Top 100 Quotes About Moral Courage
#1. It isn't the absence of conscience or values that prevents us from being all we should be, it is simply the lack of moral courage.
Michael Josephson
#2. When moral courage feels that it is in the right, there is no personal daring of which it is incapable.
Leigh Hunt
#3. The very ones whose social pressure cause you to compromise will despise you for it. They probably respect your convictions,
and many of them wish they had the moral stamina to stand alone.
May the Lord give you added courage to be a witness for Him,
even in a hard place.
Billy Graham
#4. Why is it that, among men, physical courage is a trait so plenteous yet moral courage is a trait so rare?
Mark Twain
#5. It is not the function of religion to answer all the questions about God's moral government of the universe, but to give us courage through faith to go on in the face of questions to which we find no answer in our present status.
Harold B. Lee
#6. Wisdom, compassion, and courage are the three universally recognized moral qualities of men.
Confucius
#7. The face of sin today often wears the mask of tolerance. Do not be deceived; behind that facade is heartache, unhappiness and pain.. YOU be the one to make a stand for right, even if you stand alone. Have the moral courage to be a light for others to follow.
Thomas S. Monson
#8. Be faithful to that which exists within yourself.
Andre Gide
#9. It takes moral courage to grieve; it requires religious courage to rejoice.
Soren Kierkegaard
#10. There's some wisdom and no moral deficiency to one who holds courage in reserve and uses it as a last resort. Before we take the kind of risks that require courage, we ought to exhaust other less risky alternatives.
Michael Josephson
#11. May what I do flow from me like a river, no forcing and no holding back, the way it is with children.
Rainer Maria Rilke
#12. A man of great common sense and good taste, meaning thereby a man without originality or moral courage.
George Bernard Shaw
#13. Have the moral courage to stand firm in obeying God's will, even if you have to stand alone.
Ulisses Soares
#14. If there is anything that links the human to the divine, it is the courage to stand by a principle when everybody else rejects it.
Abraham Lincoln
#15. Here is the rule of thumb: if you aren't giving anything up, it isn't moral and it isn't courage. Stumbles, sacrifices, inner struggle, false starts and wrong turns, conflict with parents and peers-these are some of the signs of the genuine article The way you know it's real is if it hurts.
William Deresiewicz
#16. We need men with moral courage to speak and write their real thoughts, and to stand by their convictions, even to the very death.
Robert Green Ingersoll
#17. If we emphasize the life and works of our greatest contributors ... people will come to realize that moral courage is bravery of the highest type, and America will be called the "Champion of Peace."
Spark Matsunaga
#18. Never do a wrong thing to make a friend
or to keep one.
Robert E.Lee
#19. There are not enough morally brave men in stock. We are out of moral-courage material; we are in a condition of profound poverty.
Mark Twain
#20. Goodness is about character - integrity, honesty, kindness, generosity, moral courage, and the like. More than anything else, it is about how we treat other people.
Dennis Prager
#21. Few things are more damaging to our democracy than a military officer who doesn't have the moral courage to stand up for what's right or the moral fiber to step aside when circumstances dictate.
Michael Mullen
#22. The challenge is to resist circumstances. Any idiot can be happy in a happy place, but moral courage is required to be happy in a hellhole.
Joyce Carol Oates
#23. When a heavy weight presses the soul to the lowest level at which endurance is possible, there is an instant and desperate effort of every physical and moral nerve to throw off the weight; and hence the heaviest anguish often precedes a return tide of joy and courage.
Harriet Beecher Stowe
#24. Moral courage is higher and a rarer virtue than physical courage.
William Slim
#25. While President Bush likes to project an image of strength and courage, the real truth is that in the presence of his large financial contributors, he is a moral coward.
Al Gore
#26. No matter how brilliant a man may be, he will never engender confidence in his subordinates and associates if he lacks simple honesty and moral courage.
J. Lawton Collins
#27. The price paid for intellectual pacification is the sacrifice of the entire moral courage of the human mind.
John Stuart Mill
#28. The public is tired of politicians professing certain beliefs and not acting on those beliefs. They want elected officials who have the moral courage to do what they will say they will do when they're running for election.
Colonel Tom Parker
#29. When will our consciences grow so tender that we will act to prevent human misery rather than avenge it?
Eleanor Roosevelt
#30. Knowing what's right doesn't mean much unless you do what's right.
Theodore Roosevelt
#31. We need justice. We need toleration, honesty and moral courage. These are modern virtues without which we cannot hope to control the forces science has let loose among us.
I. A. R. Wylie
#32. When the economic well-being of their nation demanded a strong and creative response, my colleagues at the Federal Reserve ... mustered the moral courage to do what was necessary.
Ben Bernanke
#33. When I today ask myself whence I got the moral courage, for it takes moral courage to make a move (or form a plan) running counter to all tradition, I think I may say in answer, that it was only my intense preoccupation with the problem of the blockade which helped me to do so.
Aron Nimzowitsch
#34. His moral courage led him to question a great wrong and refuse, backed by his men, to take part in a horrific slaughter of innocents, when other men, such as Harry Richmond, took advantage of being suddenly unfettered by conventional standards to do whatever the darkest side of human nature desired.
Tom Bensing
#36. Character, in the long run, is the decisive factor in the life of an individual and of nations alike.
Theodore Roosevelt
#37. To be original you must listen to the voice of your heart rather than the clamor of the world - and have the courage to teach publicly what you have learned. The source of all genius is sincerity; men would be wiser if they were more moral.
Ludwig Borne
#38. What is Moral Courage? It is the ability to distinguish right from wrong and having so distinguished it, be prepared to say so,irrespective of the views held by your superiors or subordinates and of consequences to yourself.
Sam Manekshaw
#39. Statements are made so plainly and positively that men have hardly the moral courage to pause upon them and find that they are without support.
G.K. Chesterton
#40. What a fine fellow is Quincey! I believe in my heart of hearts that he suffered as much about Lucy's death as any of us, but he bore himself through it like a moral Viking. If America can go on breeding men like that, she will be a power in the world indeed.
Bram Stoker
#41. The moral courage required to hold a different view and to press it upon irritated readers or unsympathetic listeners remains everywhere in short supply.
Tony Judt
#43. All the things that make the character of an individual great, comes from the moral values he or she possesses. Those are the things that give such an individual, strength, vision, integrity, courage and understanding of how to behave toward others.
Ellen J. Barrier
#44. Integrity is the ability to stand by an idea.
Ayn Rand
#45. Bad judges, lousy cops, greedy lawyers, lazy prosecutors, mediocre teachers, and incompetent bureaucrats are inevitable. When they happen, they should be weeded out and sent back to school to learn something about moral courage and the Golden Rule.
Dennis McDougal
#46. A patriot must always be ready to defend his country against his government.
Edward Abbey
#47. Courage was America's watchword, but a courage of the body rather than of the soul - physical courage, not moral.
Mary Roberts Rinehart
#48. You may take my purse; but I cannot have my moral Self annihilated. The purse is any Highwayman's who might meet me with a loaded pistol: but the Self is mine and God my Maker's; it is not yours; and I will resist you to the death, and revolt against you ...
Thomas Carlyle
#49. It is a great thing to see physical courage, and greater still to see moral courage, but the greatest to see of all is spiritual courage; oh, to see a person who will stand true to the integrity of Jesus Christ no matter what he or she goes through!
Oswald Chambers
#50. Moral courage further demands that you assume the responsibility for your own acts.
Napoleon Hill
#51. I believe that courage is morally neutral. I can well imagine wicked people being brave and good people being timid or afraid. I don't consider it a moral virtue.
Susan Sontag
#52. Moral courage can be lonely indeed. People don't mind being trapped, as long as no one else is free. But stage a break, and everybody else begins to panic.
William Deresiewicz
#53. Every serious-minded person knows that a large part of the effort required in moral discipline consists in the courage needed to acknowledge the unpleasant consequences of one's past and present acts.
John Dewey
#54. Buzyness, however, is moral laziness because it involves refusing to live with courage and intentionality.
Dan B. Allender
#55. Discouragement is a moral state, a failure of heart; you treat it by taking courage, not Prozac.
David Gelernter
#56. The quality you most admire in a man? Courage moral and physical: 'anima' - the ability to think like a woman. Also a sense of the absurd.
The quality you most admire in a woman? Courage moral and physical: "anima" - the ability to visualize the mind and need of a man. Also a sense of the absurd.
Christopher Hitchens
#57. It doesn't take courage to kill someone,' Klaus said. 'It takes a severe lack of moral stamina.
Lemony Snicket
#58. None of us can hope to get anywhere without character, moral courage and the spiritual strength to accept responsibility.
Thomas Watson Jr.
#59. Little boldness is needed to assail the opinions and practices of notoriously wicked men; but to rebuke great and good men for their conduct, and to impeach their discernment, is the highest effort of moral courage.
William Lloyd Garrison
#60. Good men don't become legends," he said quietly.
"Good men don't need to become legends." She opened her eyes, looking up at him. "They just do what's right anyway.
Brandon Sanderson
#61. As for moral courage, it is very rare, he said, to find that kind found at 2 o'clock in the morning; that is to say, courage in the face of the unexpected.
Napoleon Bonaparte
#62. Everybody Moral courage is a virtue of higher cast and nobler origin than physical. It springs from a consciousness of virtue and renders a man, in the pursuit or defense of right, superior to the fear of reproach, opposition, or contempt.
Samuel Griswold Goodrich
#63. I believe that soldiers will bear me out in saying that both come in time of battle. I take it that the moral courage comes in going into the battle, and the physical courage in staying in.
Woodrow Wilson
#64. Moral courage is more a rare commodity than bravery in a battle or great intelligence.
John F. Kennedy
#65. Moral courage is the most valuable and usually the most absent characteristic in men
George S. Patton Jr.
#66. It is highly significant and indeed almost a rule, that moral courage has its source in such identification through one's own sensitivity with suffering of one's fellow human beings. (p. 16-17)
Rollo May
#67. As regards moral courage, then, it is not so much that the public schools support it feebly, as that they suppress it firmly.
G.K. Chesterton
#68. The one man other than my father who made the most lasting impression was an uncle, Serge B. Benson. He taught me in three different classes - but above all, he taught me lessons in moral, physical, and intellectual courage that I have tried to apply in later life.
Ezra Taft Benson
#69. Be with a leader when he is right, stay with him when he is still right, but, leave him when he is wrong.
Abraham Lincoln
#70. I would rather be a little nobody, then to be a evil somebody.
Abraham Lincoln
#71. Melodramas of moral courage provide satisfaction through the comforting fantasy that our own character would hold steady under the most extreme pressure of dreadful events. [But we must face] the painful awareness that in all likelyhood one's own character would not have stood firm.
Jonathan Shay
#72. I feel sorry for the man who has never known the bracing thrill of taking a stand and sticking to it fearlessly. Moral courage has rewards that timidity can never imagine. Like a shot of adrenaline, it floods the spirit with vitality
Billy Graham
#73. If we are to survive, we must have ideas, vision, and courage. These things are rarely produced by committees. Everything that matters in our intellectual and moral life begins with an individual confronting his own mind and conscience in a room by himself.
Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr.
#74. Through persistence, self-knowledge, prayer, commitment, optimism, a resolute trust in God and the building of your own personal moral strength, you can enjoy the blessings of a deeper faith and face the difficulties of life with courage and confidence.
Norman Vincent Peale
#77. At last an authentic voice from Saudi Arabia. Al-Mohaimeed has written a remarkable, rhythmic, genuine novel. Wolves of the Crescent Moon throbs with sensuality and moral courage, as if it didn't take place in a society that denies the tick of the heart.
Hanan Al-Shaykh
#78. Integrity is telling myself the truth. And honesty is telling the truth to other people.
Spencer Johnson
#79. I prefer to be true to myself, even at the hazard of incurring the ridicule of others, rather than to be false, and to incur my own abhorrence.
Frederick Douglass
#80. A rubbish word. One he hardly ever used. The word had no moral weight. A person didn't need courage for "nice." "Nice" called for no sacrifice, no strength of character. If only all he'd ever had to do was be nice . . .
Susan Elizabeth Phillips
#81. Physical courage, which despises all danger, will make a man brave in one way; and moral courage, which despises all opinion, will make a man brave in another.
Charles Caleb Colton
#82. Jesus wants to give you five things: extravagant compassion, moral clarity, sacrificial courage, persevering hope, and refreshing joy,
Gary Haugen
#83. The Christian is to take his place in society with moral courage to stand up for that which is right, just, and honorable.
Billy Graham
#84. What we dedicate today is not a memorial to war, rather it's a tribute to the physical and moral courage that makes heroes out of farm and city boys and that inspires Americans in every generation to lay down their lives for people they will never meet, for ideals that make life itself worth living.
Bob Dole
#85. Sports is a moral undertaking because it requires of participants, and it schools spectators in the appreciation of, noble things - courage, grace under pressure, sportsmanship.
George Will
#86. It is a tragedy that we live in a world where physical courage is so common, and moral courage is so rare.
Claude Monet
#87. A moral coward is one who is afraid to do what he thinks is right because others will disapprove or laugh. Remember that all men have their fears, but those who face their fears with dignity have courage as well.
Thomas S. Monson
#88. We knew no one man had killed the prophet. Rather, the combined weight of racism and an absence of moral courage had crushed him. A constitution ignored, laws denied, these were the weapons. America pulled the trigger.
Marita Golden
#89. It is curious that physical courage should be so common in the world and moral courage so rare.
Mark Twain
#90. The Romans rightly employed the same word (virtus) to designate courage, which is, in a physical sense, what the other is in a moral; the highest virtue of all being victory over ourselves.
Samuel Smiles
#91. If wisdom in government eludes us, perhaps courage could substitute-the moral courage to terminate mistakes.
Barbara Tuchman
#92. The only reason I'm in Hollywood is that I don't have the moral courage to refuse the money.
Marlon Brando
#93. Everything started as nothing.
Auliq Ice
#94. What do you believe reveals more about a man's character, his arrogance or his attempt to disguise it?
Aaron B. Powell
#96. Patience, that blending of moral courage with physical timidity.
Thomas Hardy
#97. I learned that moral courage is harder than physical courage.
Tim O'Brien
#98. A woman should have the ballot, because without this responsibility she cannot best develop her moral courage.
Jane Addams
#99. The truth won't set us free - until we develop the skills and the habit and the talent and the moral courage to use it.
Margaret Heffernan
#100. In America, the traditional routes to black identity have hardly been normal. Suicide (disappearance by imitation, or willed extinction), violence (hysterical religiosity, crime, armed revolt), and exemplary moral courage; none of these is normal.
June Jordan
