Mark TwainSourced
Courage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear — not absence of fear.
Source: Pudd'nhead Wilson, ch. 12 (1894)
Checked quotes about courage
26 quotes with a known source.
Mahatma GandhiSourced
Strength does not come from physical capacity. It comes from an indomitable will.
Source: "The Doctrine of the Sword", Young India (11 August 1920)
Friedrich NietzscheSourced
What does not destroy me, makes me stronger.
Source: Twilight of the Idols, "Maxims and Arrows" 8 (1888)
EpictetusSourced
If you would improve, be content to be thought foolish and stupid.
Source: Enchiridion 13
ConfuciusSourced
To see what is right, and not to do it, is want of courage.
Source: Analects 2.24, tr. James Legge
Ralph Waldo EmersonSourced
Trust thyself: every heart vibrates to that iron string.
Source: Self-Reliance (1841)
Leo TolstoySourced
The strongest of all warriors are these two — Time and Patience.
Source: War and Peace, Book 10 (1869) — said by General Kutuzov
Franz KafkaSourced
From a certain point onward there is no longer any turning back. That is the point that must be reached.
Source: Zürau Aphorisms, no. 5 (1917–18)
Winston ChurchillSourced
I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears and sweat.
Source: First speech as Prime Minister, House of Commons (13 May 1940)
Winston ChurchillSourced
We shall never surrender.
Source: "We shall fight on the beaches", House of Commons (4 June 1940)
OvidSourced
Be patient and tough; someday this pain will be useful to you.
Source: Amores III.11.7 ("Perfer et obdura; dolor hic tibi proderit olim")
VirgilSourced
Fortune favours the bold.
Source: Aeneid X.284 ("Audentes fortuna iuvat")
Alexander PopeSourced
Fools rush in where angels fear to tread.
Source: An Essay on Criticism (1711)
Immanuel KantSourced
Have courage to use your own understanding!
Source: "What is Enlightenment?" (1784) ("Sapere aude!")
Thomas PaineSourced
These are the times that try men's souls.
Source: The American Crisis, no. 1 (1776)
Emily BrontëSourced
No coward soul is mine.
Source: "No Coward Soul Is Mine" (1846)
John Stuart MillSourced
Bad men need nothing more to compass their ends, than that good men should look on and do nothing.
Source: Inaugural Address at the University of St Andrews (1867)
Rabindranath TagoreSourced
You cannot cross the sea merely by standing and staring at the water.
Source: Stray Birds, 129 (1916)
Theodore RooseveltSourced
It is not the critic who counts… The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena.
Source: "Citizenship in a Republic", Paris (23 April 1910)
Franklin D. RooseveltSourced
The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.
Source: First Inaugural Address (4 March 1933)
Nelson MandelaSourced
It is an ideal for which I am prepared to die.
Source: Statement from the dock, Rivonia Trial (20 April 1964)
Helen KellerSourced
Life is either a daring adventure or nothing.
Source: Let Us Have Faith (1940)
Eleanor RooseveltSourced
You gain strength, courage and confidence by every experience in which you really stop to look fear in the face.
Source: You Learn by Living (1960)
Marie CurieAttributed
Nothing in life is to be feared, it is only to be understood.
Source: Attributed in later collections; no original source located
Ernest HemingwaySourced
The world breaks every one and afterward many are strong at the broken places.
Source: A Farewell to Arms, ch. 34 (1929)
Tomáš Garrigue MasarykAttributed
Don't be afraid and don't steal.
Source: His famous summary of good government ("Nebát se a nekrást")
Famous, but not theirs
Quotes about courage that are usually credited to the wrong person.
Mark TwainNot theirs
Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things you didn't do than by the ones you did do.
Actually: From H. Jackson Brown's book P.S. I Love You (1990), where it is credited to Brown's mother. Twain died in 1910.
Mahatma GandhiNot theirs
First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win.
Actually: No record of Gandhi saying it. A close version appears in a 1918 speech by US union organiser Nicholas Klein.
Ralph Waldo EmersonNot theirs
Do not go where the path may lead, go instead where there is no path and leave a trail.
Actually: Closest early version is by the poet Muriel Strode (1903): "I will not follow where the path may lead, but I will go where there is no path, and I will leave a trail."
Henry David ThoreauMisquoted
Go confidently in the direction of your dreams! Live the life you've imagined.
The real words: Poster version of Walden's Conclusion: "if one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours."
Winston ChurchillMisquoted
Never, never, never give up.
The real words: At Harrow School (29 October 1941) he said: "never give in, never give in, never, never, never, never — in nothing, great or small…"
Winston ChurchillNot theirs
Success is not final, failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts.
Actually: Quote Investigator found the earliest close version in a 1938 Budweiser advertisement.
Winston ChurchillNot theirs
If you're going through hell, keep going.
Actually: No evidence Churchill said or wrote it; the Churchill Project lists it as spurious.
Dante AlighieriNot theirs
The hottest places in hell are reserved for those who, in times of great moral crisis, maintain their neutrality.
Actually: Popularised by John F. Kennedy, who credited Dante. The Inferno does put the neutral in Hell's vestibule, but this sentence is not in the poem.
Johann Wolfgang von GoetheMisquoted
Whatever you can do, or dream you can, begin it. Boldness has genius, power and magic in it.
The real words: A very free paraphrase of Faust by John Anster (1835), made famous by mountaineer W. H. Murray in 1951. Goethe's text says nothing like it.
Edmund BurkeNot theirs
The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.
Actually: Not found in Burke. The closest real lines are his "When bad men combine, the good must associate" (1770) and John Stuart Mill's 1867 "Bad men need nothing more… than that good men should look on and do nothing."
Nelson MandelaNot theirs
Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure.
Actually: Marianne Williamson, A Return to Love (1992). Mandela never used it in his 1994 inaugural speech, despite the legend.
Eleanor RooseveltNot theirs
Do one thing every day that scares you.
Actually: Mary Schmich, "Wear Sunscreen" column, Chicago Tribune (1997).
Galileo GalileiNo source found
And yet it moves.
The trail: First printed in 1757, more than a century after his trial. No contemporary records it.
Martin LutherNo source found
Here I stand, I can do no other.
The trail: Printed in early editions of his speech at Worms (1521), but not in the transcripts of the hearing; he may never have said it.
Marilyn MonroeNot theirs
Well-behaved women seldom make history.
Actually: Historian Laurel Thatcher Ulrich, in an academic article (1976).