Quotes About Courage

At Boston University, where the Reverend King had been studying for his Ph.D., the faculty, impressed by him, had urged him to become an academic, but, although attracted by that prospect, he rejected it in favor of a southern pastorship; "That's where I'm needed," he told his wife, Coretta. He was to discount his role in the Montgomery boycott. "I just happened to be there," he was to say. "There comes a time when time itself is ready for a change.

Johnson's customary reaction to physical danger, real or imagined, was so dramatic, almost panicky, that at college he had had the reputation of being "an absolute physical coward." All during World War II he had done everything he could to avoid combat.

It was as a result of his courage that two white men were on trial for killing a Negro, a trial in which, whatever the result, "there is a kind of majesty. And we owe that sight to Mose Wright, who was condemned to bow all his life, and had enough left to raise his head and look the enemy in those terrible eyes when he was sixty-four.

List one fear that has been controlling your life. Once you decide to confront the fear, begin repeating to yourself, I can handle it. No matter what happens, I will handle it. Keep repeating this mantra until you take action and stop feeling fear.

I define personal power as a state of mind in which a person is confident he can handle whatever may come. This kind of power not only successfully deals with problems, challenges and adversity, it actually welcomes them, meets them head on, and is thankful for them. Personal power isn't the absence of fear. Even the most powerful people have fear. Personal power is the result of feeling fear, but not giving in to the fear.

These aspects of masculinity include strength, discipline, courage, passion, persistence, and integrity.

If a grasshopper tries to fight a lawnmower, one may admire his courage but not his judgement.

My old man says when it's time to be counted, the important thing is to be man enough to stand up.

Courage is the complement of fear. A man who is fearless cannot be courageous. [He is also a fool.]

Money problems can always be solved by a man not frightened by them.

Heroism' often consists in keeping your head in an emergency and doing the best you can with what you have instead of panicking and being shot in the tail. People who fight this way win more battles than do intentional heroes; a glory hound often throws away the lives of his mates as well as his own.

The price of freedom is the willingness to do sudden battle anywhere, any time and with utter recklessness.

Victory in defeat, there is none higher. She didn't give up, Ben; she's still trying to lift that stone after it has crushed her. She's a father working while cancer eats away his insides, to bring home one more pay check. She's a twelve-year-old trying to mother her brothers and sisters because mama had to go to Heaven. She's a switchboard operator sticking to her post while smoke chokes her and fire cuts off her escape. She's all the unsung heroes who couldn't make it but never quit.

Audacity, always audacity - soundest principal of strategy.

I see the beauty of Mike's attempt to devise an ideal ethic and applaud his recognition that such must start by junking the present sexual code and starting fresh. Most philosophers haven't the courage for this; they swallow the basics of the present code--monogamy, family pattern, continence, body taboos, conventional restrictions on intercourse, and so forth--then fiddle with details...even such piffle as discussing whether the female breast is an obscene sight! (p.365)

The best things in history are accomplished by people who get tired of being shoved around.

All those religions--they contradict each other on every point but every one of them is filled with ways to help people to be brave enough to laugh even though they know they are dying.

I believe that this hairless embryo with the aching, oversize brain case and the opposable thumb, this animal barely up from the apes, will endure --will endure longer than his home planet, will spread out to the other planets, to the stars, and beyond, carrying with him his honesty, his insatiable curiosity, his unlimited courage --and his noble essential decency. This I believe with all my heart.

Many problems can be solved by a man not frightened by them.

Nothing gives life more zest that running for your life.

Freedom begins when you tell Mrs. Grundy to go fly a kite.

contrary to some opinions, it is better to be a dead hero than a live louse. Dying is messy and inconvenient but even a louse dies someday no matter what he will do to stay alive and he is forever having to explain his choice.

To the everlasting glory of the Infantry—

To die trying is the proudest humans thing.