Cowardice Quotes - Page 19

• Your devotion is nothing more than cowardice. You would not be here if you had anywhere else to go.

  J. K. Rowling

  Devotion, Ifs

  J.K. Rowling (2015). “Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire”, p.17, Pottermore

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• Non-violence should never be used as a shield for cowardice. It is a weapon for the brave.

  Mahatma Gandhi

  Brave, Weapons, Shields

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• Remember, Monsieur, that the downfall of most Communities comes from the cowardice of Superiors in not holding firm and in not purging them of the troublesome and incorrigible.

  Vincent de Paul

  Leadership, Community, Remember

  Saint Vincent de Paul, Pierre Coste (1990). “Correspondence, Conferences, Documents: Correspondence; January 1640-July 1646)”

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• We believe that preparation eradicates cowardice, which we define as the failure to act in the midst of fear.

  Veronica Roth

  Fear, Believe, Preparation

  Veronica Roth (2013). “Divergent Trilogy”, p.45, HarperCollins UK

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• I do believe that where there is a choice between cowardice and non-violence I would advise violence. Thus when my eldest son asked me what he should have done, had he been present when I was almost fatally assaulted in 1908, whether he should have run away and seen me killed or whether he should have used his physical force which he could and wanted to use, and defended me, I told him that it was his duty to defend me even by using violence.

  Mahatma Gandhi

  Running, Believe, Son

  Mahatma Gandhi (2005). “All Men Are Brothers”, p.99, A&C Black

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• Often life asks much of you, and you either honor life by answering with all your heart, or you cower your way into your grave.

  James Rollins

  Heart, Honor, Way

  Twitter post from May 05, 2013

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• Patience and submission are very carefully to be distinguished from cowardice and indolence. We are not to repine, but we may lawfully struggle; for the calamities of life, like the necessities of Nature, are calls to labor and diligence.

  Samuel Johnson

  Patience, Struggle, May

  Samuel Johnson (1811). “Works”, p.184

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• The opposite of manliness isn't cowardice; it's technology.

  Nassim Nicholas Taleb

  Technology, Opposites, Manliness

  Nassim Nicholas Taleb (2010). “The Bed of Procrustes: Philosophical and Practical Aphorisms”, p.16, Random House

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• Probably the most distinctive characteristic of the successful politician is selective cowardice.

  Richard Harris

  Successful, Politician, Characteristics

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• After using the 'good offices' of UN diplomacy (economic sanctions and weapons inspections) to ensure that Iraq was brought to its knees, its people starved, half a million of its children killed, its infrastructure severely damaged, after making sure that most of its weapons have been destroyed, in an act of cowardice that must surely be unrivalled in history, the 'Allies' / 'Coalition of the Willing' (better known as the Coalition of the Bullied and Bought) - sent in an invading army!

  Arundhati Roy

  Children, Army, Iraq

  Arundhati Roy (2006). “Ordinary Person's Guide To Empire”, p.117, Penguin Books India

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• Surely nothing is more reproachful to a being endowed with reason, than to resign its powers to the influence of the air, and live in dependence on the weather and the wind, for the only blessings which nature has put into our power, tranquillity and benevolence. To look up to the sky for the nutriment of our bodies, is the condition of nature; to call upon the sun for peace and gaiety, or deprecate the clouds lest sorrow should overwhelm us, is the cowardice of idleness, and the idolatry of folly.

  Samuel Johnson

  Blessing, Clouds, Air

  Samuel Johnson, Peter Martin (2009). “Samuel Johnson: Selected Writings”, p.73, Harvard University Press

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• Moral cowardice and intellectual corruption are the natural concomitants of unchallenged privilege.

  Noam Chomsky

  Intellectual, Privilege, Moral

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• Compromise does not mean cowardice.

  John F. Kennedy

  Peace, Mean, Ubuntu

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• The other producer of old age is habit: the deathly process of doing the same thing in the same way at the same hour day after day, first from carelessness, then from inclination, at last from cowardice or inertia. Luckily the inconsequent life is not the only alternative; for caprice is as ruinous as routine. Habit is necessary; it is the habit of having habits, of turning a trail into a rut, that must be incessantly fought against if one is to remain alive.

  Edith Wharton

  Writing, Age, Routine

  "A Backward Glance".

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• And we are understanding - we're beginning to understand that the Nigerian military is now better on. And also, probably even more importantly, Michel, morale is higher amongst the military. I mean, you had Nigerian soldiers being accused of cowardice, running away from Boko Haram and not having the will to fight.

  Ofeibea Quist-Arcton

  Running, Military, Mean

  "Nigeria Declares Victory Over Boko Haram - But Do Nigerians See It That Way?". "All Things Considered" with Michel Martin, www.npr.org. December 27, 2015.

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• I do not fight battles that cannot be won. Do not confuse that with cowardice.

  Paolo Bacigalupi

  Fighting, Battle

  Paolo Bacigalupi (2012). “The Drowned Cities: Number 2 in series”, p.84, Hachette UK

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• Better it were not to live than to live a coward.

  Walter Raleigh

  Coward

  Sir Walter Raleigh, William Oldys, Thomas Birch (1829). “The Works of Sir Walter Ralegh, Kt: The life of Sir Walter Ralegh, by William Oldys. The life of Sir Walter Ralegh, by Tho. Birch”, p.360

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• True devotion must not get dispirited; nor elated or satisfied with lesser gains; it must fight against failure, loss, calumny, calamity, ridicule and against egoism and pride , impatience and cowardice .

  Sathya Sai Baba

  Fighting, Pride, Loss

  FaceBook post by Sri Sathya Sai Baba from Oct 27, 2016

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• It is cowardice to commit suicide.

  Napoleon Bonaparte

  Suicide, Commit

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• To be afraid is the miserable condition of a coward. To do wrong, or omit to do right from fear, is to superadd delinquency to cowardice.

  David Dudley Field II

  Coward, Miserable, Delinquency

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• What are the characters that I discern most clearly in the so-called Anglo-Saxon type of man? I may answer at once that two stickout above all others. One is his curious and apparently incurable incompetence--his congenital inability to do any difficult thing easily and well, whether it be isolating a bacillus or writing a sonata. The other is his astounding susceptibility to fears and alarms--in short, his hereditary cowardice.... There is no record in history of any Anglo-Saxon nation entering upon any great war without allies.

  H. L. Mencken

  War, Writing, Character

  H.L. Mencken (2012). “Mencken Chrestomathy”, p.173, Vintage

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• Every fall into love involves the triumph of hope over self-knowledge. We fall in love hoping we won't find in another what we know is in ourselves, all the cowardice, weakness, laziness, dishonesty, compromise, and stupidity. We throw a cordon of love around the chosen one and decide that everything within it will somehow be free of our faults. We locate inside another a perfection that eludes us within ourselves, and through our union with the beloved hope to maintain (against the evidence of all self-knowledge) a precarious faith in our species.

  Alain de Botton

  Falling In Love, Elude Us, Self

  Alain de Botton (2015). “On Love: A Novel”, p.14, Grove/Atlantic, Inc.

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• Inaction is cowardice, but there can be no scholar without the heroic mind.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Mind, Heroic, Scholar

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (2015). “Emerson's Essays: Top Essays”, p.16, 谷月社

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• People pontificate, "Suicide is selfishness." Career churchmen like Pater go a step further and call in a cowardly assault on the living. Oafs argue this specious line for varying reason: to evade fingers of blame, to impress one's audience with one's mental fiber, to vent anger, or just because one lacks the necessary suffering to sympathize. Cowardice is nothing to do with it - suicide takes considerable courage. Japanese have the right idea. No, what's selfish is to demand another to endure an intolerable existence, just to spare families, friends, and enemies a bit of soul-searching.

  David Mitchell

  Suicide, Selfish, Careers

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• In unanimity there may well be either cowardice or uncritical thinking.

  Donald Rumsfeld

  Thinking, May, Wells

  Twitter post from Oct 22, 2010

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