Of Veterans Day Courage & Fear

During the first Gulf war I served as an Army Chaplain for the 3/15th Infantry Regiment, 24th Infantry Division. We were the unit which did the famous "Hail Mary Deep Into Iraq to Destroy the Republican Guard." When I would stand up amid the explosions and Iraqi tanks firing at me to be with my troops in their time of need, my soldiers would call me "brave and courageous." or some just plain "crazy." My response to them was always to quote either Patton or Twain which I will do in my list of qoutes below.

It is OK to be afraid and even admit publicly that you fear this or that but remember "For God has not given us a spirit of fear, but of power and of love and of a sound mind." 2 Timothy 1:7 As a Veteran and former Army Chaplain who has seen my share of the eye of the tiger of death, I want to encourage everyone today to face your fear(s) head on and be the master of them rather than it controlling you. Happy Veterans Day to all my brothers and sisters who have served and are serving our Great Nation called The United States of America!

Here is a collection of quotes from the famous and not so famous concerning the topic of courage and fear. I pray it helps you when you face your tiger.

Courage is fear holding on a minute longer. ~George Smith Patton

Courage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear - not absence of fear. Except a creature be part coward it is not a compliment to say it is brave. ~Mark Twain, Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar, 1894

Courage is being scared to death... and saddling up anyway. ~John Wayne

Cowardice, as distinguished from panic, is almost always simply a lack of ability to suspend the functioning of the imagination. ~Ernest Hemingway, Men at War, 1942

Courage is being afraid but going on anyhow. ~Dan Rather

Courage is fear that has said its prayers. ~Dorothy Bernard

There is no such thing as bravery; only degrees of fear. ~John Wainwright

Courage is reckoned the greatest of all virtues; because, unless a man has that virtue, he has no security for preserving any other. ~Samuel Johnson

Courage is not the absence of fear, but rather the judgement that something else is more important than fear. ~Ambrose Redmoon

Every man has his own courage, and is betrayed because he seeks in himself the courage of other persons. ~Ralph Waldo Emerson

Courage is what it takes to stand up and speak; courage is also what it takes to sit down and listen. ~Winston Churchill

Courage doesn't always roar. Sometimes courage is the little voice at the end of the day that says I'll try again tomorrow. ~Mary Anne Radmacher

It is curious that physical courage should be so common in the world and moral courage so rare. ~Mark Twain

People are made of flesh and blood and a miracle fibre called courage. ~Mignon McLaughlin, The Neurotic's Notebook, 1960

Sometimes even to live is an act of courage. ~Lucius Annaeus Seneca, Letters to Lucilius

It was times like these when I thought my father, who hated guns and had never been to any wars, was the bravest man who ever lived. ~Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird

Courage is doing what you're afraid to do. There can be no courage unless you're scared. ~Edward Vernon Rickenbacker

Coward: A man in whom the instinct of self-preservation acts normally. ~Sultana Zoraya

Bravery is being the only one who knows you're afraid. ~Franklin P. Jones

Courage can't see around corners, but goes around them anyway. ~Mignon McLaughlin, The Neurotic's Notebook, 1960

Sometimes the biggest act of courage is a small one. ~Lauren Raffo

Some have been thought brave because they were afraid to run away. ~Thomas Fuller

Fear and courage are brothers. ~Terri Guillemets

Courage is not simply one of the virtues, but the form of every virtue at the testing point. ~C.S. Lewis

The courage of life is often a less dramatic spectacle than the courage of a final moment; but it is no less a magnificent mixture of triumph and tragedy. ~John F. Kennedy

One man with courage makes a majority. ~Andrew Jackson

Courage is the power to let go of the familiar. ~Raymond Lindquist

Valor is stability, not of legs and arms, but of courage and the soul. ~Michel de Montaigne

When we are afraid we ought not to occupy ourselves with endeavoring to prove that there is no danger, but in strengthening ourselves to go on in spite of the danger. ~Mark Rutherford

True courage is not the brutal force of vulgar heroes, but the firm resolve of virtue and reason. ~Alfred North Whitehead

Courage, in the final analysis, is nothing but an affirmative answer to the shocks of existence. ~Kurt Goldstein

To live with fear and not be afraid is the final test of maturity. ~Edward Weeks

A man of courage never wants weapons. ~Author Unknown

Healing takes courage, and we all have courage, even if you have to dig a little. ~Tori Amos

It is easy to be brave from a safe distance. ~Aesop

Cowards, 'tis said, in certain situations,
Derive a sort of courage from despair,
And then perform, from downright desperation,
Much more than many a bolder man would dare.
~Thomas Ingoldsby, "The Ghost," 1837

A brave arm makes a short sword long. ~Author Unknown

No one has yet computed how many imaginary triumphs are silently celebrated by people each year to keep up their courage. ~Henry S. Haskins

Look at hopelessness in the face and say: "We are simply not meant to be together." Hold courage's hand and walk away. ~Dodinsky

I'm not funny. What I am is brave. ~Lucille Ball

Courage is a peculiar kind of fear. ~Charles Kennedy

For without belittling the courage with which men have died, we should not forget those acts of courage with which men have lived. ~John F. Kennedy

I have no fear! what is in store for me
Shall find me self-reliant, undismayed.
God grant my only cowardice may be:
Afraid to be afraid!
~Everard Jack Appleton, quoted in Journal of Education, vol. 81, Boston University, 1915

Courage is tiny pieces of fear all glued together. ~Terri Guillemets

Courage is... the knowledge of how to fear what ought to be feared and how not to fear what ought not to be feared. ~David Ben-Gurion

Courage is knowing what not to fear. ~Plato

Optimism is the foundation of courage. ~Nicholas Murray Butler

Courage is as often the outcome of despair as of hope; in the one case we have nothing to lose, in the other everything to gain. ~Diane de Poitiers

To him that waits all things reveal themselves, provided that he has the courage not to deny, in the darkness, what he has seen in the light. ~Coventry Patmore

Necessity does the work of courage. ~Nicholas Murray Butler

Perfect courage means doing unwitnessed what we would be capable of with the world looking on. ~Fran?ois, Duc de La Rochefoucauld, Maxims, 1678

Courage is almost a contradiction in terms. It means a strong desire to live taking the form of readiness to die. ~G.K. Chesterton

Courage crawls atop fear and screams loud its mighty victory! ~Terri Guillemets

Courage is the fear of being thought a coward. ~Horace Smith

Courage is to feel the daily daggers of relentless steel and keep on living. ~Douglas Malloch

The only real progress lies in learning to be wrong all alone. ~Albert Camus

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 is never to let your actions be influenced by your fears. ~Arthur Koestler

Underneath courage shouts fear but of a hoarse voice. ~Terri Guillemets

Courage ought to have eyes as well as arms. ~H.G. Bohn

You can't test courage cautiously. ~Anne Dillard

The only courage that matters is the kind that gets you from one moment to the next. ~Mignon McLaughlin, The Second Neurotic's Notebook, 1966

In the beginning of a change, the patriot is a scarce man, and brave, and hated and scorned. When his cause succeeds, the timid join him, for then it costs nothing to be a patriot. ~Mark Twain, Notebook, 1935

I wanted you to see what real courage is, instead of getting the idea that courage is a man with a gun in his hand. It's when you know you're licked before you begin but you begin anyway and you see it through no matter what. You rarely win, but sometimes you do. ~Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird

A timid person is frightened before a danger, a coward during the time, and a courageous person afterward. ~Jean Paul Richter

A hero is no braver than an ordinary man, but he is braver five minutes longer. ~Ralph Waldo Emerson

Have the courage to live. Anyone can die. ~Robert Cody

If you enjoyed this post please do like, comment and share it with others. Thank you, Darrell Williams - Morristown, Tennessee