Cowardly Quotes - Page 3

• I join you therefore in branding as cowardly the idea that the human mind is incapable of further advances.

  Thomas Jefferson

  Educational, Ideas, Mind

  Thomas Jefferson, Jean M. Yarbrough (1963). “The Essential Jefferson”, p.194, Hackett Publishing

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• I am religious by nature, I'm not a nihilist. I don't follow, I don't even know what the tenets of things like deconstructionism are, and all those schools that come up and their way of looking at things that people strive to incorporate into what they write. I don't even know what they are. Because I sense from a distance that I don't want to know. And therefore even if I had no politics, actual politics, my cultural point of view is hopelessly out of date with the modern literary sensibility. Which is nihilistic, and ironic, detached, cool, and cowardly.

  Mark Helprin

  Religious, Distance, Writing

  Source: americasfuture.org

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• Courage is nine-tenths context. What is courageous in one setting can be foolhardy in another and even cowardly in a third.

  Joseph Epstein

  Courage, Bravery, Nine

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• There is -- in world affairs -- a steady course to be followed between an assertion of strength that is truculent and a confession of helplessness that is cowardly.

  Dwight D. Eisenhower

  World, Affair, Confession

  Eisenhower, Dwight D. (1960). “Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: Dwight D. Eisenhower, 1953”, p.34, Best Books on

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• Poor human nature, what horrible crimes have been committed in thy name! All wars are wars among thieves who are too cowardly to fight and who therefore induce the young manhood of the whole world to do the fighting for them.

  Emma Goldman

  Peace, War, Fighting

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• The wolf's clear, intelligent eyes brushed mine. The wolf is gentle-hearted. Not noble, not cowardly, just nonfighting.

  Lois Crisler

  Eye, Intelligent, Noble

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• If you go to the city of Washington, and you examine the pages of the Congressional Directory, you will find that almost all of those corporation lawyers and cowardly politicians, members of Congress, and misrepresentatives of the masses - you will find that almost all of them claim, in glowing terms, that they have risen from the ranks to places of eminence and distinction. I am very glad that I cannot make that claim for myself. I would be ashamed to admit that I had risen from the ranks. When I rise it will be with the ranks, and not from the ranks.

  Eugene V. Debs

  Glowing, Cities, Would Be

  Eugene V. Debs' anti-war speech in Canton, Ohio (June 16, 1918), as quoted in The Call Magazine, www.marxists.org. 1918.

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• I am beginning with the young. We older ones are used up. Yes, we are old already. We are rotten to the marrow. We have no unrestrained instincts left. We are cowardly and sentimental. We are bearing the burden of a humiliating past, and have in our blood the dull recollection of serfdom and servility. But my magnificent youngsters! Are there finer ones anywhere in the world? Look at these young men and boys! What material! With them, I can make a new world.

  Adolf Hitler

  Boys, Past, Men

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• ‎"Don't bother too much about your feelings. When they are humble, loving, brave, give thanks for them; when they are conceited, selfish, cowardly, ask to have them altered. In neither case are they you, but only a thing that happens to you. What matters is your intentions and your behavior

  C. S. Lewis

  Selfish, Humble, Conceited

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• War is a quarrel between two thieves too cowardly to fight their own battle; therefore they take boys from one village and another village, stick them into uniforms, equip them with guns, and let them loose like wild beasts against one other.

  Thomas Carlyle

  Peace, Military, War

  Attributed to Thomas Carlyle in "Patriotism: A Menace to Liberty", essay by Emma Goldman, chapter five of Anarchism and Other Essays, 1911.

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• Better to die for my people in my own land than rule in another and suffer a lifetime of cowardly guilt.

  Darren Shan

  Land, People, Suffering

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• Suspicious.- To admit a belief merely because it is a custom - but that means to be dishonest, cowardly, lazy! - And so could dishonesty, cowardice and laziness be the preconditions for morality?

  Friedrich Nietzsche

  Mean, Lazy, Laziness

  Friedrich Nietzsche, Maudemarie Clark, Brian Leiter (1997). “Nietzsche: Daybreak: Thoughts on the Prejudices of Morality”, p.59, Cambridge University Press

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• When I look at him, I don't see the cowardly young man who sold me out to Jeanine Matthews, and i don't hear the excuses he gave afterward. When I look at him, I see the boy who held my hand in the hospital when our mother broke her wrist and told me it would be all right. I see the brother who told me to make my own choices, the night before the Choosing Ceremony. I think of all the remarkable things he is--smart and enthusiastic and observant, quiet and earnest and kind.

  Veronica Roth

  Mother, Brother, Smart

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• I'm still very sensitive and wary of people recognising me The only thing that really annoys me is people trying to surreptitiously take a photo on their phone without asking. I feel it's cowardly and a bit pathetic. Just ask me if you really want me to have a photograph with you.

  Benedict Cumberbatch

  Phones, People, Trying

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• Characters tend to be either for or against the quest. If they assist it, they are idealized as simply gallant or pure; if they obstruct it, they are characterized as simply villainous or cowardly. Hence every typical character...tends to have his moral opposite confronting him, like black and white pieces in a chess game.

  Northrop Frye

  Character, Black And White, Opposites

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• The coward makes himself cowardly, the hero makes himself heroic.

  Jean-Paul Sartre

  Hero, Coward, Heroic

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• For neither does wealth bring honour to the owner, if he be a coward; of such a one the wealth belongs to another, and not to himself. Nor does beauty and strength of body, when dwelling in a base and cowardly man, appear comely, but the reverse of comely, making the possessor more conspicuous, and manifesting forth his cowardice.

  Plato

  Plato, Men, Dwelling

  Plato (2015). “The Complete Plato”, p.166, Booklassic

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• Courageous men never lose the zest for living even though their life situation is zestless; cowardly men, overwhelmed by the uncertainties of life, lose the will to live. We must constantly build dykes of courage to hold back the flood of fear.

  Martin Luther King, Jr.

  Courage, Men, Zest

  Martin Luther King, Jr. (2012). “A Gift of Love: Sermons from Strength to Love and Other Preachings”, p.120, Beacon Press

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• I was stricken by news and television pictures coming from the United States this morning. It is impossible to fully comprehend the evil that would have conjured up such a cowardly and depraved assault upon thousands of innocent people. There can be no cause or grievance that could ever justify such unspeakable violence. Indeed, such an attack is an assault not only on the targets but an offense against the freedom and rights of all civilized nations.

  Jean Chretien

  Morning, Rights, People

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• It is common to assume that human progress affects everyone - that even the dullest man, in these bright days, knows more than any man of, say, the Eighteenth Century, and is far more civilized. This assumption is quite erroneous. . . . The great masses of men, even in this inspired republic, are precisely where the mob was at the dawn of history. They are ignorant, they are dishonest, they are cowardly, they are ignoble. They know little if anything that is worth knowing, and there is not the slightest sign of a natural desire among them to increase their knowledge.

  H. L. Mencken

  Men, Knowing, Historical

  Homo Neanderthalensis Baltimore Sun, The Impossible Mencken, June 29, 1925.

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• There is a prayer intended to give strength to people faced with circumstances they don’t want to accept. The power of the prayer comes from it's insight into human nature. Because so many of us rage against the hand that life has dealt us. Because so many of us are cowardly. And afraid to stand up for what is right. Because so many of us give into despair when faced with an impossible choice. The good news for those who utter these words is that God will hear you and answer your prayer. The bad news is that sometimes the answer is no.

  Mary Alice

  Prayer, Hands, People

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• I am delighted to be part of this Women's Aid campaign - the statistics are frightening. I've spent time with the victims of these cowardly acts, and it's heartbreaking. Everyday women and children are being abused in their own homes. I am standing up and saying that I am a Real Man, and that violence against women and children has to end.

  Gethin Jones

  Children, Real, Home

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• I never quite got the hang of the getting drunk & fondling the thighs [of all the cumbersome young males] business... whether that makes me a gallant & proper gentleman, a cowardly wuss or an unadventurous prude, I cannot make out

  Stephen Fry

  Drunk, Gentleman, Prudes

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• Philosophizing is simply one way of being afraid, a cowardly pretense that doesn't get you anywhere.

  Louis-Ferdinand Celine

  Way, Being Afraid, Pretense

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• As the representatives of the people we are here to declare that our resolve has not been weakened by these horrific and cowardly acts.

  Tom Daschle

  People, September 11, Resolve

  Trent Lott, Tom Daschle, Jon Sternfeld (2016). “Crisis Point: Why We Must – and How We Can – Overcome Our Broken Politics in Washington and Across America”, p.138, Bloomsbury Publishing USA

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