Cowardice Quotes - Page 17

• If you are black, the only roads into the mainland of American life are through subservience, cowardice, and loss of manhood. These are the white man's roads.

  Amiri Baraka

  Loss, Men, White Man

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• When will the state of the country be sound?... When its people believe that the end result of cowardice is more disastrous than that of behaving with integrity.

  Naguib Mahfouz

  Country, Integrity, Believe

  Naguib Mahfouz (2016). “Echoes of an Autobiography”, p.17, Anchor

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• Coercion created slavery, the cowardice of the slaves perpetuated it.

  Jean-Baptiste Rousseau

  Slavery, Coercion, Servitude

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• What if there are children who will suffer somehow because I failed to obey God? What if my cowardice costs even one child somewhere in the world his or her life?

  Richard Stearns

  Children, What If, Suffering

  Richard Stearns (2009). “The Hole in Our Gospel: What does God expect of Us? The Answer that Changed my Life and Might Just Change the World”, p.49, Thomas Nelson Inc

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• Despair and postponement are cowardice and defeat. Men were born to succeed, not to fail.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Procrastination, Men, Despair

  Henry David Thoreau, Odell Shepard (1961). “The Heart of Thoreau's Journals”, p.109, Courier Corporation

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• It needs fanatical faith to rationalize our cowardice.

  Eric Hoffer

  Needs, Rationalize

  Eric Hoffer (1980). “The True Believer”

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• The one thing you can count on in Hollywood - across the board - is cowardice.

  Sean Penn

  Hollywood, Boards, One Thing

  "Give it up for Sean Penn" by James Kaplan, www.theguardian.com. May 6, 2001.

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• True courage lies in the middle, between cowardice and recklessness.

  Miguel de Cervantes

  Lying, Middle, True Courage

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• In this country, intellectual cowardice is the worst enemy a writer or journalist has to face ... Unpopular ideas can be silenced, and incovenient facts kept dark, without the need for any official ban ... At any given moment there is an orthodoxy, a body of iedas which it is assumed that all right-thinking people will accept without question.

  George Orwell

  Country, Dark, Thinking

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• I hate liberality - nine times out of ten it is cowardice, and the tenth time lack of principle.

  Henry Addington, 1st Viscount Sidmouth

  Hate, Political, Principles

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• There is a certain cowardice, a certain weakness, rather, among respectable folk. Only brigands are convinced-of what? That they must succeed. And so they do succeed.

  Charles Baudelaire

  Inspirational, Weakness, Succeed

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• Bravery is knowledge of the cowardice of the enemy.

  E. W. Howe

  Courage, Bravery, Enemy

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• When faced with a choice between violence and cowardice, always choose violence

  Mahatma Gandhi

  Choices, Violence

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• They say cowardice is infectious; but then argument is, on the other hand, a great emboldener.

  Robert Louis Stevenson

  Hands, Argument

  Robert Louis Stevenson (1884). “Treasure Island”, p.30

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• The monster is never just there where we think he is. What is truly monstrous is our cowardice and sloth.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Thinking, Sloth, Monsters

  Henry David Thoreau (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Henry David Thoreau (Illustrated)”, p.1786, Delphi Classics

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• The desire to gain wealth and the fear to lose it are our chief breeders of cowardice and propagators of corruption.

  William James

  Desire, Gains, Wealth

  William James (2013). “The Varieties of Religious Experience”, p.368, Courier Corporation

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• Maybe any action becomes cowardly once you stop to reason about it.

  Mary McCarthy

  Action, Reason, Cowardly

  Mary McCarthy (2017). “Mary McCarthy: Novels 1963-1979”, p.409, Library of America

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• There is nothing so depressing as a constant contemplation of one's self, and the greatest moral cowardice in the world's opinion comes from consulting one's own personal convenience.

  Marie Corelli

  Depressing, Self, World

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• Cynicism is a form of cowardice, a failure of courage to hope.

  Merle Shain

  Cynicism, Form

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• Why, why, when one writes, does a sort of shackle bind one's imagination? I become conscious of a deadening mediocrity, perhaps a form of mental cowardice, and I long to break free, to let my imagination take wings. It doesn't - yet.

  Winifred Holtby

  Writing, Wings, Long

  Winifred Holtby, Alice Holtby (1941). “Letters to a friend”

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• It is bad for the soul to know itself a coward, it is apt to take refuge in mere wordy violence.

  Radclyffe Hall

  Soul, Coward, Violence

  Radclyffe Hall (2016). “The Well Of Loneliness”, p.129, Radclyffe Hall

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• You are less majestically neutral than cloaking your cowardice in principle.

  George Hearst

  Principles

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• There is a schizophrenic nature in modern politics. A leader is expected to have a religious faith but he is not supposed to let it influence him in his duties. Somehow, the truths that determine everything else about his existence are not allowed to influence how he conducts himself in public life. Not only that, his principles are usually considered so personal that the public is not even allowed to know for certain what they are. This passes for noble statecraft in our time. It was once thought cowardice.

  Stephen Mansfield

  Religious, Leader, Principles

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• I love women who are bosses and who don't constantly worry about what their employees think of them. I love women who don't ask, "Is that OK?" after everything they say. I love when women are courageous in the face of unthinkable circumstances, like my mother when she was diagnosed with stage IV pancreatic cancer. Or like Gabrielle Giffords writing editorials for the New York Times about the cowardice of Congress regarding gun laws and using phrases like "mark my words" like she is Clint Eastwood. How many women say stuff like that?

  Mindy Kaling

  Mother, New York, Cancer

  "Lena Dunham Hilariously, Candidly Interviews Mindy Kaling". Interview with Lena Dunham, www.rollingstone.com. November 11, 2013.

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• Nonviolence and cowardice go ill together. True nonviolence is an impossibility without the possession of unadulterated fearlessness.

  Mahatma Gandhi

  Together, Possession, Ill

  Mahatma Gandhi (1980). “All Men are Brothers: Autobiographical Reflections”, p.92, A&C Black

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