At least once in our lives, we’ve heard stories of people who have shown courage —those who fought wars, brought social changes, or stood up for something good. People admire them for their courageous acts.
For some, however, being courageous is not as easy. It can be even more difficult because, often, people forget that courage is not always about these extravagant deeds.
Simple things can be acts of courage. From the smallest everyday decision making to significant financial risks, we can show courage.
Here are 118 inspirational courage quotes to remind us to have courage each day of our lives.
1. “Courage is the price that life exacts for granting peace.” – Amelia Earhart
2. “The best protection any woman can have… is courage.” – Elizabeth Cady Stanton
3. “Let who will boast their courage in the field, I find but little safety from my shield, Nature’s, not honour’s
law we must obey: This made me cast my useless shield away.” – Archilochus
4. “Courage is a mean with regard to fear and confidence.” – Aristotle
5. “Limit to courage? There is no limit to courage.” – Gabriele D’Annunzio
6. “Courage to be is the key to revelatory power of the feminist revolution.” – Mary Daly
7. “It takes courage to grow up and become who you really are.” – e. e. cummings
8. “Courage! I have shown it for years; think you I shall lose it at the moment when my sufferings are to end?” – Marie Antoinette
9. “Courage is the first of human qualities because it is the quality which guarantees the others.” – Aristotle
10. “Real courage is knowing what faces you and knowing how to face it.” – Timothy Dalton
11. “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
12. “To have courage for whatever comes in life – everything lies in that.” – Saint Teresa of Avila
13. “Courage is the most important of all the virtues, because without courage you can’t practice any other virtue consistently. You can practice any virtue erratically, but nothing consistently without courage.” – Maya Angelou
14. “He who is not courageous enough to take risks will accomplish nothing in life.” – Muhammad Ali
15. “Genius is talent set on fire by courage.” – Henry Van Dyke
16. “Courage follows action.” – Mack R. Douglas
17. “Ofttimes the test of courage becomes rather to live than to die.” – Vittorio Alfieri
18. “Often the test of courage is not to die but to live.” – Vittorio Alfieri
19. “To live we must conquer incessantly, we must have the courage to be happy.” – Henri Frederic Amiel
20. “Courage is the art of being the only one who knows you’re scared to death.” – Earl Wilson
21. “Then there is a still higher type of courage – the courage to brave pain, to live with it, to never let others know of it and to still find joy in life; to wake up in the morning with an enthusiasm for the day ahead.” – Howard Cosell
22. “Either life entails courage, or it ceases to be life.” – E. M. Forster
23. “You will never do anything in this world without courage. It is the greatest quality of the mind next to honor.” – Aristotle
24. “Courage is never to let your actions be influenced by your fears.” – Arthur Koestler
25. “Courage is simply the willingness to be afraid and act anyway.” – Robert Anthony
26. “Courage, my friends; ’tis not too late to build a better world.” – Tommy Douglas
27. “Courage is just fear, plus prayers, plus understanding.” – Edward Albert
28. “He who has faith has… an inward reservoir of courage, hope, confidence, calmness, and assuring trust
that all will come out well – even though to the world it may appear to come out most badly.” – B. C. Forbes
29. “Courage enlarges, cowardice diminishes resources. In desperate straits the fears of the timid aggravate the dangers that imperil the brave.” – Christian Nestell Bovee
30. “I think that people need to have the courage of their convictions and not be trying to fool people into thinking that they’ve changed overnight.” – Chris Bell
31. “Courage is rightly esteemed the first of human qualities… because it is the quality which guarantees all others.” – Winston Churchill
32. “Success is not final, failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts.” – Winston Churchill
33. “Although the war in which you fought took place more than half-a-century ago, your courage, your sacrifice and your patriotism reaches through the decades and inspires us today.” – Mike Ferguson
34. “Courage: Great Russian word, fit for the songs of our children’s children, pure on their tongues, and free.” – Anna Akhmatova
35. “You don’t develop courage by being happy in your relationships everyday. You develop it by surviving difficult times and challenging adversity.” – Epicurus
36. “All of us have moments in out lives that test our courage. Taking children into a house with a white carpet is one of them.” – Erma Bombeck
37. “Courage, above all things, is the first quality of a warrior.” – Karl Von Clausewitz
38. “The man who has the courage of his platitudes is always a successful man.” – Van Wyck Brooks
39. “It takes a lot of courage to show your dreams to someone else.” – Erma Bombeck
40. “All our dreams can come true, if we have the courage to pursue them.” – Walt Disney
41. “Every day begins with an act of courage and hope: getting out of bed.” – Mason Cooley
42. “True courage is a result of reasoning. A brave mind is always impregnable.” – Jeremy Collier
43. “My great hope is to laugh as much as I cry; to get my work done and try to love somebody and have the courage to accept the love in return.” – Maya Angelou
44. “You have to really be courageous about your instincts and your ideas. Otherwise you’ll just knuckle under, and things that might have been memorable will be lost.” – Francis Ford Coppola
45. “It is a wise man who knows where courage ends and stupidity begins.” – Jerome Cady
46. “To persevere, trusting in what hopes he has, is courage in a man.” – Euripides
47. “I know that if I’d had to go and take an exam for acting, I wouldn’t have got anywhere. You don’t take exams for acting, you take your courage.” – Dame Edith Evans
48. “The most courageous act is still to think for yourself. Aloud.” – Coco Chanel
49. “The paradox of courage is that a man must be a little careless of his life even in order to keep it.” – Gilbert K. Chesterton
50. “History, despite its wrenching pain, cannot be unlived, but if faced with courage, need not be lived again.” – Maya Angelou
51. “Courage is fire, and bullying is smoke.” – Benjamin Disraeli
52. “Courage is rightly esteemed the first of human qualities – because it is the quality which guarantees all others.” – Joseph Chamberlain
53. “He who loses wealth loses much; he who loses a friend loses more; but he that loses his courage loses all.” – Miguel de Cervantes
54. “To dare to live alone is the rarest courage; since there are many who had rather meet their bitterest enemy in the field, than their own hearts in their closet.” – Charles Caleb Colton
55. “Physical courage, which despises all danger, will make a man brave in one way; and moral courage, which despises all opinion, will make a man brave in another.” – Charles Caleb Colton
56. “It requires more courage to suffer than to die.” – Napoleon Bonaparte
57. “The courage of very ordinary people is all that stands between us and the dark.” – Pam Brown
58. “Until the day of his death, no man can be sure of his courage.” – Jean Anouilh
59. “Way down deep, we’re all motivated by the same urges. Cats have the courage to live by them.” – Jim Davis
60. “Man cannot discover new oceans unless he has the courage to lose sight of the shore.” – Lord Chesterfield
61. “It takes a lot of courage to release the familiar and seemingly secure, to embrace the new. But there is no real security in what is no longer meaningful. There is more security in the adventurous and exciting, for in movement there is life, and in change there is power.” – Alan Cohen
62. “Men make history and not the other way around. In periods where there is no leadership, society stands still. Progress occurs when courageous, skillful leaders seize the opportunity to change things for the better.” – Harry S. Truman
63. “Those who are rooted in the depths that are eternal and unchangeable and who rely on unshakeable principles, face change full of courage, courage based on faith.” – Emily Greene Balch
64. “Our democracy poses problems and these problems must and shall be solved by courageous leadership.” – Charles Edison
65. “In fact, my courage and my bravery at a young age was the thing I was bullied for, a kind of ‘Who do you think you are?’” – Lady Gaga
66. “But steel bars have never yet kept out a mob; it takes something a good deal stronger: human courage backed up by the consciousness of being right.” – Ray Stannard Baker
67. “Courage is like love; it must have hope for nourishment.” – Napoleon Bonaparte
68. “I have reached the conclusion that those who have physical courage also have moral courage. Physical courage is a great test.” – Oriana Fallaci
69. “It is a blessed thing that in every age some one has had the individuality enough and courage enough to stand by his own convictions.” – Robert Green Ingersoll
70. “Keep courage. Whatever you do, do not feel sorry for yourself. You will win in a great age of opportunity.” – Richard L. Evans
71. “Those who lack the courage will always find a philosophy to justify it.” – Albert Camus
72. “One isn’t necessarily born with courage, but one is born with potential. Without courage, we cannot practice any other virtue with consistency. We can’t be kind, true, merciful, generous, or honest.” – Maya Angelou
73. “Yes, you must have the courage of being free.” – Jose Carreras
74. “We have a powerful potential in out youth, and we must have the courage to change old ideas and practices so that we may direct their power toward good ends.” – Mary McLeod Bethune
75. “You can’t test courage cautiously.” – Annie Dillard
76. “Courage is what it takes to stand up and speak; courage is also what it takes to sit down and listen.” – Winston Churchill
77. “Our situation today shows that beauty demands for itself at least as much courage and decision as do truth and goodness, and she will not allow herself to be separated and banned from her two sisters without taking them along with herself in an act of mysterious vengeance.” – Hans Urs von Balthasar
78. “To dare to live alone is the rarest courage since there are many who had rather meet their bitterest enemy in the field, than their own hearts in their closet.” – Charles Caleb Colton
79. “Courage that grows from constitution often forsakes a man when he has occasion for it; courage which arises from a sense of duty acts; in a uniform manner.” – Joseph Addison
80. “Courage ought to have eyes as well as arms.” – H. G. Bohn
81. “The courage we desire and prize is not the courage to die decently, but to live manfully.” – Thomas Carlyle
82. “I’ll know how to die with courage; that is easier than living.” – Georg Buchner
83. “Necessity does the work of courage.” – Nicholas M. Butler
84. “Men who live valiantly and die nobly have a strength and a courage from the eternal Father.” – Josephus Daniels
85. “Such decisions will be far reaching and difficult. But you never lacked courage in the past. Your courage is now needed for the future.” – Gerry Adams
86. “To bathe a cat takes brute force, perseverance, courage of conviction – and a cat. The last ingredient is usually hardest to come by.” – Stephen Baker
87. “Every man has his own courage, and is betrayed because he seeks in himself the courage of other persons.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson
88. “A great part of courage is the courage of having done the thing before.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson
89. “Healing takes courage, and we all have courage, even if we have to dig a little to find it.” – Tori Amos
90. “A man of courage is also full of faith.” – Marcus Tullius Cicero
91. “Wisdom, compassion, and courage are the three universally recognized moral qualities of men.” – Confucius
92. “There is in true beauty, as in courage, something which narrow souls cannot dare to admire.” – William Congreve
93. “It often takes more courage to change one’s opinion than to keep it.” – Willy Brandt
94. “It takes a certain courage and a certain greatness to be truly base.” – Jean Anouilh
95. “I beg you take courage; the brave soul can mend even disaster.” – Catherine II
96. “My mother taught me about the power of inspiration and courage, and she did it with a strength and a passion that I wish could be bottled.” – Carly Fiorina
97. “You will find as you grow older that courage is the rarest of all qualities to be found in public life.” – Benjamin Disraeli
98. “It is only necessary to have courage, for strength without self-confidence is useless.” – Giacomo Casanova
99. “The really courageous and bold thing is to make movies about human behaviour.” – Laura Dern
100. “Courage and grace are a formidable mixture. The only place to see it is in the bullring.” – Marlene Dietrich
101. “Falsehood is cowardice, the truth courage.” – Hosea Ballou
102. “Most of us have far more courage than we ever dreamed we possessed.” – Dale Carnegie
103. “Is he alone who has courage on his right hand and faith on his left hand?” – Charles Lindbergh
104. “Every man of courage is a man of his word.” – Pierre Corneille
105. “The word courage – God, I love that word. Words are so important to me.” – Peter Fonda
106. “Courage is almost a contradiction in terms. It means a strong desire to live taking the form of
readiness to die.” – Gilbert K. Chesterton
107. “It takes a lot of courage to release the familiar and seemingly secure, to embrace the new. But there is no real security in what is no longer meaningful. There is more security in the adventurous and exciting, for in movement there is life, and in change there is power.” – Alan Cohen
108. “The courage to imagine the otherwise is our greatest resource, adding color and suspense to all our life.” – Daniel J. Boorstin
109. “Courage and perseverance have a magical talisman, before which difficulties disappear and obstacles vanish into air.” – John Quincy Adams
110. “Cowardice and courage are never without a measure of affectation. Nor is love. Feelings are never true. They play with their mirrors.” – Jean Baudrillard
111. “I have no physical courage, I’ve asked for a double.” – Catherine Deneuve
112. “We have a powerful potential in out youth, and we must have the courage to change old ideas and practices so that we may direct their power toward good ends.” – Mary McLeod Bethune
113. “Being gifted needs courage.” – Georg Brandes
114. “Nothing gives a fearful man more courage than another’s fear.” – Umberto Eco
115. “People don’t follow titles, they follow courage.” – William Wells Brown
116. “The kind of beauty I want most is the hard-to-get kind that comes from within – strength, courage, dignity.” – Ruby Dee
117. “We need to find the courage to say NO to the things and people that are not serving us if we want to rediscover ourselves and live our lives with authenticity.” – Barbara de Angelis
118. “My mother taught me that we all have the power to achieve our dreams. What I lacked was the courage.” – Clay Aiken
