“Courage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear—not absence of fear.”
Courage Quotes
Draw strength from the bravest words ever spoken with powerful courage quotes. Whether facing fear or stepping into the unknown, these words will give you the boldness to act.
161 quotes · Page 1 of 7
“I learned that courage was not the absence of fear, but the triumph over it.”
Attribution note: Source disputed or unverified.
“A person who never made a mistake never tried anything new.”
Attribution note: Source disputed or unverified.
“Success is not final, failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts.”
“Owning our story and loving ourselves through that process is the bravest thing we'll ever do.”
“Courage starts with showing up and letting ourselves be seen.”
Attribution note: Source disputed or unverified.
Attribution note: Source disputed or unverified.
“Do not go where the path may lead, go instead where there is no path and leave a trail.”
“Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few.”
“Courage is not simply one of the virtues, but the form of every virtue at the testing point.”
“We realize the importance of our voices only when we are silenced.”
“If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster and treat those two impostors just the same.”
“Our doubts are traitors, and make us lose the good we oft might win, by fearing to attempt.”
About courage quotes
Almost every writer who has thought seriously about courage arrives at the same conclusion: it is not the absence of fear. Mark Twain called it “resistance to fear, mastery of fear.” Nelson Mandela, in Long Walk to Freedom, wrote that courage “was not the absence of fear, but the triumph over it.” C.S. Lewis described it as “the form of every virtue at the testing point.”
Others describe how courage is built. Eleanor Roosevelt said we gain it “by every experience in which you really stop to look fear in the face.” Brené Brown says it starts with showing up and letting ourselves be seen. Winston Churchill called it the first of human qualities, because it guarantees all the others.
Frequently asked questions
- What did Mandela say about courage and fear?
- In Long Walk to Freedom (1994): “I learned that courage was not the absence of fear, but the triumph over it.”
- What is Mark Twain’s quote about courage?
- “Courage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear—not absence of fear,” from Pudd’nhead Wilson (1894).
- Who said “Do one thing every day that scares you”?
- It is usually credited to Eleanor Roosevelt, but it was written by columnist Mary Schmich in 1997. For a genuine Roosevelt line, see her quote on looking fear in the face from You Learn by Living.
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