Cowardice Quotes - Page 22

• We shall never know how many acts of cowardice have been motivated by the fear of appearing not sufficiently progressive.

  Charles Peguy

  Courage, Progressive, Motivated

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• Whatever your sex or position, life is a battle in which you are to show your pluck, and woe be to the coward. Whether passed on a bed of sickness or a tented field, it is ever the same fair play and admits no foolish distinction. Despair and postponement are cowardice and defeat. Men were born to succeed, not to fail.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Courage, Sex, Men

  Henry David Thoreau (2013). “Quotable Thoreau: An A to Z Glossary of Inspiring Quotations from Henry David Thoreau”, p.59, BookBaby

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• The heroes in paganism correspond exactly to the saints in popery, and holy dervises in MAHOMETANISM. The place of, HERCULES, THESEUS, HECTOR, ROMULUS, is now supplied by DOMINIC, FRANCIS, ANTHONY, and BENEDICT. Instead of the destruction of monsters, the subduing of tyrants, the defence of our native country; whippings and fastings, cowardice and humility, abject submission and slavish obedience, are become the means of obtaining celestial honours among mankind.

  David Hume

  Country, Hero, Mean

  David Hume (2016). “Delphi Complete Works of David Hume (Illustrated)”, p.1245, Delphi Classics

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• The recommendation by the Arkansas Supreme Court Disciplinary Committee that President Clinton be disbarred is like a tender green shoot of integrity rising from the stinking junkyard of American public life. At last, some official body has come to a decision about Clinton's conduct that is untainted by politics, cowardice or cynicism.

  Mona Charen

  Integrity, Decision, President

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• Such is the nature and make-up of the French that they are only good at the start. Then they are worse than devils, but, given time, they're less than women.

  Francois Rabelais

  Courage, War, Devil

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• Our leaders have described the recent atrocity with the customary cliche: mindless cowardice. Mindless may be a suitable word for the vandalising of a telephone box. It is not helpful for understanding what hit New York on September 11. Those people were not mindless and they were certainly not cowards. On the contrary, they had sufficiently effective minds braced with an insane courage, and it would pay us mightily to understand where that courage came from. It came from religion.

  Richard Dawkins

  New York, People, Leader

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• To say less of yourself than is true is stupidity, not modesty. To pay yourself less than you are worth is cowardice and pusillanimity.

  Michel de Montaigne

  Self, Stupidity, Pay

  Michel de Montaigne (1958). “Complete Essays”, p.274, Stanford University Press

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• This is one of the stout-hearted old warriors: he is angry with civilization because he supposes that its aim is to make all goodthings--honors, treasures, beautiful women--accessible even to cowards.

  Friedrich Nietzsche

  Beautiful, Courage, Warrior

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• Now must we sing and sing the best we can,
  But first you must be told your character:
  Convicted cowards all, by kindred slain.

  William Butler Yeats

  Character, Coward, Firsts

  William Butler Yeats (2001). “The Major Works”, p.170

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• Without the blessing of cowardice, the world would long since have been torn to bits.

  Mason Cooley

  Blessing, Long, World

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• Courage, like cowardice, is undoubtedly contagious, but some persons are not liable to catch it.

  George D. Prentice

  Courage, Liable, Contagious

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• Sloth is the great enemy -- the inspirer of cowardice, irresolution, self-pitying grief, and trivial, hairsplitting doubts. Sloth may also be a psychological cause of sickness. It is tempting to relax from our duties, take refuge in ill-health and hide under a nice warm blanket.

  Patanjali

  Nice, Grief, Self

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• If commissars in Soviet Russia agreed to subordinate themselves to state power, they could at least plead fear in extenuation. Their counterparts in more free and open societies can plead only cowardice.

  Noam Chomsky

  Russia, States, Soviet

  Source: www.publicanthropology.org

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• It is fear and terror that make all men brave, except the philosophers. Yet it is illogical to be brave through fear and cowardice.

  Plato

  Men, Brave, Philosopher

  Source: www.goodreads.com

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• Where it is a general rule that it is wrong to gratify lovers, this can be attributed to the defects of those who make that rule: the government's lust for rule and the subjects' cowardice.

  Plato

  Government, Lust, Lovers

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