This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
"Non-doing has nothing to do with being indolent or passive. Quite the contrary. It takes great courage and energy to cultivate non-doing, both in stillness and in activity. Nor is it easy to make a special time for non-doing and to keep at it in the face of everything in our lives which needs to be done." - Jon Kabat-Zinn
"Hope lies in dreams, in imagination, and in the courage of those who dare to make dreams into reality. " - Jonas Salk
"Renowned for conquest, and in council skilled, their courage dwells not in a troubled flood of mounting spirits, and fermenting blood: Lodged in the soul, with virtue overruled, inflamed by reason, and by reason cooled,in hours of peace content to be unknown. And only in the field of battle shown: To souls like these, in mutual friendship joined, Heaven dares intrust the cause of humankind." - Joseph Addison
"The conquest of the fear of death is the recovery of life's joy. One can experience an unconditional affirmation of life only when one has accepted death, not as contrary to life, but as an aspect of life. Life in its becoming is always shedding death, and on the point of death. The conquest of fear yields the courage of life. That is the cardinal initiation of every heroic adventure - fearlessness and achievement." - Joseph Campbell
"Leadership os communicating the company's Vision and Mission and having the courage to follow it. Companies that endure have a noble purpose." - Joseph Jaworski
"Leadership is communicating the company's Vision and Mission and having the courage to follow it. Companies that endure have a noble purpose." - Joseph Jaworski
"Each of us has an inner dream that we can unfold if we will just have the courage to admit what it is. And the faith to trust our own admission. The admitting is often very difficult." - Julia Cameron
"It takes constant vigilance not to slip into negativity or simple apathy. It takes courage to believe over any given period of time that we are getting better and not sliding into decline." - Julia Cameron
"Hope awakens courage. He who can implant courage in the human soul is the best physician." - Karl Ludwig von Knebel
"One of the marks of a gift is to have the courage of it." - Katherine Anne Porter, born Callie Russell Porter
"Without self-discovery, a person may still have self confidence, but it is a self confidence built on ignorance and it melts in the face of heavy burdens. Self discovery is the end product of a great challenge mastered, when the mind commands the body to do the seemingly impossible, when courage and strength are summoned to extraordinary limits for the sake of something outside the self--a principle, an onerous task, another human life." - Kurt Hahn, fully Kurt Martin "the rod" Hahn
"Countrymen, the task ahead is great indeed, and heavy is the responsibility; and yet it is a noble and glorious challenge - a challenge which calls for the courage to dream, the courage to believe, the courage to dare, the courage to do, the courage to envision, the courage to fight, the courage to work, the courage to achieve - to achieve the highest excellencies and the fullest greatness of man. Dare we ask for more in life?" - Kwame Nkrumah
"Responsibility of any kind can seem intimidating and for this reason man may often be afraid of truly deep relationships with other human beings. A relationship suggests to him the most extreme of responsibilities. It implies a burden, a restriction of freedom, seldom the converse. A student in love class, for instance, commented, “I’ve always been afraid of deep relationship because of the responsibility it seemed to impose. I was afraid of the demands it would make of me and I worried I wouldn’t be able to meet those demands. I was amazed to find that when I did get the courage to form a relationship, I actually became stronger. I acquired two minds instead of one, four hands, four arms, four legs, and another’s world. In joining forces with someone, I got twice the strength to grow, with twice as many alternatives. Now it’s easier for me to love others. I am stronger and I am less afraid.” He had discovered an important insight." - Leo Busacaglia
"The quest for this unwearied peace is constant and universal. Probe deeply into the teaching of Buddha, Maimonides, or a Kempis, and you will discover that they base their diverse doctrines on the foundation of a large spiritual serenity. Analyze the prayers of troubled, overborne mankind of all creeds, in every age--and their petitions come down to the irreducible common denominators of daily bread and inward peace. Grown men do not pray for vain trifles. When they lift up their hearts and voices in the valley of tears they ask for strength and courage and understanding. " -
"Courage to think is infinitely more rare than courage to act, and yet the danger in the first case is generally imaginary, in the last real." - Lord Brooke, Fulke Greville, 1st Baron Brooke, de jure 13th Baron Latimer and 5th Baron Willoughby de Brooke
"Man cannot discover new oceans unless he has the courage to lose sight of the shore." - Lord Chesterfield, Philip Dormer Stanhope, 4th Earl of Chesterfield
"No one likes having offended another person; hence everyone feels so much better if the other person doesn't show he's been offended. Nobody likes being confronted by a wounded spaniel. Remember that. It is much easier patiently -- and tolerantly -- to avoid the person you have injured than to approach him as a friend. You need courage for that." - Ludwig Wittgenstein, fully Ludwig Josef Johann Wittgenstein
"It is in the whole process of meeting and solving problems that life has meaning. Problems are the cutting edge that distinguishes between success and failure. Problems call forth our courage and our wisdom; indeed, they create our courage and our wisdom. It is only because of problems that we grow mentally and spiritually. It is through the pain of confronting and resolving problems that we learn." - M. Scott Peck, fully Morgan Scott Peck
"Despite current ads and slogans, the world doesn't change one person at a time. It changes when networks of relationships form among people who share a common cause and vision of what's possible. This is good news for those of us intent on creating a positive future. Rather than worry about critical mass, our work is to foster critical connections. We don't need to convince large numbers of people to change; instead, we need to connect with kindred spirits. Through these relationships, we will develop the new knowledge, practices, courage and commitment that lead to broad-based change." - Margaret J. Wheatley, aka Meg Wheatley
"Imagination does not become great until human beings, given the courage and the strength, use it to create." - Maria Montessori
"If you as parents cut corners, your children will too. If you lie, they will too. If you spend all your money on yourselves and tithe no portion of it for charities, colleges, churches, synagogues, and civic causes, your children won't either. And if parents snicker at racial and gender jokes, another generation will pass on the poison adults still have not had the courage to snuff out." - Marian Wright Edelman
"It is curious that physical courage should be so common in the world and moral courage so rare." - Mark Twain, pen name of Samuel Langhorne Clemens
"Courage doesn't always roar. Sometimes courage is the little voice at the end of the day that says I'll try again tomorrow. " - Mary Anne Radmacher
"The opportunity for greater courage comes in the most ordinary of moments. " - Mary Anne Radmacher
"Courage is confidence. No matter how dark night may be, courage always finds the light and the promise of a distant star. " - Mary Kay Ash, fully Mary Kathlyn Wagner Ash
"Often the difference between a successful man and a failure is not one's better abilities or ideas, but the courage that one has to bet on his ideas, to take a calculated risk, and to act." - Maxwell Maltz
"Have enough courage to trust love one more time and always one more time." - Maya Angelou, born Marguerite Annie Johnson
"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, born Marguerite Annie Johnson
"Touched by an Angel. We, unaccustomed to courage exiles from delight live coiled in shells of loneliness until love leaves its high holy temple and comes into our sight to liberate us into life. Love arrives and in its train come ecstasies old memories of pleasure ancient histories of pain. Yet if we are bold, love strikes away the chains of fear from our souls. We are weaned from our timidity In the flush of love's light we dare be brave And suddenly we see that love costs all we are and will ever be. Yet it is only love which sets us free." - Maya Angelou, born Marguerite Annie Johnson
"If we commit ourselves to one person for life, this is not, as many people think, a rejection of freedom; rather, it demands the courage to move into all the risks of freedom, and the risk of love which is permanent; into that love which is not possession but participation." - Madeleine L’Engle
"Ordinary people, even weak people, can do extraordinary things through temporary courage generated by a situation. But the person of character does not need the situation to generate his courage. It is a part of his being and a standard approach to all life's challenges. We’re all ethical in our own eyes. Although we are usually judged by our last worst act, we usually judge ourselves by our most noble deeds, our best intentions and our most virtuous traits. Character is not a fancy coat we put on for show, it’s who we really are." - Michael S. Josephson
"God grant me the serenity to accept the people I cannot change, the courage to change the one I can, and the wisdom to know it’s me." - Michael S. Josephson
"I don't feel that it is necessary to know exactly what I am. The main interest in life and work is to become someone else that you were not in the beginning. If you knew when you began a book what you would say at the end, do you think that you would have the courage to write it? What is true for writing and for a love relationship is true also for life. The game is worthwhile insofar as we don't know what will be the end. My field is the history of thought. Man is a thinking being." - Michel Foucault
"The only kind of courage that matters is the kind that gets you from one moment to the next." - Mignon McLaughlin
"He who loses wealth loses much; he who loses a friend loses more; but he that loses his courage loses all." - Miguel de Cervantes, fully Miguel de Cervantes Saaversa
"My soul has grown over the years, and some of my views have changed. As long as I am alive, I will continue to try to understand more because the work of the heart is never done. All through my life I have been tested. My will has been tested, my courage has been tested, my strength has been tested. Now my patience and endurance are being tested. Every step of the way I believe that God has been with me. And, more than ever, I know that he is with me now. I have learned to live my life one step, one breath, and one moment at a time, but it was a long road. I set out on a journey of love, seeking truth, peace and understanding. l am still learning." - Muhammad Ali, born Cassius Marcellus Clay, Jr.
"When a person enters into service of Hashem and sees it is so hard for him, and it seems as if they are distancing him from above and not allowing him at all to enter, he should know that all this feeling of being “distanced” is truthfully only his being “drawn near”. He must remain very very strong not to be discouraged even if many years of hard work go by and he still feels that he is very far and that he didn’t even begin to enter into the gates of holiness, for he sees that he is full of materialism, evil thoughts and the like, and every time he tries to do something holy it is so hard for him and all his crying and pleading with God seems to be going to waste… On all this he needs great courage not to pay attention to these delusions at all. Because all this “distancing”, in truth, is only his “drawing near”, and all the great tzaddikim had to go through this kind of experience before they reached their level." - Nachman of Breslov, aka Reb Nachman Breslover or Bratslav, Nachman from Uman NULL
"It requires more courage to suffer than to die." - Napoleon Bonaparte, Napoleon I
"The first virtue in a soldier is endurance of fatigue; courage is only the second virtue." - Napoleon Bonaparte, Napoleon I
"The subconscious mind makes no distinction between constructive and destructive thought impulses. It works with the material we feed it, through our thought impulses. The subconscious mind will translate into reality a thought driven by fear, just as readily as it will translate into reality a thought driven by courage or faith." - Napoleon Hill
"The music that inspires the souls of lovers exists within themselves and the private universe they occupy. They share it with each other; they do not share it with the tribe or with society. The courage to hear that music and to honor it is one of the prerequisites of romantic love." - Nathaniel Branden
"Innovators and creators are persons who can to a higher degree than average accept the condition of aloneness. They are more willing to follow their own vision, even when it takes them far from the mainland of the human community. Unexplored places do not frighten them- or not, at any rate, as much as they frighten those around them. This is one of the secrets of their power. That which we call "genius" has a great deal to do with courage and daring, a great deal to do with nerve." - Nathaniel Branden
"Happiness is not found in things you possess, but in what you have the courage to release." - Nathaniel Hawthorne
"I learned that courage was not the absence of fear, but the triumph over it. The brave man is not he who does not feel afraid, but he who conquers that fear." - Nelson Mandela, fully Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela