Quotes Index
Courage Quotes
“In the end, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends.” Martin Luther King Jr., “The Trumpet of Conscience”, 1967
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“We can easily forgive a child who is afraid of the dark; the real tragedy of life is when men are afraid of the light.” Plato
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“If we emphasize the life and works of our greatest contributors, people will come to realize that moral courage is bravery of the highest type, and America will be called the ‘Champion of Peace.’” Senator Spark Matsunaga
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“Find out just what people will quietly submit to, and you have found out the exact measure of injustice and wrong which will be imposed on them, and these will continue till they are resisted with either words or blows. The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppress.” Frederick Douglass, African-American slave, and later abolitionist.
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“A time comes when silence is betrayal.” Rev. Martin Luther King
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“When a cause comes along and you know in your bones that it is just, yet refuse to defend it—at that moment you begin to die. And I have never seen so many corpses walking around talking about justice.” - Mumia Abu-Jamal
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“Cowardice asks the question: is it safe? Expediency asks the question: is it politic? Vanity asks the question: is it popular? But conscience asks the question: is it right? And there comes a time when one must take a position that is neither safe, nor politic, nor popular- but one must take it simply because it is right.” Martin Luther King Jr. 1929-1968
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“Whatever you do, you need courage. Whatever course you decide upon, there is always someone to tell you that you are wrong. There are always difficulties arising that tempt you to believe your critics are right. To map out a course of action and follow it to an end requires some of the same courage that a soldier needs. Peace has its victories, but it takes brave men and women to win them.” Ralph Waldo Emerson
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“The greatest of fault, I should say, is to be conscious of none.” Robert Carlyle (1795-1881)
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“We are called to speak for the weak, for the voiceless, for victims of our nation and for those it calls enemy, for no document from human hands can make these humans any less our brothers.”
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“The moment we begin to fear the opinions of others and hesitate to tell the truth that is in us, and from motives of policy are silent when we should speak, the divine floods of light and life no longer flow into our souls.” Elizabeth Cady Stanton Biography, reformer, writer, lecturer, 1815-1902
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“When bad men combine, the good must associate; else they will fall one by one, an unpitied sacrifice in a contemptible struggle. All that is required for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing.” Sir Edmund Burke (1729-1797), Thoughts on the Cause of the Present Discontents, 1770
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“Let no man turn aside, ever so slightly, from the broad path of honour, on the plausible pretence that he is justified by the goodness of his end. All good ends can be worked out by good means.” Charles Dickens
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“DO NOT KEEP SILENT when your own ideas and values are being attacked. If a dictatorship ever comes to this country, it will be by the default of those who keep silent. We are still free enough to speak. Do we have time? No one can tell.” Ayn Rand, Philosophy: Who Needs It
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“When I tell the truth, it is not for the sake of convincing those who do not know it, but for the sake of defending those that do.” William Blake
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“In order to rally people, governments need enemies. They want us to be afraid, to hate, so we will rally behind them. And if they do not have a real enemy, they will invent one in order to mobilize us.” Thich Nhat Hanh, Vietnamese monk, activist and writer
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“The voice of protest, of warning, of appeal is never more needed than when the clamor of fife and drum, echoed by the press and too often by the pulpit, is bidding all men fall in and keep step and obey in silence the tyrannous word of command. Then, more than ever, it is the duty of the good citizen not to be silent.” Charles Eliot Norton
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“To sin by silence when they should protest makes cowards of men.” Abraham Lincoln: 16th U.S. president, 1809-1865
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“Never do anything against conscience even if the state demands it.” Albert Einstein
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“As long as the world shall last there will be wrongs, and if no man objected and no man rebelled, those wrongs would last forever.” Clarence Darrow