101 Greatest Courage Quotes

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101 of the greatest Courage Quotes of all time

Here is a collection of quotes about courage from a wide assortment of famous authors from Socrates to Steve Jobs. When you’re up against it, sometimes its good to read these and realise that people, all through history, have faced great challenges and its the courage that we all hold within us that leads to the greatest achievements.

“Life shrinks or expands in proportion to one’s courage.”

Anais Nin


Man cannot discover new oceans unless he has the courage to lose sight of the shore.

Andre Gide


One man with courage makes a majority.

Andrew Jackson


It takes as much courage to have tried and failed as it does to have tried and succeeded.

Anne Morrow Lindbergh


You will never do anything in this world without courage. It is the greatest quality of the mind next to honor.

Aristotle


Courage is the first of human qualities because it is the quality which guarantees the others.

Aristotle


Courage is never to let your actions be influenced by your fears.

Arthur Koestler


How few there are who have courage enough to own their faults, or resolution enough to mend them.

Benjamin Franklin


Courage is contagious. When a brave man takes a stand, the spines of others are often stiffened.

Billy Graham


Ingenuity, plus courage, plus work, equals miracles.

Bob Richards


Mistakes are always forgivable, if one has the courage to admit them.

Bruce Lee


Change will never happen when people lack the ability and courage to see themselves for who they are.

Bryant H. McGill


Courage is not simply one of the virtues, but the form of every virtue at the testing point.

C. S. Lewis


A man of character in peace is a man of courage in war.

Charles Wilson


Courage is the ladder on which all the other virtues mount.

Clare Boothe Luce


Faced with what is right, to leave it undone shows a lack of courage.

Confucius


Inaction breeds doubt and fear. Action breeds confidence and courage. If you want to conquer fear, do not sit home and think about it. Go out and get busy.

Dale Carnegie


Most of us have far more courage than we ever dreamed we possessed.

Dale Carnegie


Courage is being afraid but going on anyhow.

Dan Rather


If you could get up the courage to begin, you have the courage to succeed.

David Viscott


It takes courage to grow up and become who you really are.

E E Cummings


Any intelligent fool can make things bigger and more complex… It takes a touch of genius – and a lot of courage to move in the opposite direction.

E. F. Schumacher


Either life entails courage, or it ceases to be life.

E. M. Forster


Courage is the art of being the only one who knows you’re scared to death.

Earl Wilson


Courage is doing what you are afraid to do. There can be no courage unless you are scared.

Eddie Rickenbacker


You have to accept whatever comes and the only important thing is that you meet it with courage and with the best that you have to give.

Eleanor Roosevelt


The best protection any woman can have… is courage.

Elizabeth Cady Stanton


Creativity requires the courage to let go of certainties.

Erich Fromm


It takes a lot of courage to show your dreams to someone else.

Erma Bombeck


Perfect courage is to do without witnesses what one would be capable of doing with the world looking on.

Francois de La Rochefoucauld


Success means having the courage, the determination, and the will to become the person you believe you were meant to be.

George A. Sheehan


Have the courage of your desire.

George Gissing


Courage is fear holding on a minute longer.

George S. Patton


The world will step aside for nearly anyone who has the courage of his of her opinions.

George Weinberg


There are always a few who stand up in times of communal madness and have the courage to say that what unites us is greater than what divides us.

Geraldine Brooks


It is only necessary to have courage, for strength without self-confidence is useless.

Giacomo Casanova


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


To live we must conquer incessantly, we must have the courage to be happy.

Henri Frederic Amiel


Failure is only postponed success as long as courage ‘coaches’ ambition. The habit of persistence is the habit of victory.

Herbert Kaufman


A man of courage flees forward, in the midst of new things.

Jacques Maritain


Whether you be man or woman you will never do anything in this world without courage. It is the greatest quality of the mind next to honor.

James Allen


A leader must have the courage to act against an expert’s advice.

James Callaghan


Courage consists not in blindly overlooking danger, but in seeing it, and conquering it.

Jean Paul


Courage is action, not talk.

Jeff Rich


My definition of courage is never letting anyone define you.

Jenna Jameson


The opposite for courage is not cowardice, it is conformity. Even a dead fish can go with the flow.

Jim Hightower


Efforts and courage are not enough without purpose and direction.

John F. Kennedy


If you are lucky enough to find a way of life you love, you have to find the courage to live it.

John Irving


True courage is like a kite a contrary wind raises it higher.

John Petit-Senn


Courage and perseverance have a magical talisman, before which difficulties disappear and obstacles vanish into air.

John Quincy Adams


There is hope in dreams, imagination, and in the courage of those who wish to make those dreams a reality.

Jonas Salk


Courage to continue comes from deeper sources than outward results.

Kenneth L. Pike


Being deeply loved by someone gives you strength, while loving someone deeply gives you courage.

Lao Tzu


Courage is the capacity to confront what can be imagined.

Leo Rosten


Morality may consist solely in the courage of making a choice.

Leon Blum


A lot of people do not muster the courage to live their dreams because they are afraid to die.

Les Brown


Sometimes even to live is an act of courage.

Lucius Annaeus Seneca


Determination, energy, and courage appear spontaneously when we care deeply about something. We take risks that are unimaginable in any other context.

Margaret J. Wheatley


Courage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear, not absence of fear.

Mark Twain


Take chances, make mistakes. That’s how you grow. Pain nourishes your courage. You have to fail in order to practice being brave.

Mary Tyler Moore


We must have courage to bet on our ideas, to take the calculated risk, and to act. Everyday living requires courage if life is to be effective and bring happiness.

Maxwell Maltz


History, despite its wrenching pain, cannot be unlived, but if faced with courage, need not be lived again.

Maya Angelou


A team is where a boy can prove his courage on his own. A gang is where a coward goes to hide.

Mickey Mantle


He who is not courageous enough to take risks will accomplish nothing in life.

Muhammad Ali


It requires more courage to suffer than to die.

Napoleon Bonaparte


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


Have the courage to act instead of react.

Oliver Wendell Holmes


There can be no failure to a man who has not lost his courage, his character, his self respect, or his self-confidence. He is still a King.

Orison Swett Marden


Courage conquers all things: it even gives strength to the body.

Ovid


The courage of very ordinary people is all that stands between us and the dark.

Pam Brown


Part of courage is simple consistency.

Peggy Noonan


Every man of courage is a man of his word.

Pierre Corneille


Courage is knowing what not to fear.

Plato


Courage in danger is half the battle.

Plautus


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

Ralph W. Sockman


Keep courage. Whatever you do, do not feel sorry for yourself. You will win in a great age of opportunity.

Richard L. Evans


The greatest test of courage on earth is to bear defeat without losing heart.

Robert Green Ingersoll


Keep your fears to yourself, but share your courage with others.

Robert Louis Stevenson


Courage is very important. Like a muscle, it is strengthened by use.

Ruth Gordon


Do not lose courage in considering your own imperfections.

Saint Francis de Sales


He is a man of courage who does not run away, but remains at his post and fights against the enemy.

Socrates


Have the courage to face a difficulty lest it kick you harder than you bargain for.

Stanislaus I


Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma – which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of others’ opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition.

Steve Jobs


A wise woman knows how to summon her courage and do what is right, rather than what is easy.

Suze Orman


Have the courage to be ignorant of a great number of things, in order to avoid the calamity of being ignorant of everything.

Sydney Smith


Courtesy is as much a mark of a gentleman as courage.

Theodore Roosevelt


The courage we desire and prize is not the courage to die decently, but to live manfully.

Thomas Carlyle


One man with courage is a majority.

Thomas Jefferson


Clear thinking requires courage rather than intelligence.

Thomas Szasz


Real courage is knowing what faces you and knowing how to face it.

Timothy Dalton


Courage, my friends ’tis not too late to build a better world.

Tommy Douglas


Healing takes courage, and we all have courage, even if we have to dig a little to find it.

Tori Amos


The man who has the courage of his platitudes is always a successful man.

Van Wyck Brooks


What would life be if we had no courage to attempt anything?

Vincent Van Gogh


Often the test of courage is not to die but to live.

Vittorio Alfieri


Have the courage to say no. Have the courage to face the truth. Do the right thing because it is right. These are the magic keys to living your life with integrity.

W. Clement Stone


All our dreams can come true, if we have the courage to pursue them.

Walt Disney


Who could refrain that had a heart to love and in that heart courage to make love known?

William Shakespeare


Moral courage is higher and a rarer virtue than physical courage.

William Slim


It often takes more courage to change one’s opinion than to keep it.

Willy Brandt


Courage is what it takes to stand up and speak courage is also what it takes to sit down and listen.

Winston Churchill


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