This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Muriel James and Dorothy Jongeward
It takes courage to experience the freedom that comes with autonomy, courage to accept intimacy and directly encounter other persons, courage to take a stand in an unpopular cause, courage to choose authenticity over approval and to choose it again and again, courage to accept the responsibility for your own choices, and, indeed, courage to be the unique person you really are.
Authenticity | Cause | Courage | Experience | Freedom | Responsibility | Unique | Approval |
Hope awakens courage. He who can implant courage in the human soul is the best physician.
Moral courage, the courage of one’s convictions, the courage to see things through. The world is in a constant conspiracy against the brave. It’s the age-old struggle – the roar of the crowd on one side and the voice of your conscience on the other.
Age | Conscience | Conspiracy | Convictions | Courage | Struggle | World |
This is the essence of humanism: we have the privilege and responsibility to consider deep questions and to courageously bear the answers and the difficulty in finding solid answers. In doing so, one can aspire to one’s chosen values, and hopefully find fulfillment in the process.
Difficulty | Fulfillment | Responsibility | Privilege |
The future belongs to those who fuse intelligence with faith, and who with courage and determination grope their way forward from chance to choice, from blind adaptation to creative evolution.
Chance | Choice | Courage | Determination | Evolution | Faith | Future | Intelligence |
Helmuth von Moltke the Elder, fully Helmuth Karl Bernhard Graf von Molke
Eternal peace is a dream, and not even a beautiful one. War is a part of God’s world order. In it are developed the noblest virtues of man: courage and abnegation, dutifulness and self-sacrifice. Without war the world would sink into materialism.
Courage | Eternal | God | Man | Materialism | Order | Peace | Sacrifice | Self | Self-sacrifice | War | World |
The only idea man can affix to the name of God is that of a first cause, the cause of all things. Incomprehensible and difficult as it is for a man to conceive what a first cause is, he arrives at the belief of it from the tenfold greater difficulty of disbelieving it.
There are three kinds of “honest” people: those who are dishonest but whose dishonest remains undetected; those who have stopped being dishonest because their fortunes are already made; and finally all those who would like to be dishonest, but who lack the courage or the opportunity.
Courage | Opportunity | People |
Everyone likes to think that they have done reasonably well in life, so that it comes as a shock to find our children believing differently. The temptation is to tune them out; it takes much more courage to listen.
Children | Courage | Life | Life | Temptation | Temptation | Think |
Eddie Rickenbacker, formally Edward Vernon "Eddie" Rickenbacker
Courage is doing what you're afraid to do. There can be no courage unless you're scared.
Seven common obstacles that people seem to face in living their best lives: (1) Have difficulty putting themselves first. (2) Their schedule does not reflect their priorities. (3) They feel drained by certain people or things. (4) Feel trapped for monetary reasons. (5) Living on adrenalin. (6) Don’t have a supportive community in their life. (7) Their spiritual well-being comes last.
Difficulty | Life | Life | People |
E. F. Schumacher, fully Ernst Friedrich "Fritz" Schumacher
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.
Faith, then, is a quality of human living. At its best it has taken the form of serenity and courage and loyalty and service; a quiet confidence and joy which enable one to feel at home in the universe, and to find meaning in the world and in one’s own life, a meaning that is profound and ultimate, and is stable no matter what may happen to oneself at the level of immediate event. Men and women of this kind of faith face catastrophe and confusion, affluence and sorrow, unperturbed; face opportunity with conviction and drive; and face others with cheerful charity.
Charity | Confidence | Courage | Faith | Joy | Life | Life | Loyalty | Loyalty | Meaning | Men | Opportunity | Quiet | Serenity | Service | Sorrow | Universe | World |
The President must have not only the courage of his convictions but also the courage to change his convictions.
Change | Convictions | Courage |