Quotes About Courage

So what is "heart"? It's courage, but courage to do what? The courage to do the right thing when all else tells you not to do it. The courage to rise above your surroundings and circumstances. The courage to be God's idea of a real man and to give of yourself for others when it costs you to do so and when everything tells you to look out for yourself first.

It's time now for something to be done. He who has the courage to act must know that he will probably go down in German history as a traitor. But if he fails to act, he will be a traitor before his own conscience. —CLAUS SCHENK VON STAUFFENBERG

We need to be brave enough to dissect a frog now and then, to see what's inside.

At its core, every battle worth fighting is a spiritual battle. Those men were able to succeed only because they humbled themselves and entrusted the battle to God. But

The line between courageous faith and foolish idealism is, almost by definition, one angstrom wide.

Do not defend God's Word, but testify to it .

Do the right thing, seek the truth, defend the weak, live courageous lives.

Some wondered whether he was just kicking against the goads, but when someone asked Bonhoeffer whether he shouldn't join the German Christians in order to work against them from within, he answered that he couldn't. "If you board the wrong train," he said, "it is no use running along the corridor in the opposite direction

Take all we have, only give us peace'? In God's name…let us at least make one effort; and if we must fall, let us fall like men!

291 The German Christians had convinced themselves that "evangelizing" Germany was worth any price, including eviscerating the gospel by preaching hatred against the Jews. But Bonhoeffer knew that twisting the truth to sell it more effectively was not confined to the German Christians. Members of the Confessing Church had also shaved the truth betimes.

Shirley "Cha Cha" Muldowney, who was the first female Top Fuel dragster champion, but

Bonhoeffer "was a person about whom one had the feeling that he was completely whole," said one Finkenwalde ordinand, "a man who believes in what he thinks and does what he believes in.

Confirmands today are like young soldiers marching to war, the war of Jesus Christ against the gods of this world. It is a war that demands the commitment of one's whole life. Is not God, our Lord, worthy of this struggle? Idolatry and cowardice confront us on all sides, but the direst foe does not confront us, he is within us. 'Lord, I believe; help thou mine unbelief.

God's cause is not always the successful one, that we really could be "unsuccessful": and yet be on the right road. But this is where we find out whether we have begun in faith or in a burst of enthusiasm. - Dietrich Bonhoeffer

We pretend we would have spoken out for the Jews in Bonhoeffer's day, or that we would have spoken against the slave trade in Wilberforce's day, but are we speaking out today on the issues that are no less important to God in our time? If not, we are deceiving ourselves.

Second-baseman Eddie Stanky spoke for the whole team when he shouted at the opposing dugout: "Listen, you yellow-bellied cowards, why don't you yell at somebody who can answer back?

years later, after Niemöller had been imprisoned for eight years in concentration camps as the personal prisoner of Adolf Hitler, he penned these infamous words: First they came for the Socialists, and I did not speak out— because I was not a Socialist. Then they came for the Trade Unionists, and I did not speak out— because I was not a Trade Unionist.

What Wilberforce vanquished was something even worse than slavery, something that was much more fundamental and can hardly be seen from where we stand today: he vanquished the very mind-set that made slavery acceptable and allowed it to survive and thrive for millennia.

While Hildebrandt, Niemöller, and Jacobi were thinking about how to defeat Müller, Bonhoeffer was thinking about God's highest call, about the call of discipleship and its cost.

human being's moral integrity begins when he is prepared to sacrifice his life for his convictions.

We will have to move through a very deep valley, I believe much deeper than we can sense now, before we will be able to ascend the other side again. —DIETRICH BONHOEFFER

True faith is not a leap in the dark; it's a leap into the light.*

Every culture and era flatters itself that we are finally seeing what previous eras and cultures could not see because of their own blinders and ideological lenses. To admit that we are in some sense no different from tenth-century peasants is unacceptable to most of us. It may be offensive. To accept it may take real courage.

Bonhoeffer's three conclusions—that the church must question the state, help the state's victims, and work against the state, if necessary—were too much for almost everyone. But for him they were inescapable. In time, he would do all three.