Key takeaways
- The best courage quotes agree on one thing: courage is acting well while afraid, not feeling no fear. Aristotle, Twain and Emerson each say so in their own words.
- Aristotle defined courage as the middle point between cowardice and rashness, facing the right things for the right reason, in the right way.
- "Success is not final, failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts" is not Churchill. The International Churchill Society says it is found nowhere in his canon.
- The popular Seneca line "it is because we do not dare that they are difficult" is a fair modern rendering of Letter 104. Gummere's translation puts it differently.
- Every quote below gives its source, with act and scene, book, chapter or date, and names the translator where there is one.
Courage quotes tend to come in two kinds. Some describe courage as fearlessness, which nobody can actually practice. The better ones describe it as a decision made while afraid, and those are the lines that hold up when you check where they came from.
This list keeps the quotes that trace to a real text, in a named public-domain translation where one is needed. For the classical definitions, the starting point is W. D. Ross's translation of Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics, free from MIT's Internet Classics Archive.
What are the best courage quotes with a real source?
The strongest courage quotes put fear and action in the same sentence. Each of these is checked against the source text.
"The man, then, who faces and who fears the right things and from the right motive, in the right way ... is brave." (Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, Book III, chapter 7, W. D. Ross translation)
"I should say that courage is a sort of endurance of the soul." (Laches, in Plato's Laches, Benjamin Jowett translation)
"Our lack of confidence is not the result of difficulty; the difficulty comes from our lack of confidence." (Seneca, Letter 104, Richard M. Gummere translation)
"Cowards die many times before their deaths; The valiant never taste of death but once." (William Shakespeare, Julius Caesar, Act 2, Scene 2)
"But screw your courage to the sticking-place, And we'll not fail." (Shakespeare, Macbeth, Act 1, Scene 7)
"Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more." (Shakespeare, Henry V, Act 3, Scene 1)
"Courage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear," and "not absence of fear." (Mark Twain, Pudd'nhead Wilson, chapter XII, 1894)
"He has not learned the lesson of life who does not every day surmount a fear." (Ralph Waldo Emerson, Courage, in Society and Solitude, 1870)
"Knowledge is the antidote to fear." (Emerson, same essay)
"Have the courage not to adopt another's courage." (Emerson, same essay)
"The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena." (Theodore Roosevelt, Citizenship in a Republic, Paris, April 23, 1910)
"Those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat." (Roosevelt, same speech)
Emerson's essay is the most practical text on the list. He describes a young soldier who told his sister he had no proper courage, so he trained himself to do whatever he was afraid to do. Emerson's conclusion: "It is he who has done the deed once who does not shrink from attempting it again."
What did the Greek philosophers say courage is?
Aristotle called courage the middle point between cowardice and rashness, and Plato's Laches called it endurance of the soul. Both definitions put fear inside courage rather than outside it.
In Book II of the Ethics, Aristotle sets out the scale: about fear and confidence "courage is the mean," the man who exceeds in confidence "is rash," and the one who exceeds in fear "is a coward." In Book III he adds a sharp observation about the rash. They "wish for dangers beforehand but draw back when they are in them," while the brave man is keen in action and quiet before it.
Plato's Laches is a whole dialogue about the question. The general Laches offers "a sort of endurance of the soul," and Socrates pushes back: a foolish endurance is harmful, so is it courage? Laches agrees that "only the wise endurance is courage," and the dialogue keeps digging from there. The text is free in Jowett's translation from Project Gutenberg.
Who said "courage is not the absence of fear"?
The modern line is credited to Nelson Mandela and, in a longer form, to the writer Ambrose Redmoon, but the idea is much older. Mark Twain printed it in 1894.
The entry heads chapter XII of Pudd'nhead Wilson, one of the mock calendar sayings Twain put at the start of each chapter: "Courage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear," and "not absence of fear." He follows it with a joke: if ignorance of fear were courage, the flea would be the bravest of all creatures.
I have not checked the Mandela or Redmoon wording against a printed text, so treat both attributions with care. If you want a version with a source you can cite, Twain's is the one. Emerson made the same point in 1870, writing that the man who does not surmount a fear every day has not learned the lesson of life.
What did Shakespeare write about courage?
He wrote some of the most quoted courage lines in English, but two of the three famous ones are spoken in dangerous company.
"Cowards die many times before their deaths" is Caesar's answer to his wife Calpurnia in Act 2, Scene 2 of Julius Caesar, when she begs him to stay home from the Senate. He goes anyway, and the conspirators kill him that day. "Screw your courage to the sticking-place" is Lady Macbeth in Act 1, Scene 7, talking her husband into murdering the king. Only "Once more unto the breach" is plain heroism: Henry V rallying his men at the siege of Harfleur in Act 3, Scene 1, telling them to "imitate the action of the tiger."
All three scenes can be read in full at MIT's complete works of Shakespeare. The lines still work on their own. They just carry more weight when you know who says them, and why.
What does the Man in the Arena speech say about courage?
It says courage belongs to the person who tries and risks failure, not the critic who watches. Theodore Roosevelt gave the speech at the Sorbonne in Paris on April 23, 1910.
The passage opens with "It is not the critic who counts" and gives the credit to the one "whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood." The courage in it is not physical bravery. It is the willingness to fail in public, the man who "at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly." The Theodore Roosevelt Presidential Library keeps the full Man in the Arena text.
We cover the speech line by line in what the Man in the Arena quote actually means. For the Roman image behind it, see what a gladiator actually was.
Which courage quotes are misattributed?
Churchill attracts several fake courage quotes, and two famous classical lines circulate in wording their authors never used. The table compares each popular line with the source.
| Quote as shared | Usually credited to | What the source shows |
|---|---|---|
| "Success is not final, failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts" | Churchill | Found nowhere in his canon, per the Churchill Society |
| "Courage is what it takes to stand up and speak" | Churchill | Appears nowhere in the Churchill canon, per the same list |
| "The secret of happiness is freedom, and the secret of freedom is courage" | Thucydides or Pericles | A loose paraphrase of the Funeral Oration, Book II |
| "It is not because things are difficult that we do not dare" | Seneca | A fair modern rendering of Letter 104 |
| "Courage is not the absence of fear" | Mandela or Redmoon | Twain printed the idea in 1894 |
The Churchill Society's list of quotes falsely attributed to Churchill says it can find no attribution for the "success is not final" line. The Pericles paraphrase comes from Richard Crawley's translation of the Funeral Oration, where Athenians are told to judge "happiness to be the fruit of freedom," and freedom in turn the fruit of valor. Seneca's Latin is close to the modern version too. Gummere gives it as "Our lack of confidence is not the result of difficulty; the difficulty comes from our lack of confidence."
How do you build courage, according to these writers?
The writers on this list describe courage as a practice you build in steps. Their advice comes down to five habits.
- Face one fear a day. Emerson says the lesson of life is learned by surmounting a fear daily.
- Learn the danger. Emerson's "knowledge is the antidote to fear" means understanding the risk shrinks it.
- Aim for the middle. Aristotle warns against rashness as firmly as against cowardice.
- Do it once. Emerson notes that the man who has done the deed once does not shrink from it again.
- Step into the arena. Roosevelt gives the credit to the one who tries, not the one who comments.
Which courage quotes work on a wall?
The ones that carry a scene with them. "Cowards die many times before their deaths" is short and memorable. Roosevelt's arena works best as the full passage, read slowly, rather than as a fragment. Twain's line works as a reminder that fear is the raw material of courage, not its opposite.
Courage also works as imagery: an empty arena seen from the sand, a gladiator facing a lion, a ticket that says admit one. Our Man In The Arena series pairs Roosevelt's idea with images of Roman and Greek arenas. The full set sits in the Man in the Arena wall art collection.
Featured courage pieces
Frequently asked questions
What is the most famous quote about courage?
Shakespeare's "Cowards die many times before their deaths; The valiant never taste of death but once," from Julius Caesar, Act 2, Scene 2, is among the best known. Roosevelt's 1910 man in the arena passage is the most famous modern one.
Did Churchill say "Success is not final, failure is not fatal"?
There is no evidence he did. The International Churchill Society says it can find no attribution for the line and that it is found nowhere in his canon. The same list rejects "Courage is what it takes to stand up and speak."
Who said "courage is not the absence of fear"?
The modern wording is credited to Nelson Mandela and to Ambrose Redmoon. The idea appears in Mark Twain's Pudd'nhead Wilson of 1894: "Courage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear," and "not absence of fear."
What did Aristotle say about courage?
In the Nicomachean Ethics he called courage the mean between cowardice and rashness. In Ross's translation, the brave man faces and fears the right things, from the right motive, in the right way and at the right time.
What is a short quote about courage?
Emerson's "Knowledge is the antidote to fear," from his essay Courage, is six words. Shakespeare's "Once more unto the breach" is five words, and the rest of Henry V's speech gives it a battlefield behind it.
