Cowardly Quotes - Page 8

• You happen to be talking to an agnostic. You know what an agnostic is? A cowardly atheist.

  Studs Terkel

  Atheist, Talking, Atheism

  "Religion & Ethics Newsweekly", www.pbs.org. December 19, 2003.

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• America is a nation with many flaws, but hopes so vast that only the cowardly would refuse to acknowledge them.

  James A. Michener

  Usa, America, Politics

  James A. Michener (1970). “The Quality of Life”

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• Don't play it safe. Resist the seductions of the cowardly values our society has come to prize so highly: comfort, convenience, security, predictability, control. These, too, are nets. Above all, resist the fear of failure. Yes, you will make mistakes. But they will be your mistakes, not someone else's. And you will survive them, and you will know yourself better for having made them, and you will be a fuller and a stronger person.

  William Deresiewicz

  Mistake, Play, Stronger

  "What Are You Going to Do With That?". Essay adapted from a talk delivered to a freshman class at Stanford University in May 2010, www.chronicle.com. October 03, 2010.

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• A book is like a man - clever and dull, brave and cowardly, beautiful and ugly.

  John Steinbeck

  Beautiful, Clever, Book

  John Steinbeck (1989). “Steinbeck: A Life in Letters”, p.372, Penguin

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• Suicide isn't cowardly. I'll tell you what's cowardly; treating people so badly that they want to end their lives.

  Ashley Purdy

  Suicide, Bvb, People

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• When a war is over I think it's a cowardly thing to leave the war behind you in minefields that hit women and children and the most vulnerable. Imagine the war is finished and you go to work and there are snipers shooting at you. Imagine taking your kids to the beach and you find that the beach is blowing up beneath you. Like there's nowhere safe.

  Paul McCartney

  Beach, Children, War

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• Consistently, from the Hezbollah heartland, my message was that Hezbollah must stop this cowardly blending ... among women and children," . "I heard they were proud because they lost very few fighters and that it was the civilians bearing the brunt of this. I don't think anyone should be proud of having many more children and women dead than armed men.

  Jan Egeland

  Children, Men, Thinking

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• Remember, the only thing to fear is Fear, and - well, don't even fear Fear, for he's a cowardly chap at the best, who will run if you show a brave front.

  William Walker Atkinson

  Running, Fear, Brave

  William Walker Atkinson (2016). “THOUGHT VIBRATION - The Law of Attraction in the Thought World (Unabridged): From the American pioneer of the New Thought movement, known for Practical Mental Influence, The Secret of Success, The Arcane Teachings, Nuggets of the New Thought, Reincarnation and the Law of Karma”, p.29, e-artnow

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• I really think it would be cowardly to pull back and not challenge the status quo, when the status quo may not be the right way for the field to go.

  Mehmet Oz

  Thinking, Challenges, Would Be

  "Dr. Oz on Complementary Medicine: 'Challenge the Status Quo'" by Lana Zak, abcnews.go.com. August 31, 2009.

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• Our movement took a grip on cowardly Marxism and from it extracted the meaning of socialism. It also took from the cowardly middle-class parties their nationalism. Throwing both into the cauldron of our way of life there emerged, as clear as a crystal, the synthesis -- German National Socialism.

  Hermann Goring

  Party, Class, Goering

  "Personal Quotes/ Biography". www.imdb.com.

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• It's a cowardly form of politics to use my spouse to beat me.

  John Bercow

  Use, Beats, Form

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• The Manifesto was a cowardly proceeding, the more I thought of it the less I liked it.

  B. H. Roberts

  Polygamy, Manifestos, Proceeding

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• Obedience indeed is only the pitiful and cowardly egotism of him who thinks that he can do something better than reason.

  Percy Bysshe Shelley

  Thinking, Reason, Obedience

  Percy Bysshe Shelley (1994). “The Selected Poetry and Prose of Shelley”, p.92, Wordsworth Editions

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• Fortune reveres the brave, and overwhelms the cowardly.

  Seneca the Elder

  Courage, Brave, Fortune

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• Imposing limitations on yourself is cowardly because it protects you from having to try, and perhaps failing.

  Vladimir K. Zworykin

  Trying, Failing, Protect You

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• Oh, how cowardly is wickedness always!

  Statius

  Wickedness

  "Thebais". Book by Statius, II, 489,

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• Once again, the hopeless cowardly Americans were back to repeat their cowardly act hiding behind a technological advance that God, most gracious, wanted it to be their curse and cause for shame.

  Saddam Hussein

  Causes, Hopeless, Shame

  "Transcript of Saddam Hussein's speech to Iraqis". www.cnn.com. September 3, 1996.

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• It takes physical courage to indulge in wickedness. The "good" are too cowardly to do it.

  Friedrich Nietzsche

  Courage, Indulge In, Wickedness

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• A cowardly populace which will dare nothing beyond talk.
  [Lat., Vulgus ignavum et nihil ultra verba ausurum.]

  Tacitus

  Ultras, Dare

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• The secret of power is the knowledge that others are more cowardly than you are.

  Ludwig Borne

  Advice, Secret

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• All attempts at law, all religion, all ethical norms might be nothing more than attempts by the weak to restrain the strong. Then, within the law, arise the new strong, who subvert the law for their own ends of power and family interest, leaving the old strong outside their circle to pursue the waiting possibilities which they call crime. The weak, the cowardly, the decent ones, live between these groups.

  George Zebrowski

  Strong, Law, Circles

  George Zebrowski (2014). “Brute Orbits”, p.81, Open Road Media

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• In actions of enthusiasm, this drawback appears: but in those lower activities, which have no higher aim than to make us more comfortable and more cowardly, in actions of cunning, actions that steal and lie, actions that divorce the speculative from the practical faculty, and put a ban on reason and sentiment, there is nothing else but drawback and negation.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Lying, Divorce, Enthusiasm

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1856). “Representative Men: Seven Lectures ...”, p.263

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• Do not mistake your objection to defeat for an objection to fighting, your objection to being a slave for an objection to slavery, your objection to not being as rich as your neighbor for an objection to poverty. The cowardly, the insubordinate, and the envious share your objections.

  George Bernard Shaw

  Mistake, Fighting, Slavery

  Nelly Sachs, George Bernard Shaw, Frans Eemil Sillanpää, René Sully-Prudhomme (1971). “Nelly Sachs, Jean-Paul Sartre, George Bernard Shaw, Frans Eemil Sillanpää, René Sully-Prudhomme”

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• The invasion of Iraq will surely go down in history as one of the most cowardly wars ever fought. It was a war in which a band of rich nations, armed with enough nuclear weapons to destroy the world several times over, rounded on a poor nation, falsely accused it of having nuclear weapons, used the United Nations to force it to disarm, then invaded it, occupied it, and are now in the process of selling it.

  Arundhati Roy

  War, Iraq, Nuclear

  Arundhati Roy (2006). “Ordinary Person's Guide To Empire”, p.333, Penguin Books India

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• No, liberty is not made for us: we are too ignorant, too vain, too presumptious, too cowardly, too vile, too corrupt, too attached to rest and to pleasure, too much slaves to fortune to ever know the true price of liberty. We boast of being free! To show how much we have become slaves, it is enough just to cast a glance on the capital and examine the morals of its inhabitants.

  Jean-Paul Marat

  Ignorant, Being Free, Liberty

  L'Ami du peuple newspaper, No. 559, August 27, 1791.

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