Quotes About Courage

The Bridge at Remagen

In my interviews with World War II veterans, they sometimes tell me that the reason they fought was they had learned as children the difference between right and wrong and they didn't want to live in a world in which wrong prevailed, so they fought.

They were learning about others. A common experience: the guy who talked toughest, bragged most, excelled in maneuvers, everyone's pick to be the top soldier in the company, was the first to break, while the soft-talking kid who was hardly noticed in camp was the standout in combat. These are the clichés of war novels precisely because they are true. They

Theirs not to reason why/Theirs but to do and die," even if the soldiers did not know the source. Those on Omaha Beach who had committed the poem to memory surely muttered to themselves, "Some one had blunder'd.")

Stephen E. Ambrose

Stephen E. Ambrose

On the beach, men saw Father Lacy "go down to the water's edge and pull the dead, dying, and wounded from the water and put them in relatively protected positions. He didn't stop at that, but prayed for them and with them, gave comfort to the wounded and dying. A real man of God."22

Pvt. Felix Branham was in that boat. "Colonel Canham had a BAR and a .45 and he was leading us in," Branham said. "There he was firing and he got his BAR shot out of his hand and he reached and he used his .45. He was the bravest guy."23

We sometimes forget, I think, that you can manufacture weapons, and you can purchase ammunition, but you can't buy valor and you can't pull heroes off an assembly line.

Painters, poets and philosophers have seen many things in the myth of Sisyphus. They have seen an image of the absurdity of human life, the futility of effort, the remorseless cruelty of fate, the unconquerable power of gravity. But they have seen too something of mankind's courage, resilience, fortitude, endurance and self-belief. They see something heroic in our refusal to submit.

Here Phaeton lies who in the sun-god's chariot fared. And though greatly he failed, more greatly he dared.

Few heroes die peacefully in their beds after long lives filled with happiness.

I never quite got the hang of the getting drunk & fondling the thighs [of all the cumbersome young males] business... whether that makes me a gallant & proper gentleman, a cowardly wuss or an unadventurous prude, I cannot make out

You may be gold, and we poor ordinary men may be of bronze, but ask any solier out there which metal they'd rather have for a sword blae or a spearpoint

Even as he breathed his last breath he killed more Trojans. Terrified by the sight of a mortally wounded man with such implacable strength and will, most held back, unsure that such a man could really die.

No, blasphemy only threatens those whose faith in their religion is weak

We're from where we're from," she says back. "Scars are part of the deal, aren't they?

It matters if you just don't give up.

While there's life, there is hope.

If one is physically disabled, one cannot afford to be *psychologically* disabled as well.

I swear to use my scientific knowledge for the good of Humanity. I promise never to harm any person in my search for enlightenment. I shall be courageous and careful in my quest for greater knowledge about the mysteries that surround us. I shall not use scientific knowledge for my own personal gain or give it to those who seek to destroy the wonderful planet on which we live. If I break this oath, may the beauty and wonder of the Universe forever remain hidden from me.

I will never be as brave as him—I'm not by nature a particularly courageous person—but he showed me that I could try. And that trying might turn out to be the most important part of courage.

Be brave, be curious, be determined, overcome the odds. It can be done.

I hope for the best. I have to. We have no other option.