Courage quotes
Quotations about courage, from Seneca’s letters and Shakespeare’s stage to the speeches of Theodore and Franklin Roosevelt and Nelson Mandela. Courage is one of the most misattributed themes on the internet, so each entry names its earliest verifiable source and, where it is a translation, the translator.
Beware, for I am fearless and therefore powerful.
The country needs and, unless I mistake its temper, the country demands bold, persistent experimentation. It is common sense to take a method and try it: If it fails, admit it frankly and try another. But above all, try something.
Courage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear — not absence of fear.
I learned that courage was not the absence of fear, but the triumph over it.
Cowards die many times before their deaths; / The valiant never taste of death but once.
Deep into that darkness peering, long I stood there wondering, fearing, / Doubting, dreaming dreams no mortals ever dared to dream before;
Far better it is to dare mighty things, to win glorious triumphs, even though checkered by failure, than to take rank with those poor spirits who neither enjoy much nor suffer much, because they live in the gray twilight that knows not victory nor defeat.
History, despite its wrenching pain / Cannot be unlived, but if faced / With courage, need not be lived again.
I am no bird; and no net ensnares me; I am a free human being with an independent will, which I now exert to leave you.
If you would not have a man flinch when the crisis comes, train him before it comes.
It is a far, far better thing that I do, than I have ever done; it is a far, far better rest that I go to than I have ever known.
It is circumstances (difficulties) which show what men are. Therefore when a difficulty falls upon you, remember that God, like a trainer of wrestlers, has matched you with a rough young man.
Our lack of confidence is not the result of difficulty; the difficulty comes from our lack of confidence.
Let us have faith that right makes might, and in that faith let us to the end dare to do our duty as we understand it.
Life, although it may only be an accumulation of anguish, is dear to me, and I will defend it.
In the fell clutch of circumstance / I have not winced nor cried aloud. / Under the bludgeonings of chance / My head is bloody, but unbowed.
Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few.
Our doubts are traitors, / And make us lose the good we oft might win, / By fearing to attempt.
Out of the night that covers me, / Black as the pit from pole to pole, / I thank whatever gods may be / For my unconquerable soul.
Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will.
But screw your courage to the sticking-place, / And we’ll not fail.
For sometimes it is an act of bravery even to live.
You may trod me in the very dirt / But still, like dust, I’ll rise.
That which does not kill me, makes me stronger.
He says the best way out is always through.
The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood.
I care for myself. The more solitary, the more friendless, the more unsustained I am, the more I will respect myself.
The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.
Come, my friends, / ’Tis not too late to seek a newer world.
To see what is right and not to do it is want of courage.
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.
We few, we happy few, we band of brothers; / For he to-day that sheds his blood with me / Shall be my brother.
We shall go on to the end, we shall fight in France, we shall fight on the seas and oceans, we shall fight with growing confidence and growing strength in the air, we shall defend our Island, whatever the cost may be, we shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender.
We suffer more often in imagination than in reality.
Where the mind is without fear and the head is held high; / Where knowledge is free;
You may write me down in history / With your bitter, twisted lies,