Quotes About Courage

Americans admire a people who can scratch a desert and produce a garden. The Israelis have shown qualities that Americans identify with: guts, patriotism, idealism, a passion for freedom. I have seen it. I know. I believe that.

So you are lean and mean and resourceful and you continue to walk on the edge of the precipice because over the years you have become fascinated by how close you can walk without losing your balance.

If we look to people who make no mistakes, who were always on the right side, who never apologized for tyrants or unjust wars, we shall have few heroes and heroines

we were all driven by something that pushed us further than others dared to go. We were mission oriented and would do what we had to do to achieve it.

To me, a Purple Heart is not a badge of honor. To be blunt about it, I've always considered them enemy marksmanship medals and I'm happy not to have ever "won" one.

Ordinarily I believe that I have as high a spirit as the average man, and as solid a resolution; but when one has been dragged through the Valley of Humiliation, and plunged, again and again, into the Waters of Bitterness and Privation, a man can be constrained to a course of action of which, in his happier moments, he would have deemed himself incapable. I know this of my own knowledge.

A man is not born to run away." Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes (1921).*

There is a time to be timid. There is a time to be conciliatory. There is a time, even, to fly and there is a time to fight. And I'm going to fight like hell. (On Congressional moves toward impeachment)

desk into a small and lonely light and floated in dreams on a skiff of words. He blinked away the shadows of an ominous image, something tremendous, dark, winged, blotting over the sparkle of the rising sun. Kipling stood up, one hand pressing the cloth, the other still shielding his eyes. "An airplane," he said. The double wings dipped and a trail of black smoke stained the perfect blue sky and then the craft lurched and dropped below the level of the trees.

Hope has wings that make it fly.

Heroes rarely look the way we draw them in our minds: attractive, imposing figures with rippling muscles and strong chins. More times than not they are humble beings, small and flawed. It is only their spirits that are beautiful and strong.

Only those who never step, never stumble.

The most difficult of decisions are often not the ones in which we cannot determine the correct course; rather the ones in which we are certain of the path but fear the journey.

One need not fight every battle, or die in the struggle, to be a hero.

My mom used to say that faith and fear can't exist simultaneously in the mind any more than light and dark can exist simultaneously in the same room.

Our culture's quest to hide death behind a facade of denial has made fools and pretended immortals of us all. Perhaps it would be more helpful and liberating to begin each day by repeating the words of Crazy Horse, "Today is a good day to die.

As one who would rather light a candle than curse the darkness.

Sometimes it takes travelling the world to realize that it isn't ok to be different, it's freaking awesome!

The warrior who goes off to battle should not boast as the one who returns from it.

It is oftentimes a blessing to not know our limitations. It's the only way to accomplish the impossible.

Deep in our hearts everyone walks free.

Heroes are heroes precisely because they are willing to do what everyone else won't—oppose the popular voice.

It is in the darkest skies that stars are best seen.

But more than brave, you have love. And love is brave.