Quotes About Courage

We should give heed to what has been said by the heathen poet: "Do not yield to evils but proceed more boldly against them."15

Everything that is done in this world is done by hope.

Be a sinner and sin boldly, but believe and rejoice in Christ even more boldly.

Where the battle rages, there the loyalty of the soldier is proved.

I cannot choose but adhere to the word of God, which has possession of my conscience; nor can I possibly, nor will I even make any recantation, since it is neither safe nor honest to act contrary to conscience! Here I stand; I cannot do otherwise, so help me God! Amen.

You don't have to see the whole staircase. Just take the first step.

Faith is taking the first step even when you can't see the whole staircase.

We must build dikes of courage to hold back the flood of fear.

If man hasn't discovered something that he will die for, he isn't fit to live.

I refuse to accept the cynical notion that nation after nation must spiral down a militaristic stairway into the hell of nuclear destruction. I believe that unarmed truth and unconditional love will have the final word in reality.

Ordinarily, a person leaving a courtroom with a conviction behind him would wear a somber face. But I left with a smile. I knew that I was a convicted criminal, but I was proud of my crime.

If you will protest courageously, and yet with dignity and Christian love, when the history books are written in future generations, the historians will have to pause and say, "There lived a great people - a black people - who injected new meaning and dignity into the veins of civilization." This is our challenge and our overwhelming responsibility.

If you lose hope, somehow you lose the vitality that keeps life moving, you lose that courage to be, that quality that helps you to go on in spite of all. And so today I still have a dream.

Will we march only to the music of time, or will we, risking criticism and abuse, march to the soul-saving music of eternity?

We will have to repent in this generation not merely for the vitriolic words and actions of the bad people, but for the appalling silence of the good people.

As a teenager I had never been able to accept the fact of having to go to the back of a bus or sit in the segregated section of a train. The first time I had been seated behind a curtain in a dining car, I felt as if the curtain had been dropped on my selfhood.

Freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed.

Courage is the power of the mind to overcome fear.

Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter.

Faith is taking the first step even when you can't see the whole staircase.

There comes a time when one must take a position that is neither safe, nor politic, nor popular, but he must take it because conscience tells him it is right.

The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy.

A man who won't die for something is not fit to live.

There comes a time when silence is betrayal.