Cowardice Quotes - Page 7

• We have sworn, and not lightly. This oath we will keep. We are threatened with many evils, and treason not least; but one thing is not said: that we shall suffer from cowardice, from cravens or the fear of cravens. Therefore I say that we will go on, and this doom I add: the deeds that we shall do shall be the matter of song until the last days of Arda.

  J. R. R. Tolkien

  Song, Evil, Suffering

  J.R.R. Tolkien (2012). “The Silmarillion”, p.63, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• When desperate ills demand a speedy cure, Distrust is cowardice, and prudence folly.

  Samuel Johnson

  Demand, Desperate, Cures

  Samuel Johnson (1809). “Works”, p.225

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• Cowardice is impotence worse than violence. The coward desires revenge but being afraid to die, he looks to others, maybe to the government of the day, to do the work of defense for him. A coward is less than a man. He does not deserve to be a member of a society of men and women.

  Mahatma Gandhi

  Revenge, Men, Desire

  Mahatma Gandhi, Thomas Merton (1965). “Gandhi on Non-violence”, p.33, New Directions Publishing

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• A man who knows a thing, recognizes a given danger, and sees with his own eyes the possibility of a remedy, damned well has the duty and the obligation not to work 'silently', but to stand up openly against the evil and for its cure. If he does not do so then he is a faithless, miserable weakling who fails either from cowardice or from laziness and incompetence....Every last agitator who possesses the courage to defend his opinions with manly forth-rightness, standing on a tavern table among his adversaries, accomplishes more than a thousand of these lying, treacherous sneaks.

  George Lincoln Rockwell

  Lying, Eye, Men

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• I do believe that, where there is only a choice between cowardice and violence, I would advise violence. I would rather have India resort to arms in order to defend her honour than that she should, in a cowardly manner, become or remain a helpless witness to her own dishonour. But I believe that nonviolence is infinitely superior to violence, forgiveness is more manly than punishment.

  Mahatma Gandhi

  Believe, Order, Punishment

  Mohandas Karmchand Gandhi, Mahatma Gandhi, V. Geetha (2004). “Soul Force: Gandhi's Writings on Peace”, p.158, Tara Publishing

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• Let us be clear: censorship is cowardice. ... It masks corruption. It is a school of torture: it teaches, and accustoms one to the use of force against an idea, to submit thought to an alien "other." But worst still, censorship destroys criticism, which is the essential ingredient of culture.

  Pablo Antonio Cuadra

  School, Ideas, Criticism

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• The minds of human beings are not always entirely at one with the world in which they live, some people have trouble adjusting to reality, basically they're just weak, confused spirits who use words, sometimes very skillfully, to justify their cowardice.

  Jose Saramago

  Confused, Reality, People

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• If the bubble reputation can be obtained only at the cannon's mouth, I am willing to go there for it, provided the cannon is empty.

  Mark Twain

  Mouths, Reputation, Empty

  Mark Twain (1994). “Tales, Speeches, Essays, and Sketches”, p.146, Penguin

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• But I have a conscience and a religious faith, and I know that our liberties were not won without suffering, and may be lost again through our cowardice. I intend to do my duty to my
  country.

  Upton Sinclair

  Country, Religious, Suffering

  Upton Sinclair (2004). “The Land of Orange Groves and Jails: Upton Sinclair's California”, p.55, Heyday

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• In a word, I was too cowardly to do what I knew to be right, as I had been too cowardly to avoid doing what I knew to be wrong.

  Charles Dickens

  Inspirational, Expectations, Morality

  Charles Dickens (1881). “Great Expectations”, p.61

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• Now what is it moves our very hearts, and sickens us so much at cruelty shown to poor brutes? I suppose this first, that they have done no harm; next, that they have no power whatever of resistance; it is the cowardice and tyranny of which they are the victims which makes their sufferings so especially touching.

  John Henry Newman

  Moving, Heart, Animal

  "Parochial and Plain Sermons".

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• There is always a philosophy for lack of courage.

  Albert Camus

  Philosophy

  Albert Camus (1965). “Notebooks, 1942-1951”

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• To act without knowledge is folly, to know without acting is cowardice.

  Dominique Pire

  Acting, Folly, Knows

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• Calculating people are contemptable. The reason for this is that calculation deals with loss and gain, and the loss and gain mind never stops. Death is considered loss and life is considered gain. Thus, death is something that such a person does not care for, and he is contemptable. Furthermore, scholars and their like are men who with wit and speech hide their own true cowardice and greed. People often misjudge this.

  Yamamoto Tsunetomo

  Truth, Loss, Men

  Yamamoto Tsunetomo (2012). “Hagakure: The Book of the Samurai”, p.31, Shambhala Publications

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• Things are not bad in themselves, but our cowardice makes them so.

  Michel de Montaigne

  "Essais". Book by Michel de Montaigne, Book I, Ch. 14, 1595.

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• The price of cowardice will only be evil. We shall reap courage and victory only when we dare to make sacrifices.

  Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

  Wisdom, Sacrifice, Evil

  Aleksandr I. Solzhenitsyn, Anne Applebaum (2007). “The Gulag Archipelago Volume 2: An Experiment in Literary Investigation”, Harper Perennial Modern Classics

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• Ahimsa is an attribute of the brave. Cowardice and ahimsa don't go together any more that water and fire.

  Mahatma Gandhi

  Fire, Water, Brave

  Mahatma Gandhi (1984). “The Quintessence of Gandhi in His Own Words”

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• Silence becomes cowardice when occasion demands speaking out the whole truth and acting accordingly.

  Mahatma Gandhi

  Wise, Spiritual, Silence

  Mahatma Gandhi, Thomas Merton (1965). “Gandhi on Non-violence”, p.58, New Directions Publishing

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• Our actual enemy is not any force exterior to ourselves, but our own crying weaknesses, our cowardice, our selfishness, our hypocrisy, our purblind sentimentalism.

  Sri Aurobindo

  Hypocrisy, Enemy, Selfishness

  "New Lamps for Old". Nine articles by Sri Aurobindo in the "Indu Prakash" (a Bombay daily newspaper), August 21, 1893.

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• So long as the deceit ran along quiet and monotonous, all of us let ourselves be deceived, abetting it unawares or maybe through cowardice.

  William Faulkner

  Peace, War, Long

  William Faulkner (1985). “Novels, 1930-1935”, Library of America

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• Censorship is the commonest social blasphemy because it is mostly concealed, built into us by indolence, self-interest and cowardice.

  John Osborne

  Fear, Self, Censorship

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• But if out of smugness, or even cowardice, this battle is not fought to its end, then take a look at the peoples five hundred years from now. I think you will find but few images of God, unless you want to profane the Almighty.

  Adolf Hitler

  Religious, Thinking, Years

  Adolf Hitler (1998). “Mein Kampf”, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• (I)t is simply wrong to confuse cowardice with appeasement. Cowardice is a failing of character. Appeasement is a failure of policy. Stalin appeased Hitler when he signed the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact. Stalin was an evil character, to be sure. But cowardice really isn't the first word that comes to mind when thinking of Stalin ' that word is “sexy.” I'm kidding, I'm kidding.

  Jonah Goldberg

  Sexy, Character, Thinking

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• We are too ready (women especially) not to stand by what we have said or done.

  Brenda Ueland

  Done, Said, Ready

  Brenda Ueland (2013). “If You Want to Write”, p.137, Simon and Schuster

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• Fascism, in so far as it considers and observes the future and the development of humanity quite apart from political considerations of the moment, believes neither in the possibility nor the utility of perpetual peace. It thus repudiates the doctrine of Pacifism - born of a renunciation of struggle and an act of cowardice in the face of sacrifice. War alone brings up to its highest tension all human energy and puts the stamp of nobility upon the people who have the courage to meet it.

  Benito Mussolini

  War, Believe, Struggle

  " Fascism, Anti-Fascism, and the Resistance in Italy : 1919 to the Present" by Stanislao G. Pugliese, (p. 89), 2004.

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