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Cowardice Quotes

Browse 757 quotes about Cowardice.

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Cowardice Quotes

“Nation editor Katrina van den Heuvel told me that the failure to adequately cover the Downing Street Memo epitomizes the timidity, the cowardice of a media that has been manipulated, intimidated, bullied by an administration that has taken it to a high level. . lapdog news media.”

Has BeensNationsLevelsTakenStreetsMediaNewsAdministrationEditorsCowardiceVansIntimidatedBulliedHigh LevelTimidityKatrinaDensNews MediaMemosDowningDowning Street
Author:Frank Rich
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“I am not here to pass civilities or compliments with you, but on other business. I have stood your meanness as long as I intend to. You have played the part of a damned scoundrel, and are a coward, and if you were any part of a man I would slap your jaws and force you to resent it. You may as well not issue any more orders to me, for I will not obey them... and as I say to you that if you ever again try to interfere with me or cross my path it will be at the peril of your life.”

IfsMenTryingWellsMayLongWarOrderForceEnemyPathIssuesSpeechCrossesObedienceOpponentsCivil WarCowardComplimentCowardiceInterfereThreateningFoePerilCivilityResentSlapMeannessScoundrelsProclamation
Author:Nathan Bedford Forrest
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“A coward is incapable of exhibiting love; it is the prerogative of the brave.”

LifeInspirationPeaceLove YouBraveryBraveCleverCowardCapabilityCowardiceIncapableBe BraveCowardlyPrerogativeSatyagrahaFaith In HumanityExpressing LoveCoward And CourageBritish RuleBritish Rule In India
Book:Glorious Thoughts of Gandhi: Being a Treasury of about Ten Thousand Valuable and Inspiring Thougths of Mahatma Gandhi, Classified Under Four Hundred Subjects
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“History teaches us no race, no people, no nation has ever been freed through cowardice, through cringing, through bowing and scraping, but all that has been achieved to the glory of mankind, to the glory and honour of races and nations was through the manly determination and effort of those who lead and those who are led.”

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Book:The Marcus Garvey and Universal Negro Improvement Association Papers, Vol. II: August 1919-August 1920
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“The criminal law has, from the point of view of thwarted virtue, the merit of allowing an outlet for those impulses of aggression which cowardice, disguised as morality, restrains in their more spontaneous forms. War has the same merit. You must not kill you neighbor, whom perhaps you genuinely hate, but by a little propaganda this hate can be transferred to some foreign nation, against whom all your murderous impulses become patriotic heroism.”

LittlesWarFormLawHateNationsViewsVirtueMoralityPoint Of ViewNeighborCriminalsImpulsePropagandaMeritPatrioticAllowingCowardiceHeroismAggressionSpontaneousOutletsCriminal Law
Author:Bertrand Russell
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“In my view, Jan Masaryk was thoroughly corrupt, who bumped himself off because he saw at last where his moral cowardice and ideological 'Playboyery' had led him. I vividly remember visiting him in Washington, fat, slightly tight, coming into the room looking like a broken-down butler with his master, the little Communist, Clementis, - and saying in a loud voice: 'Has anyone seen an Iron Curtain? I haven't.' Well, he has now.”

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Author:Malcolm Muggeridge
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“Bravery is a mean state concerned with things that inspire confidence and with things fearful ... and leading us to choose danger and to face it, either because to do so is noble, or because not to do so is base. But to court death as an escape from poverty, or from love, or from some grievous pain, is no proof of bravery, but rather of cowardice.”

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Book:The Nicomachean Ethics of Aristotle
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“For what is there more hideous than avarice, more brutal than lust, more contemptible than cowardice, more base than stupidity and folly?”

StupidityLustFollyCowardiceBrutalAvariceHideous
Book:The treatises of M.T. Cicero on the nature of the gods [tr. by T.Francklin]; on divination; on fate; on the republic; on the laws; and on standing for the consulship, tr. chiefly by the ed. C.D.Yonge [and F.Barham].
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“Children who wish to become good and great men or good and noble women, should try to know well all the people whom they meet. Thus they will find that there is no one who has not much of good; and when they see some great folly, or some meanness, or some cowardice, or some fault or weakness in another person, they should examine themselves carefully. Then they will see that, perhaps, they too have some of the same fault in themselves - although perhaps it does not come out in the same way - and then they must try to conquer that fault.”

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Book:Delphi Complete Works of Bram Stoker (Illustrated)
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“Is it stupidity or is it moral cowardice which leads men to continue professing a creed that makes self-sacrifice a cardinal principle, while they urge the sacrificing of others, even to the death, when they trespass against us? Is it blindness, or is it an insance inconsistency, which makes them regard as most admirable the bearing of evil for the benefit of others, while they lavish admiration on those who, out of revenge, inflict great evils in return for small ones suffered? Surely our barbarian code of right needs revision, and our barbarian standard of honour should be somewhat changed.”

MenNeedsShouldSelfEvilMoralPrinciplesSacrificeChangedReturnBenefitsStandardsRegardStupidityRevengeCodeUrgesAdmirationHonourCowardiceCreedsBlindnessAdmirableSelf SacrificeBarbariansCardinalsRevisionInconsistency
Book:Works: The study of sociology
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“Disgust is expressed by violence, and it is to be noted of our intellectual temper that violence is a quality which is felt to have a peculiarly intellectual sanction. Our preference, even as articulated by those who are most mild in their persons, is increasingly for the absolute and extreme, of which we feel violence to be the true sign. The gentlest of us will know that the tigers of wrath are to be preferred to the horses of instruction and will consider it intellectual cowardice to take into account what happens to those who ride tigers.”

KnowsFeelsPersonsHappensFeltQualityViolenceIntellectualAccountsHorseAbsolutesExtremesTemperInstructionCowardiceDisgustingTigersPreferenceWrathSanctions
Author:Lionel Trilling
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“The heroes in paganism correspond exactly to the saints in popery, and holy dervises in MAHOMETANISM. The place of, HERCULES, THESEUS, HECTOR, ROMULUS, is now supplied by DOMINIC, FRANCIS, ANTHONY, and BENEDICT. Instead of the destruction of monsters, the subduing of tyrants, the defence of our native country; whippings and fastings, cowardice and humility, abject submission and slavish obedience, are become the means of obtaining celestial honours among mankind.”

MeanCountryMankindHumilityHeroHolyDestructionSaintMonstersObedienceNativeHonourTyrantsCowardiceSubmissionDefencePaganismCelestialFastingObtainingHectorTheseusNative CountryRomulus
Book:Delphi Complete Works of David Hume (Illustrated)
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“I believe there is no other difference between those who are called courageous and those who are branded craven than that the second are fearful before the danger and the first after it. No one can be much frightened, certainly, during a period of great and immanent peril -- the mind is too much concentrated on the thing itself, and on the actions necessary to meet or avoid it. The coward is a coward, then, because he has brought his fear with him; persons we think cowardly will sometimes amaze us by their bravery, if they have had no forewarning of their danger.”

IfsThinkingMindFirstsBelievePersonsSometimesActionI BelieveDifferencesToo MuchDangerPeriodsBraveryCourageousCowardFrightenedFearfulCowardicePerilCowardlyBranded
Author:Gene Wolfe
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“The tyrant, who in order to hold his power, suppresses every superiority, does away with good men, forbids education and light, controls every movement of the citizens and, keeping them under a perpetual servitude, wants them to grow accustomed to baseness and cowardice, has his spies everywhere to listen to what is said in the meetings, and spreads dissension and calumny among the citizens and impoverishes them, is obliged to make war in order to keep his subjects occupied and impose on them permanent need of a chief.”

MenWantNeedsDoeSaidWarLightOrderGrowsSubjectsMovementCitizensMeetingsSpreadChiefsPermanentGood ManTyrantsCowardicePerpetualSuperiorityAccustomedSpyObligedServitudeCalumnyDissensionBaseness
Author:Aristotle
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“The reign of terror to which France submitted has been more justly termed "the reign of cowardice." One knows not which most to execrate,--the nation that could submit to suffer such atrocities, or that low and bloodthirsty demagogue that could inflict them. France, in succumbing to such a wretch as Robespierre, exhibited, not her patience, but her pusillanimity.”

KnowsHas BeensSufferingNationsLowsTerrorFranceCowardiceSubmitReignAtrocitiesSuccumbingReign Of Terror
Book:Lacon: Or Many Things in Few Words, Addressed to Those who Think
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“Unless we realize our sins enough to call them by name, it is hardly worth while to say anything about them at all. When we pray for forgiveness, let us say, "my temper," or "untruthfulness," or "pride," "my selfishness, my cowardice, indolence, jealousy, revenge, impurity." To recognize our sins, we must look them in the face and call them by their right names, however hard. Honesty in confession calls for definiteness in confession.”

LooksHardEnoughFacesNamesRealizingSinHonestyPridePrayingRevengeSelfishnessTemperCowardiceConfessionSay AnythingIndolenceImpurityUntruthfulness
Book:Thoughts for Every-day Living from the Spoken and Written Words of Maltbie Davenport Babcock
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