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TODAY’S TONIC: Courage is often defined not as the absence of fear By Bishop Duke Akamisoko

December 3, 2024

Courage is often defined not as the absence of fear — but the ability to confront fear head-on. It’s about facing uncertainty, danger, or adversity with strength and resolve, whether it’s in the form of small, everyday acts or significant, life-changing decisions.
Throughout history, the concept of courage has been a focal point for philosophers, leaders, activists, and writers — each bringing their unique perspective to this essential virtue.
Their reflections on courage offer us insights into its various forms: from the bravery required in extraordinary circumstances to the quiet strength needed to overcome personal challenges.

As you explore these quotes about courage, let them inspire you to embrace your fears, step out of your comfort zone, and take bold steps toward your goals…
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“You will never do anything in this world without courage. It is the greatest quality of the mind next to honor.”  — T.S. Elliot

“Mistakes are always forgivable, if one has the courage to admit them.”  — Bruce Lee

“Courage is the price that life exacts for granting peace.”  — Amelia Earhart

“We must build dikes of courage to hold back the flood of fear.”  — Martin Luther King Jr.

“You have to accept whatever comes and the only important thing is that you meet it with courage and with the best that you have to give.”  — Eleanor Roosevelt
“Being vulnerable is the ultimate act of courage.”  — Brené Brown, Daring Greatly

“Failure is unimportant. It takes courage to make a fool of yourself.”  — Charlie Chaplin

“He who loses wealth loses much; he who loses a friend loses more; but he that loses his courage loses all.”  — Miguel de Cervantes

“There is always light. If only we’re brave enough to see it. If only we’re brave enough to be it.”  — Amanda Gorman

“How few there are who have courage enough to own their faults, or resolution enough to mend them.”  — Benjamin Franklin

“Courage is what it takes to stand up and speak; courage is also what it takes to sit down and listen.”  — Winston Churchill
“Man cannot discover new oceans unless he has the courage to lose sight of the shore.”  — Andre Gide
“Courage, the original definition of courage, when it first came into the English language — it’s from the Latin word ‘cor’ meaning ‘heart’. And the original definition was to tell the story of who you are with your whole heart.”  — Brené Brown, The Power of Vulnerability TED Talk

“You’ve got to follow your passion. You’ve got to figure out what it is you love — who you really are. And have the courage to do that. I believe that the only courage anybody ever needs is the courage to follow your own dreams.”  — Oprah Winfrey
“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, Courage Doesn’t Always Roar: And Sometimes It Does, Re-Defining Courage with Daily Inspirations
“Inaction breeds doubt and fear. Action breeds confidence and courage. If you want to conquer fear, do not sit home and think about it. Go out and get busy.”  — Dale Carnegie

“You gain strength, courage, and confidence by every experience in which you really stop to look fear in the face. You must do the thing which you think you cannot do.”  — Eleanor Roosevelt

“Have courage for the great sorrows of life and patience for the small ones; and when you have laboriously accomplished your daily task, go to sleep in peace. God is awake.”  — Victor Hugo

“It is from numberless diverse acts of courage and belief that human history is shaped. Each time a man stands up for an ideal, or acts to improve the lot of others, or strikes out against injustice, he sends forth a tiny ripple of hope, and crossing each other from a million different centers of energy and daring those ripples build a current which can sweep down the mightiest walls of oppression and resistance.”  — Robert F. Kennedy
“One isn’t necessarily born with courage, but one is born with potential. Without courage, we cannot practice any other virtue with consistency. We can’t be kind, true, merciful, generous or honest.”  — Maya Angelou

“I beg you take courage; the brave soul can mend even disaster.”  — Catherine the Great
“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
“The greatest test of courage on the earth is to bear defeat without losing heart.”  — R.G. Ingersoll
“What would life be if we had no courage to attempt anything?”  — Vincent van Gogh

“It is courage, courage, courage, that raises the blood of life to crimson splendor. Live bravely and present a brave front to adversity.”  — Horace

“The courage to imagine the otherwise is our greatest resource, adding color and suspense to all our life.”  — Daniel J. Boorstin
“Either life entails courage, or it ceases to be life.”  — E.M. Forster
“You may not always have a comfortable life. And you will not always be able to solve all the world’s problems at once. But don’t ever underestimate the impact you can have, because history has shown us that courage can be contagious, and hope can take on a life of its own.”  — Michelle Obama

“There’s only one requirement of any of us, and that is to be courageous. Because courage, as you might know, defines all other human behavior.”  — David Letterman
“Living a life of daring greatly means cultivating the courage to be vulnerable, to set boundaries, and to let ourselves be seen.”  — Brené Brown, Daring Greatly

“Courage is almost a contradiction in terms. It means a strong desire to live taking the form of readiness to die.”  — Gilbert K Chesterton

“Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma — which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of others’ opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most importantly, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition.”  — Steve Jobs
“He who is not courageous enough to take risks will accomplish nothing in life.”  — Muhammad Ali
“Courage isn’t having the strength to go on — it is going on when you don’t have strength.”  — Napoleon Bonaparte

“Being deeply loved by someone gives you strength, while loving someone deeply gives you courage.”  — Lao Tzu

“Courage consists not in hazarding without fear, but being resolutely minded in a just cause.”  — Plutarch
“Develop enough courage so that you can stand up for yourself and then stand up for somebody else. I not only have the right to stand up for myself, but I have the responsibility. I can’t ask somebody else to stand up for me if I won’t stand up for myself. And once you stand up for yourself, you’d be surprised that people say, ‘Can I be of help?’”  — Maya Angelou

“It takes more courage to reveal insecurities than to hide them, more strength to relate to people than to dominate them, more “manhood” to abide by thought-out principles rather than blind reflex. Toughness is in the soul and spirit, not in muscles and an immature mind.”  — Alex Karras
“Anyone can give up; it is the easiest thing in the world to do. But to hold it together when everyone would expect you to fall apart, now that is true strength.”  — Chris Bradford
“Have the courage to take your own thoughts seriously, for they will shape you.”  — Albert Einstein

“Let me be myself and then I am satisfied. I know that I’m a woman, a woman with inward strength and plenty of courage.”  — Anne Frank

“Though we have the courage to raise our daughters more like our sons, we’ve rarely had the courage to raise our sons like our daughters.”  — Gloria Steinem
“The best protection any woman can have… is courage.”  — Elizabeth Cady Stanton

“She was powerful not because she wasn’t scared, but because she went on so strongly, despite the fear.”  — Atticus
“I don’t really want to become normal, average, standard. I want merely to gain in strength, in the courage to live out my life more fully, enjoy more, experience more. I want to develop even more original and more unconventional traits.”  — Anais Nin, The Diary of Anaïs Nin, Vol. 1: 1931-1934
“A strong, independent woman has the confidence to be her best self. Yes, it requires courage and strength, but it is well worth it.”  — Sheryl Sandberg
“There is a stubbornness about me that never can bear to be frightened at the will of others. My courage always rises at every attempt to intimidate me.”  — Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice

“Though we tremble before uncertain futures, may we meet illness, death and adversity with strength. May we dance in the face of our fears.”  — Gloria Anzaldúa
“Courage is like a muscle. We strengthen it by use.”  — Ruth Gordon

“It takes courage to be kind.”  — Maya Angelou
“Courage is doing what you are afraid to do. There can be no courage unless you are scared.”  — Eddie Rickenbacker

“Courage is the hallmark of spirituality. Courage comes when you love yourself for who you are.”  — Amit Ray
“The braver I am, the luckier I get.”  — Glennon Doyle

“Courage is grace under pressure.”  — Ernest Hemingway

“We were scared, but our fear was not as strong as our courage.”  — Malala Yousafzai
“Courage is the commitment to begin without any guarantee of success.”  — Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
“We ought to face our destiny with courage.”  — Friedrich Nietzsche

“From caring comes courage.”  — Lao Tzu
“We don’t even know how strong we are until we are forced to bring that hidden strength forward.”  — Isabel Allende, Island Beneath the Sea
“All happiness depends on courage and work.”  — Honoré de Balzac

“Courage is knowing what not to fear.”  — Plato

“Clear thinking requires courage rather than intelligence.”  — Thomas Stephen Szasz
“Knowledge without courage is sterile.”  — Baltasar Gracián
“A man of courage is also full of faith.”  — Cicero
“Life shrinks or expands in proportion to one’s courage.”  — Anaïs Nin
“It requires more courage to suffer than to die.”  — Napoleon Bonaparte
“Nothing gives a fearful man more courage than another’s fear.”  — Umberto Eco

“People with courage and character always seem sinister to the rest.”  — Herman Hesse
“Courage is adversity’s lamp.”  — Luc de Clapiers
“Creativity requires the courage to let go of certainties.”  — Erich Fromm
“Courage is found in unlikely places.”  — J. R. R. Tolkien

“You cannot swim for new horizons until you have courage to lose sight of the shore.”  — William Faulkner

“Creativity requires the courage to let go of certainties.”  — Erich Fromm
“Keep your fears to yourself but share your courage with others.”  — Robert Louis Stevenson
“Courage is being scared to death… and saddling up anyway.”  — John Wayne
“Courage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear, not absence of fear.”  — Mark Twain
“Courage is the only virtue you can’t fake.”  — Nassim Nicholas Taleb

“There is nothing in the world so much admired as a man who knows how to bear unhappiness with courage.”  — Seneca

“Everyone has talent. What is rare is the courage to follow the talent to the dark place where it leads.”  — Erica Jong
“Hope lies in dreams, in imagination, and in the courage of those who dare to make dreams into reality.”  — Jonas Salk
“Courage is a love affair with the unknown.”  — Osho

“My courage and my bravery at a young age was the thing I was bullied for, a kind of ‘Who do you think you are?’”  — Lady Gaga
“Courage is the first of human qualities because it is the quality which guarantees the others.”  — Aristotle

“Have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become.”  — Steve Jobs

“When we tackle obstacles, we find hidden reserves of courage and resilience we did not know we had. And it is only when we are faced with failure do we realize that these resources were always there within us. We only need to find them and move on with our lives.”  — A. P. J. Abdul Kalam
“To look at something as though we had never seen it before requires great courage.”  ‍— Henri Matisse

“If you can dream it, you can do it.”
These quotes will encourage you to always chase your dreams—and will also have you ready to plan your next trip to The Happiest Place on Earth.
* “All our dreams can come true, if we have the courage to pursue them.”
* “It’s kind of fun to do the impossible.”
* “The way to get started is to quit talking and begin doing.”
* “When you believe in a thing, believe in it all the way, implicitly and unquestionable.”
* “That’s the real trouble with the world. Too many people grow up.”
* “Why worry? If you’ve done the very best you can, then worrying won’t make it any better.”
* “If you can dream it, you can do it.”
* “Laughter is timeless, imagination has no age, and dreams are forever.”
* “Ideas come from curiosity.”
* “The more you are in a state of gratitude, the more you will attract things to be grateful for.”
* “When you’re curious, you find lots of interesting things to do.
“In bad times and in good, I’ve never lost my sense of zest for life.”
“First, think. Second, believe. Third, dream. And finally, dare.”
“We keep moving forward, opening new doors, and doing new things, because we’re curious and curiosity keeps leading us down new paths.”

“Everyone falls down. Getting back up is how you learn how to walk.”
“The difference between winning and losing is most often not quitting.”
“Whatever you do, do it well.”

HOW TO RESPECT YOURSELF

1. Stop chasing those who aren’t interested in you.

2. Avoid begging for attention or validation.

3. Speak less and let your words carry weight.

4. Address disrespect promptly and assertively.

5. Avoid overindulging in others’ generosity if it’s not reciprocated.

6. Limit visits to those who don’t value your presence.

7. Prioritize self-investment and your happiness.

8. Avoid engaging in gossip or unnecessary negativity.

9. Think carefully before you speak—your words define your value.

10. Always present yourself well; dress to reflect your worth.

11. Focus on your goals and stay productive.

12. Value and protect your time.

13. Leave any relationship where you’re not respected or valued.

14. Spend on yourself—it teaches others to respect your worth.

15. Be unavailable sometimes; it creates value.

16. Give more than you take.

17. Don’t go where you’re not invited, and when you are, don’t overstay your welcome.

18. Treat people as they deserve to be treated.

19. Except for owed money, two missed calls are enough; let them return the effort if they care.

20. Strive for excellence in all you do.