bravery that appears in the world, there lurks a miserable cowardice. Men will face powder and steel because they have not the courage to face public opinion.”
“It takes a lot of courage to face up to things you can't do because we feed ourselves so much denial.”
“Nothing gives us courage more readily than the desire to avoid looking like a damn fool.”
“What is more mortifying than to feel that you have missed the plum for want of courage to shake the tree?”
“Often the difference between a successful man and a failure is not one's better abilities or ideas, but the courage that one has to bet on his ideas, to take a calculated risk, and to act.”
“I think that the romantic impulse is in all of us and that sometimes we live it for a short time, but it's not part of a sensible way of living. It's a heroic path and it generally ends dangerously. I treasure it in the sense that I believe it's a path of great courage. It can also be the path of the foolhardy and the compulsive.”
“Patience, that blending of moral courage with physical timidity.”
“Courage is the ladder on which all the other virtues mount.”
“Why should we honour those that die upon the field of battle? A man may show as reckless a courage in entering into the abyss of himself.”
“My mother taught me that we all have the power to achieve our dreams. What I lacked was the courage.”
“Fashion should not be expected to serve in the stead of courage or character.”