This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
If you are willing to reflect on the courage and moderation of other people, you will find them strange... they all consider death a great evil... and the brave among them face death, when they do, for fear of greater evils... therefore, it is fear and terror that make all men brave, except for philosophers. yet it is illogical to be brave through fear and cowardice...what of the moderate among them? is their experience not similar?... they master certain pleasures because they are mastered by others... I fear this is not the right exchange to attain virtue, to exchange pleasures for pleasures, pains for pains, and fears for fears, the greater for the less like coins, but that they only valid currency for which all these things should be exchanged is wisdom.
Courage | Death | Experience | Fear | Men | Moderation | Right | Terror | Will | Moderation |
Plautus, full name Titus Maccius Plautus NULL
Good courage in a bad affair is half of the evil overcome.
Plautus, full name Titus Maccius Plautus NULL
Courage is what preserves our liberty, safety, life, and our homes and parents, our country and children. Courage comprises all things.
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Now what could bring fear to a nature thus unreceptive of all the outer? Fear demands feeling. Nor is there place for courage: courage implies the presence of danger. And such desires as are satisfied by the filling or voiding of the body, must be proper to something very different from the Soul, to that only which admits of replenishment and voidance. And how could the Soul lend itself to any admixture? An essential is not mixed. Or of the intrusion of anything alien? If it did, it would be seeking the destruction of its own nature. Pain must be equally far from it. And Grief- how or for what could it grieve? Whatever possesses Existence is supremely free, dwelling, unchangeable, within its own peculiar nature. And can any increase bring joy, where nothing, not even anything good, can accrue? What such an Existent is, it is unchangeably.
Pope Leo XIII, born Vincenzo Gioacchino Raffaele Luigi Pecci NULL
Nothing emboldens the wicked so greatly as the lack of courage on the part of the good.
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Pope John Paul II, born Karol Józef Wojtyła, aka Saint John Paul the Great NULL
The saint is not a sinless man, without weakness, a man who is not subject to temptation, but the saint, someone who knows how to take God's hand, has the courage really to look at themselves and see their imperfections, but also have trust in God, in His mercy, and manages, despite its own weaknesses, themselves drawn from all the hidden beauty that is just a mirror image of divine beauty. Saint walking on very solid ground, struggling with various problems, struggling with his weakness, and yet full of hope.
Angela Merkel, fully Angela Dorothea Merkel, née Kasner
Overcoming the Cold War required courage from the people of Central and Eastern Europe and what was then the German Democratic Republic, but it also required the steadfastness of Western partner over many decades when many had long lost hope of integration of the two Germanys and Europe.
Courage | Hope | Integration | People | War |
Pope Pius X, aka Saint Pope Pius X and Pope of the Eucharist, born Giuseppe Melchiorre Sarto NULL
We take courage in Him Who strengthens Us; and setting Ourselves to work, relying on the power of God, We proclaim that we have no other program in the Supreme Pontificate… The desire for peace is harbored in every breast, and there is no one who does not ardently invoke it. But to want peace without God is an absurdity, seeing that where God is absent thence too justice flies, and when justice is taken away, it is vain to cherish the hope of peace. "Peace is the work of justice" (Is. 22:17). There are many, We are well aware, who, in their yearning for peace, that is, for the tranquility of order, band themselves into societies and parties, which they style parties of order. Hope and labor lost. For there is but one party of order capable of restoring peace in the midst of all this turmoil, and that is the party of God. It is this party, therefore, that We must advance.
Courage | Desire | God | Hope | Justice | Labor | Order | Peace | Power | Style | Work | God |
Fearlessness may be a gift but perhaps more precious is the courage acquired through endeavour, courage that comes from cultivating the habit of refusing to let fear dictate one's actions, courage that could be described as grace under pressure — grace which is renewed repeatedly in the face of harsh, unremitting pressure.
The wellspring of courage and endurance in the face of unbridled power is generally a firm belief in the sanctity of ethical principles combined with a historical sense that despite all setbacks the condition of man is set on an ultimate course for both spiritual and material advancement. It is his capacity for self-improvement and self-redemption which most distinguishes man from the mere brute. At the root of human responsibility is the concept of perfection, the urge to achieve it, the intelligence to find a path towards it, and the will to follow that path if not to the end at least the distance needed to rise above individual limitations and environmental impediments. It is man's vision of a world fit for rational, civilized humanity which leads him to dare and to suffer to build societies free from want and fear. Concepts such as truth, justice and compassion cannot be dismissed as trite when these are often the only bulwarks which stand against ruthless power.
Belief | Capacity | Compassion | Courage | Endurance | Humanity | Individual | Intelligence | Justice | Man | Power | Principles | Responsibility | Self-improvement | Sense | Vision | Will | World |
Barbara Ehrenreich, born Barbara Alexander
The very notion of personality, which is what we are trying to get at here, seems to have very limited application to me and quite possibly to everyone else. Self is another dodgy concept, since I am, when I subject this 'I' to careful inspection, not much more than a flickering of affinities, habits, memories, and predilections that could go either way- towards neediness or independence for example courage or cowardice.
Within a system which denies the existence of basic human rights, fear tends to be the order of the day. Fear of imprisonment, fear of torture, fear of death, fear of losing friends, family, property or means of livelihood, fear of poverty, fear of isolation, fear of failure. A most insidious form of fear is that which masquerades as common sense or even wisdom, condemning as foolish, reckless, insignificant or futile the small, daily acts of courage which help to preserve man's self-respect and inherent human dignity. It is not easy for a people conditioned by fear under the iron rule of the principle that might is right to free themselves from the enervating miasma of fear. Yet even under the most crushing state machinery courage rises up again and again, for fear is not the natural state of civilized man.
Common Sense | Courage | Existence | Fear | Means | Order | People | Property | Right | Rule | Sense | System |
We are, all of us, exploring a world none of us understands... searching for a more immediate, ecstatic, and penetrating mode of living... for the integrity, the courage to be whole, living in relation to one another in the full poetry of existence. The struggle for an integrated life existing in an atmosphere of communal trust and respect is one with desperately important political and social consequences... Fear is always with us, but we just don't have time for it.
Courage | Fear | Important | Life | Life | Poetry | Respect | Struggle | Time | Trust | World | Respect |
No matter what you think about the Iraq war, there is one thing we can all agree on for the next days - we have to salute the courage and bravery of those who are risking their lives to vote and those brave Iraqi and American soldiers fighting to protect their right to vote.
I have never looked upon ease and happiness as ends in themselves -- this critical basis I call the ideal of a pigsty. The ideals that have lighted my way, and time after time have given me new courage to face life cheerfully, have been Kindness, Beauty, and Truth. Without the sense of kinship with men of like mind, without the occupation with the objective world, the eternally unattainable in the field of art and scientific endeavors, life would have seemed empty to me. The trite objects of human efforts -- possessions, outward success, luxury -- have always seemed to me contemptible.
Art | Courage | Ends | Ideals | Life | Life | Luxury | Men | Occupation | Sense | Time | Art | Happiness |
Buckminster Fuller, fully Richard Buckminster "Bucky" Fuller
The courage to cooperate or initiate are based entirely on the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth as the divine mind within you tells you the truth is. It really does require a courage and a self-disciplining to go along with that truth.
Buckminster Fuller, fully Richard Buckminster "Bucky" Fuller
I have to say, I think that we are in some kind of final examination as to whether human beings now, with this capability to acquire information and to communicate, whether we're really qualified to take on the responsibility we're designed to be entrusted with. And this is not a matter of an examination of the types of governments, nothing to do with politics, nothing to do with economic systems. It has to do with the individual. Does the individual have the courage to really go along with the truth?
Capability | Courage | Individual | Nothing | Responsibility | Think |
R. W. Sellars, fully Roy Wood Sellars
But the humanist’s religion is the religion of one who says yea to life here and now, of one who is self-reliant and fearless, intelligent and creative. It is the religion of the will to power, of one who is hard on himself and yet joyous in himself. It is the religion of courage and purpose and transforming energy. Its motto is, ‘What hath man not wrought?’ … The religious man will now be he who seeks out causes to be loyal to, social mistakes to correct, wounds to heal, achievements to further.
Courage | Life | Life | Man | Purpose | Purpose | Religion | Will |
A system of ethics may be based either on fear or on love, but not on both. When based on fear, the letter of the law, as a rule, will be executed, but not its spirit. Because of fear, men may deal honestly with one another, but they will not necessarily be honest men, they may speak truthfully even and not be truthful. Fear develops a dual personality, one manifested in the presence of the object feared, the other, perhaps of extremely opposite tendencies, unfolded in the secret chamber of the heart. In a system of ethics based on fear, man is persuaded that he is weak and untrustworthy, that his nature is hopelessly corrupt, unable to master itself except at the lash of a Force lying outside himself. Man, it then would seem, is innately wicked ; his wickedness must be chained by threats of divine wrath and punishment ; he, of his own accord, would not walk in the path that is straight ; he must be forced into it by the gaps and ditches that are lurking dangerously outside this path. Such a system, in which man is convinced that he is unable to take care of himself, build his own character, merely tends to generate moral weakness and cowardice. A system of ethics based on love develops a unified personality, a oneness between thought and action. It enhances, more and more, the moral courage which is basic to man. Through love, man becomes conscious of the great force of goodness and virtue that lie within him. He knows that he is possessed of inherent goodness and godliness, if he knows that in himself is a spark of the divine, a force that makes for perfection. All he needs to do is to allow this divine spark to illuminate and permeate his whole being, and darkness and evil will disappear from his heart.
Care | Courage | Darkness | Ethics | Evil | Fear | Force | Love | Lying | Man | Men | Nature | Object | Oneness | Punishment | System | Thought | Virtue | Virtue | Weakness | Wickedness | Will | Thought |