Buck up, Your Highness -
or, Gird up Your Loins
Courage is Everything
The following is about the virtue that’s like air – you lose it and you die (inside). I was inspired just writing it down. This stuff beamed off the computer screen into my soul. Words have power- like a hunk of buttered hot bread to a starving man, a window carved into a cell, a thick feather bed on a freezing night. If you scroll away now, you’re leaving all your money on the table. Stay rich and read…
Courage is rightly esteemed the first of human qualities because … it is the quality which guarantees all others." - Winston Churchill
“...ultimately, if none of the girls competed, it would end this attack on women’s sports and indeed on women,” he said. “But people don’t fight. That’s human nature. Courage is the rarest of the good human traits. Honesty is more common. Loyalty is more common. Kindness is more common. Courage is the rarest. But without courage, we’re doomed”. - Dennis Prager” (a man with the backbone to stand up and out and be attacked right left and left.! As a favorite target of some “new liberal” Democrats, Prager amiably aims back, and you REALLY need to view some Prager U video shorts with an open mind before you write him off. I value and agree with a lot of his ideas. And I’m definitely NOT a racist white supremacist anti-clean air neo-Nazi tyrannical violence-spewing maniac, like his supporters are “fondly” described. In fact, I’ve never even met anyone like that – have YOU?)
“It is curious that physical courage should be so common in the world and moral courage so rare.” – Mark Twain
“My relations to my father help to explain (I am not suggesting that they excuse) one of the worst acts of my life. I allowed myself to be prepared for confirmation, and confirmed, and to make my first Communion, in total disbelief, acting a part, eating and drinking my own condemnation. As Johnson points out, where courage is not, no other virtue can survive except by accident. Cowardice drove me into hypocrisy and hypocrisy into blasphemy...I knew very well that I was acting a lie with the greatest possible solemnity.” - C.S. Lewis
To Know what is right and do it not
“To see what is right and not do it, is the want of courage.” – Confucius (Not acting on what we know to be right can also be due to lack of time and/or resources - in my borderline-humble opinion. If I had a staff, a huge budget, and a wand, I could do lots of good.) (So say lots of politicians? As they cast lots for spoils?)!
“Courage is what it takes to stand up and speak. Courage is also what it takes to sit down and listen.” – Winston Churchill
• "One ought never to turn one's back on a threatened danger and try to run away from it. If you do that, you will double the danger. But if you meet it promptly and without flinching, you will reduce the danger by half." - Churchill
"If you will not fight for right when you can easily win without blood shed; if you will not fight when your victory is sure and not too costly; you may come to the moment when you will have to fight with all the odds against you and only a precarious chance of survival. There may even be a worse case. You may have to fight when there is no hope of victory, because it is better to perish than to live as slaves. - Winston Churchill
“A great leader’s courage … comes from passion, not position.” – John Maxwell (The passion being what makes him great)
“It’s not the size of the dog in the fight; it’s the size of the fight in the dog.” —Mark Twain
You have enemies? Good. It means you’ve stood up for something, sometime in your life. - Churchill
“When the eagles are silent, the parrots begin to jabber.” - Churchill
"It is wonderful what great strides can be made when there is a resolute purpose behind them." - Churchill
"There is only one duty, only one safe course, and that is to try to be right and not to fear to do or say what you believe to be right." - Churchill
“Success is not final, failure is not fatal, it is the courage to continue that counts.” - Churchill
"This is the lesson: never give in, never give in, never, never, never, never -- in nothing, great or small, large or petty -- never give in except to convictions of honour and good sense. Never yield to force; never yield to the apparently overwhelming might of the enemy." - Winston Churchill
“If you have an important point to make, don’t try to be subtle or clever. Use a pile driver. Hit the point once. Then come back and hit it again. Then hit it a third time-a tremendous whack.” - Winston Churchill
ok, so that’s the end of our Churchill quotes… Churchill, who committed both spectacular mistakes (which brought him grief) as well as more spectacular triumphs in living courageously and fighting the evils of Nazism.
“The secret to happiness is freedom … and the secret to freedom is courage.” —Thucydides
The most courageous act is still to think for yourself. Aloud.” —Coco Chanel
You will never do anything in this world without courage. It is the greatest quality of the mind next to honor.” —Aristotle
“Courage isn’t having the strength to go on—it is going on when you don’t have strength.” —Napoleon Bonaparte
“Real courage is when you know you’re licked before you begin, but you begin anyway and see it through no matter what.” —Harper Lee
“One man with courage is a majority.” —Thomas Jefferson
“Like timidity, bravery is also contagious.” —Premchand
“Ye are the salt of the earth; but if the salt have lost his savor, wherewith shall it be salted? It is thenceforth good for nothing, but to be cast out, and to be trodden under foot of men. Ye are the light of the world. A city that is set on an hill cannot be hid. Neither do men light a candle, and put it under a bushel, but on a candlestick; and it giveth light unto all that are in the house. Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works, and glorify your Father which is in heaven.” Philippians 2: 12-18 (Christian Bible, King James version)
“He is a man of courage who does not run away but remains at his post and fights against the enemy.” —Socrates
“Cowards are cruel, but the brave love mercy and delight to save.” —John Gay
“From caring comes courage.” —Lao Tzu
“There are two ways to get power: by building something or by destroying something. Cowards seek to destroy.” Craig Nakken in Finding Your Moral Compass
“Moral excellence comes about as a result of habit. We become just by doing just acts, temperate by doing temperate acts, brave by doing brave acts.”– ARISTOTLE
A brave man is a man who dares to look the devil in the face and tell him he is a devil.” —James A. Garfield
Scared is what you’re feeling. Brave is what you’re doing.” —Emma Donoghue
“I beg you take courage; the brave soul can mend even disaster.” —Catherine the Great
“It takes a great deal of bravery to stand up to our enemies but just as much to stand up to our friends.” —J.K. Rowling
Don’t let the noise of others’ opinions drown out your own inner voice.” – BILL GEORGE
Conscience is the root of all true courage; if a man would be brave let him obey his conscience.” –JAMES FREEMAN CLARK
There are no limits. There are only plateaus, and you must not stay there, you must go beyond them.” – BRUCE LEE
“ The best way out is always through.” –ROBERT FROST
“Until you have done something for humanity, you should be ashamed to die.” –HORACE MANN
“You cannot swim for new horizons until you have courage to lose sight of the shore.” –WILLIAM FAULKNER
“The best protection any woman can have … is courage.” —Elizabeth Cady Stanton (AND, many would add, self defense moves and a safe, trained, legal 2nd Amendment “equalizer” – or else a couple of protective pit bulls with body armor)
“The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.” -
Edmund Burke
“The opposite of courage is not cowardice; it is conformity. Even a dead fish can go with the flow.” —Jim Hightower
Moral: Don’t be a dead fish passively washed away with the common flow, but a live one fighting upstream to lay eggs of greatness and NOT die, but live forever. A fish called Courage!! (Not to spoil your next salmon dinner or anything.)
Seize courage, fight evil, and be great.