Quotes About Courage

By the time we are women, fear is as familiar to us as air. It is our element. We live in it, we inhale it, we exhale it, and most of the time we do not even notice it. Instead of I am afraid, we say, I don't want to, or I don't know how, or I can't.

If you want a definition of what a coward is, it's needing to push a whole class of people down so that you can walk on top of them.

and I wonder if Beethoven held his breath the first time his fingers touched the keys the same way a soldier holds his breath the first time his finger clicks the trigger. We all have different reasons for forgetting to breathe.

To know true love, even though it was impossible to keep, had finally cracked her heart open enough to let someone else in.

And the day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom. ~ Anais Nin

President Obama's 100-day plan is pretty impressive. I think it's a Wow 100-plus days. The administration is not operating from fear, it is trying to drive change for the future, and that's a good thing.

Death is not a merciful conclusion but a border crossing into a new land that could be more beautiful and majestic than the tallest mansion. Faith, courage, and hope are the characteristics that create happiness. They will stand as remembered monuments for all those left around the bed, and they are the qualities I will strive to obtain. —From the journal of Cale Shaffer, dated September 7, 1992, written when he was eighteen years old

Why you wan' the whole world when ya have a likkle piece a hope here? Stay. Stay and fight, man. Fight till you look 'pon what you wan' see.

If truly tested, how would we react?

You know why you keep losing, 'cause, guess what, you're a fucking loser.

Jesus. I do not wanna be called a vampire n-word.

Fear is the enemy. I distrust it. Any feeling or decision I make that might be motivated by fear I quickly reassess.

The moment anyone tries to demean or degrade you in any way, you have to know how great you are. Nobody would bother to beat you down if you were not a threat." —Cicely Tyson

We shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight…

Es ist immer dasselbe. Die Titanic sinkt, aber das Orchester spielt weiter, [...]Nur das es diesmal überhaut keine Rettungsboote gibt.

Now he had to decide--what was the right thing to do? Something that required courage. Something that was frightening, because the unknown was lying in wait on the other side.

Protest is when I say I don't like this. Resistance is when I put an end to what I don't like. Protest is when I say I refuse to go along with this anymore. Resistance is when I make sure everybody else stops going along too', as one West German columnist wrote in 1968, relaying the words of a visiting Black Power activist.

Even the reverend did: visiting Martin Luther King in his parsonage, soon after his home had been bombed, a journalist was about to sink into an armchair when he was alerted to a couple of loaded guns on it. 'Just for self-defence,' King explained.

People wielding that axe have always been told that we're fucked, we're doomed, we should just try to scrape by, nothing will ever change for the better; from the slave barracks to the Judenräte and onwards, every revolt has been discouraged by the elders of defeatism.

Precisely the hopelessness of the situation constituted the nobility of this resistance.

Never let doubt and fear cloud your way to success"

Five thousand boys and girls under the age of sixteen were estimated to have fought in the defense of Berlin. Five hundred survived.

By no means did such views come entirely from conservative or right-wing circles, which have long regarded the American military as soft and incompetent. People from the Green and Social Democratic milieus—where German pacifism is chiefly at home today—also displayed this contempt for the courage and ability of American GIs, thereby indirectly demonstrating how deeply Germans feel the resentment of things American.

Both now and for always, I intend to hold fast to my belief in the hidden strength of the human spirit.