101 of the greatest Courage Quotes of all time
Here is a collection of quotes about courage from a wide assortment of famous authors from Socrates to Steve Jobs. When you’re up against it, sometimes its good to read these and realise that people, all through history, have faced great challenges and its the courage that we all hold within us that leads to the greatest achievements.
“Life shrinks or expands in proportion to one’s courage.”
Anais Nin
Man cannot discover new oceans unless he has the courage to lose sight of the shore.
Andre Gide
One man with courage makes a majority.
Andrew Jackson
It takes as much courage to have tried and failed as it does to have tried and succeeded.
Anne Morrow Lindbergh
You will never do anything in this world without courage. It is the greatest quality of the mind next to honor.
Aristotle
Courage is the first of human qualities because it is the quality which guarantees the others.
Aristotle
Courage is never to let your actions be influenced by your fears.
Arthur Koestler
How few there are who have courage enough to own their faults, or resolution enough to mend them.
Benjamin Franklin
Courage is contagious. When a brave man takes a stand, the spines of others are often stiffened.
Billy Graham
Ingenuity, plus courage, plus work, equals miracles.
Bob Richards
Mistakes are always forgivable, if one has the courage to admit them.
Bruce Lee
Change will never happen when people lack the ability and courage to see themselves for who they are.
Bryant H. McGill
Courage is not simply one of the virtues, but the form of every virtue at the testing point.
C. S. Lewis
A man of character in peace is a man of courage in war.
Charles Wilson
Courage is the ladder on which all the other virtues mount.
Clare Boothe Luce
Faced with what is right, to leave it undone shows a lack of courage.
Confucius
Inaction breeds doubt and fear. Action breeds confidence and courage. If you want to conquer fear, do not sit home and think about it. Go out and get busy.
Dale Carnegie
Most of us have far more courage than we ever dreamed we possessed.
Dale Carnegie
Courage is being afraid but going on anyhow.
Dan Rather
If you could get up the courage to begin, you have the courage to succeed.
David Viscott
It takes courage to grow up and become who you really are.
E E Cummings
Any intelligent fool can make things bigger and more complex… It takes a touch of genius – and a lot of courage to move in the opposite direction.
E. F. Schumacher
Either life entails courage, or it ceases to be life.
E. M. Forster
Courage is the art of being the only one who knows you’re scared to death.
Earl Wilson
Courage is doing what you are afraid to do. There can be no courage unless you are scared.
Eddie Rickenbacker
You have to accept whatever comes and the only important thing is that you meet it with courage and with the best that you have to give.
Eleanor Roosevelt
The best protection any woman can have… is courage.
Elizabeth Cady Stanton
Creativity requires the courage to let go of certainties.
Erich Fromm
It takes a lot of courage to show your dreams to someone else.
Erma Bombeck
Perfect courage is to do without witnesses what one would be capable of doing with the world looking on.
Francois de La Rochefoucauld
Success means having the courage, the determination, and the will to become the person you believe you were meant to be.
George A. Sheehan
Have the courage of your desire.
George Gissing
Courage is fear holding on a minute longer.
George S. Patton
The world will step aside for nearly anyone who has the courage of his of her opinions.
George Weinberg
There are always a few who stand up in times of communal madness and have the courage to say that what unites us is greater than what divides us.
Geraldine Brooks
It is only necessary to have courage, for strength without self-confidence is useless.
Giacomo Casanova
Real courage is when you know you’re licked before you begin, but you begin anyway and see it through no matter what.
Harper Lee
To live we must conquer incessantly, we must have the courage to be happy.
Henri Frederic Amiel
Failure is only postponed success as long as courage ‘coaches’ ambition. The habit of persistence is the habit of victory.
Herbert Kaufman
A man of courage flees forward, in the midst of new things.
Jacques Maritain
Whether you be man or woman you will never do anything in this world without courage. It is the greatest quality of the mind next to honor.
James Allen
A leader must have the courage to act against an expert’s advice.
James Callaghan
Courage consists not in blindly overlooking danger, but in seeing it, and conquering it.
Jean Paul
Courage is action, not talk.
Jeff Rich
My definition of courage is never letting anyone define you.
Jenna Jameson
The opposite for courage is not cowardice, it is conformity. Even a dead fish can go with the flow.
Jim Hightower
Efforts and courage are not enough without purpose and direction.
John F. Kennedy
If you are lucky enough to find a way of life you love, you have to find the courage to live it.
John Irving
True courage is like a kite a contrary wind raises it higher.
John Petit-Senn
Courage and perseverance have a magical talisman, before which difficulties disappear and obstacles vanish into air.
John Quincy Adams
There is hope in dreams, imagination, and in the courage of those who wish to make those dreams a reality.
Jonas Salk
Courage to continue comes from deeper sources than outward results.
Kenneth L. Pike
Being deeply loved by someone gives you strength, while loving someone deeply gives you courage.
Lao Tzu
Courage is the capacity to confront what can be imagined.
Leo Rosten
Morality may consist solely in the courage of making a choice.
Leon Blum
A lot of people do not muster the courage to live their dreams because they are afraid to die.
Les Brown
Sometimes even to live is an act of courage.
Lucius Annaeus Seneca
Determination, energy, and courage appear spontaneously when we care deeply about something. We take risks that are unimaginable in any other context.
Margaret J. Wheatley
Courage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear, not absence of fear.
Mark Twain
Take chances, make mistakes. That’s how you grow. Pain nourishes your courage. You have to fail in order to practice being brave.
Mary Tyler Moore
We must have courage to bet on our ideas, to take the calculated risk, and to act. Everyday living requires courage if life is to be effective and bring happiness.
Maxwell Maltz
History, despite its wrenching pain, cannot be unlived, but if faced with courage, need not be lived again.
Maya Angelou
A team is where a boy can prove his courage on his own. A gang is where a coward goes to hide.
Mickey Mantle
He who is not courageous enough to take risks will accomplish nothing in life.
Muhammad Ali
It requires more courage to suffer than to die.
Napoleon Bonaparte
I learned that courage was not the absence of fear, but the triumph over it. The brave man is not he who does not feel afraid, but he who conquers that fear.
Nelson Mandela
Have the courage to act instead of react.
Oliver Wendell Holmes
There can be no failure to a man who has not lost his courage, his character, his self respect, or his self-confidence. He is still a King.
Orison Swett Marden
Courage conquers all things: it even gives strength to the body.
Ovid
The courage of very ordinary people is all that stands between us and the dark.
Pam Brown
Part of courage is simple consistency.
Peggy Noonan
Every man of courage is a man of his word.
Pierre Corneille
Courage is knowing what not to fear.
Plato
Courage in danger is half the battle.
Plautus
The test of courage comes when we are in the minority. The test of tolerance comes when we are in the majority.
Ralph W. Sockman
Keep courage. Whatever you do, do not feel sorry for yourself. You will win in a great age of opportunity.
Richard L. Evans
The greatest test of courage on earth is to bear defeat without losing heart.
Robert Green Ingersoll
Keep your fears to yourself, but share your courage with others.
Robert Louis Stevenson
Courage is very important. Like a muscle, it is strengthened by use.
Ruth Gordon
Do not lose courage in considering your own imperfections.
Saint Francis de Sales
He is a man of courage who does not run away, but remains at his post and fights against the enemy.
Socrates
Have the courage to face a difficulty lest it kick you harder than you bargain for.
Stanislaus I
Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma – which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of others’ opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition.
Steve Jobs
A wise woman knows how to summon her courage and do what is right, rather than what is easy.
Suze Orman
Have the courage to be ignorant of a great number of things, in order to avoid the calamity of being ignorant of everything.
Sydney Smith
Courtesy is as much a mark of a gentleman as courage.
Theodore Roosevelt
The courage we desire and prize is not the courage to die decently, but to live manfully.
Thomas Carlyle
One man with courage is a majority.
Thomas Jefferson
Clear thinking requires courage rather than intelligence.
Thomas Szasz
Real courage is knowing what faces you and knowing how to face it.
Timothy Dalton
Courage, my friends ’tis not too late to build a better world.
Tommy Douglas
Healing takes courage, and we all have courage, even if we have to dig a little to find it.
Tori Amos
The man who has the courage of his platitudes is always a successful man.
Van Wyck Brooks
What would life be if we had no courage to attempt anything?
Vincent Van Gogh
Often the test of courage is not to die but to live.
Vittorio Alfieri
Have the courage to say no. Have the courage to face the truth. Do the right thing because it is right. These are the magic keys to living your life with integrity.
W. Clement Stone
All our dreams can come true, if we have the courage to pursue them.
Walt Disney
Who could refrain that had a heart to love and in that heart courage to make love known?
William Shakespeare
Moral courage is higher and a rarer virtue than physical courage.
William Slim
It often takes more courage to change one’s opinion than to keep it.
Willy Brandt
Courage is what it takes to stand up and speak courage is also what it takes to sit down and listen.
Winston Churchill
Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay
