Virtues

"God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference."

"I know what I have to do now. I got to keep breathing, because tomorrow the sun will rise. Who knows what the tide could bring?"

"Whereas moral courage is the righting of wrongs, creative courage, in contrast, is the discovering of new forms, new symbols, new patterns on which a new society can be built."

"Courage is not a virtue of value among other personal values like love or fidelity. It is the foundation that underlies and gives reality to all other virtues and personal values. Without courage our love pales into mere dependency. Without courage our fidelity becomes conformism."

"Courage is the capacity to meet the anxiety which arises as one achieves freedom. It is the willingness to differentiate, to move from the protecting realms of parental dependence to new levels of freedom and integration."

"In any age courage is the simple virtue needed for a human being to traverse the rocky road from infancy to maturity of personality. But in an age of anxiety, an age of herd morality and personal isolation, courage is a sine qua non. In periods when the mores of the society were more consistent guides, the individual was more firmly cushioned in his crises of development; but in times of transition like ours, the individual is thrown on his own at an earlier age and for a longer period."

"It requires greater courage to preserve inner freedom, to move on in one's inward journey into new realms, than to stand defiantly for outer freedom. It is often easier to play the martyr, as it is to be rash in battle. Strange as it sounds, steady, patient growth in freedom is probably the most difficult task of all, requiring the greatest courage. Thus if the term "hero" is used in this discussion at all, it must refer not to the special acts of outstanding persons, but to the heroic element potentially in every man."

"Courage is the obvious virtue of the stupid."

"Can a man still be brave if he's afraid?" "That is the only time a man can be brave."

"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."

"If feminism is truly universal, it must include the women who cannot speak for themselves—the imprisoned poet, the grieving mother, the young girl growing up in a surveillance state where even her language is treated as a threat. … History has always been shaped by the courage of women, often in ways the world fails to notice."

"Courage is the ladder on which all the other virtues mount."

"This is the art of courage: to see things as they are and still believe that the victory lies not with those who avoid the bad, but those who taste, in living awareness, every drop of the good."

"[C]ourage is not simply one of the virtues, but the form of every virtue at the testing point, which means, at the point of highest reality. A chastity or honesty, or mercy, which yields to danger will be chaste or honest or merciful only on conditions."

"I wanted you to see what real courage is, instead of getting the idea that courage is a man with a gun in his hand. It's when you know you're licked before you begin, but you begin anyway and see it through no matter what."

"Perfect courage is to do without witnesses what one would be capable of doing with the world looking on."

"Complete courage and absolute cowardice are extremes that very few men fall into. The vast middle space contains all the intermediate kinds and degrees of courage; and these differ as much from one another as men's faces or their humors do."

"Victory goes to those with courage!"

"It requires courage not to surrender oneself to the ingenious or compassionate counsels of despair that would induce a man to eliminate himself from the ranks of the living; but it does not follow from this that every huckster who is fattened and nourished in self-confidence has more courage than the man who yielded to despair."

"In whatever area in life one may meet the challenges of courage, whatever may be the sacrifices he faces if he follows his conscience — the loss of his friends, his fortune, his contentment, even the esteem of his fellow men — each man must decide for himself the course he will follow. The stories of past courage can define that ingredient — they can teach, they can offer hope, they can provide inspiration. But they cannot supply courage itself. For this each man must look into his own soul."

"What really counts is not the immediate act of courage or of valor, but those who bear the struggle day in and day out — not the sunshine patriots but those who are willing to stand for a long period of time."

"Without belittling the courage with which men have died, we should not forget those acts of courage with which men - such as the subjects of this book - have lived. The courage of life is often a less dramatic spectacle than the courage of a final moment; but it is no less a magnificent mixture of triumph and tragedy. A man does what he must—in spite of personal consequences, in spite of obstacles and dangers and pressures—and that is the basis of all human morality."

"Immaturity is the inability to use one's understanding without guidance from another. This immaturity is self-imposed when its cause lies not in lack of understanding, but in lack of resolve and courage to use it without guidance from another. Sapere aude! "Have courage to use your own understanding!"—that is the motto of enlightenment."

"Courage is a quality so necessary for maintaining virtue, that it is always respected, even when it is associated with vice."

"[C]ourage is reckoned the greatest of all virtues; because, unless a man has that virtue, he has no security for preserving any other."

"My lord, I am without fear!"

"[Deprogramming survivor Toru Goto] teaches us that resilience is not a trait, but a choice. That faith is not weakness, but armor. That freedom is not always granted—sometimes, it must be reclaimed."

"Winston Churchill famously claimed that of all human qualities, courage was the most esteemed, because it guaranteed all others. He was right. Courage—moral courage—is the companion of great leadership. No politician could ever be viewed as exceptional unless he or she had it in spades. And historically there would have been no social progress if not for the presence of specific humans dissenting and breaking from herd-inspired suspicion and fear.... At best, courage is self-sacrificing, non-violent, modest and based on universal principles — and immensely powerful. Think Mahatma Gandhi or Martin Luther King Jr. Regrettably, courage is also rare: think Gandhi or MLK again. And dangerous: both men were assassinated.... Look at today’s politicians... keen to be viewed as the virile leaders of their respective countries; eager to inflate their image by harming migrants and refugees, the most vulnerable in society. If there is courage in that, I fail to see it. Authoritarian leaders, or elected leaders inclined toward it, are bullies, deceivers, selfish cowards. If they are growing in number it is because (with exceptions) many other politicians are mediocre... focused on their own image... too afraid to stand up... If we do not change course quickly, we will inevitably encounter an incident where that first domino is tipped—triggering a sequence of unstoppable events that will mark the end of our time on this tiny planet..."

"Courage, of all national qualities, is the most precarious; because it is exerted only at intervals, and by a few in every nation; whereas industry, knowledge, civility, may be of constant and universal use, and for several ages, may become habitual to the whole people."

"The onward march of the human race requires that the heights around it constantly blaze with noble lessons of courage. Deeds of daring dazzle history and form one of man's guiding lights."

"My darling girl, when are you going to realize that being normal is not necessarily a virtue? It rather denotes a lack of courage."

"Courage is the ability to ignore your options."

"Cowardly Lion: Courage! What makes a king out of a slave? Courage! What makes the flag on the mast to wave? Courage! What makes the elephant charge his tusk in the misty mist, or the dusky dusk? What makes the muskrat guard his musk? Courage! What makes the Sphinx the Seventh Wonder? Courage! What makes the dawn come up like thunder? Courage! What makes the Hottentot so hot? What puts the "ape" in apricot? What have they got that I ain't got? Dorothy, Scarecrow, Tin Woodsman: Courage! Cowardly Lion: You can say that again! Hunh!"

"It is when we all play safe that we create a world of utmost insecurity. It is when we all play safe that fatality will lead us to our doom. It is in the "dark shade of courage" alone that the spell can be broken."

"What do I mean by courage? Well, let's start with what I don't mean. I don't mean blind bullheadedness or rudeness or incivility. We have all too much of those things in our culture and in our profession. They are pretenders of courage, not the real thing. For true courage will often require you to admit a mistake, hold your tongue, or wait to fight another day. When it requires you to stand up against the powers arrayed around you, it will also require you to do so with not just respect but affection for your fellow citizen. What I mean by courage is what Atticus Finch meant by it in To Kill a Mockingbird. You may remember that Finch defended an African-American man wrongly accused of raping a white woman in Alabama during the Great Depression- and that in taking on the representation he faced criticism and threats from his friends and community. As he told his daughter in the book: "I wanted you to see what real courage is, instead of getting the idea that courage is a man with a gun in his hand. It's when you know you're licked before you begin but you begin anyway and see it through no matter what.""

"Courage remains as important in the legal profession today as it was then. Throughout our history lawyers who have made the greatest mark on this country haven't done so because they were smarter or were born into better families or held more important positions; it was because they were willing to stand firm for justice in the face of immense pressure and often at grave personal costs."

"Courage is contagious. When a brave man takes a stand, the spines of others are often stiffened."

"Courage is very important. Like a muscle, it is strengthened by use."

"Courage is in the air in bracing whiffs Better than all the stalemate an's and ifs."

"Courage is of the heart by derivation, And great it is. But fear is of the soul."

"Either life entails courage, or it ceases to be life."

"People talk of the courage of convictions, but in actual life a man's duty to his family may make a rigid course seem a selfish indulgence of his own righteousness."

"Courage is defined as: the ability to face danger, difficulty, uncertainty, or pain without being overcome by fear or being deflected from a chosen course of action. Many of today’s world leaders have great courage: I wonder... would we be better off with cowardice?"

"Be scared. You can’t help that. But don’t be afraid. Ain’t nothing in the woods going to hurt you unless you corner it, or it smells that you are afraid. A bear or a deer, too, has got to be scared of a coward the same as a brave man has got to be."

"Fortitude, the virtue which enables us to endure pain, and to banish fear, is of great use in producing tranquility."

"It is plain that there is no separate essence called courage, no cup or cell in the brain, no vessel in the heart containing drops or atoms that make or give this virtue; but it is the right or healthy state of every man, when he is free to do that which is constitutional to him to do."

"'Tis said that courage is common, but the immense esteem in which it is held proves it to be rare. Animal resistance, the instinct of the male animal when cornered, is no doubt common; but the pure article, courage with eyes, courage with conduct, self-possession at the cannon's mouth, cheerfulness in lonely adherence to the right, is the endowment of elevated characters."

"A great part of courage is the courage of having done the thing before."

"Courage charms us, because it indicates that a man loves an idea better than all things in the world, that he is thinking neither of his bed, nor his dinner, nor his money, but will venture all to put in act the invisible thought of his mind."

"Any intelligent fool can make things bigger, more complex, and more violent. It takes a touch of genius—and a lot of courage to move in the opposite direction."