83 Quotes About Cowardice

Son, never trust a man who doesn’t drink because he’s probably a self-righteous sort, a man who thinks he knows right from wrong all the time. Some of them are good men, but in the name of goodness, they cause most of the suffering in the world. They’re the judges, the meddlers. And, son, never trust a man who drinks but refuses to get drunk. They’re usually afraid of something deep down inside, either that they’re a coward or a fool or mean and violent. You can’t trust a man who’s afraid of himself. But sometimes, son, you can trust a man who occasionally kneels before a toilet. The chances are that he is learning something about humility and his natural human foolishness, about how to survive himself. It’s damned hard for a man to take himself too seriously when he’s heaving his guts into a dirty toilet bowl. James Crumley

He must not merely cling to life, for then he will be a coward, and will not escape. He must not merely wait for death, for then he will be a suicide, and will not escape. He must seek his life in a spirit of furious indifference to it. G.k. Chesterton

The coward says in his heart “There is no love.” Because, standing in the shadows of the big, grand, and powerful existence of love, his small spirit is left feeling even smaller and less significant. And so he chooses to deny the existence of love altogether. Because he is too small to have it. C. Joybell C.

And Athos had. He’d broken Holland one bone, one day, one order at a time. Until all Holland wanted, more than the ability to save his world, more than the strength to bring the magic back, more than anything, was for it to end. It was cowardice, he knew, but cowardice came so much easier than hope. V.E. Schwab

If you go to your death rather than do everything you might to prevent what is happening, you are merely committing suicide and trying to make yourself feel better about it. That is the act of a coward. It is beneath contempt. Jim Butcher

Fear of ridicule begets the worst cowardice. Unknown

Amaranta, however, whose hardness of heart frightened her, whose concentrated bitterness made her bitter, suddenly became clear to her in the final analysis as the most tender woman who had ever existed, and she understood with pitying clarity that the unjust tortures to which she had submitted Pietro Crespi had not been dictated by a desire for vengeance, as everyone had thought, nor had the slow martyrdom with which she had frustrated the life of Colonel Gerineldo Márquez been determined by the gall of her bitterness, as everyone had thought, but that both actions had been a mortal struggle between a measureless love and an invincible cowardice, and that the irrational fear that Amaranta had always had of her own tormented heart had triumphed in the end. Unknown

They did not submit to the obvious alternative, which was simply to close the eyes and fall. So easy, really. Go limp and tumble to the ground and let the muscles unwind and not speak and not budge until your buddies picked you up and lifted you into the chopper that would roar and dip its nose and carry you off to the world. A mere matter of falling, yet no one ever fell. It was not courage, exactly; the object was not valor. Rather, they were too frightened to be cowards. Tim OBrien

And it was only then that I realized what I had let myself in for, and only then I realized how bloody thick I had been not to have predicted it. It would seem that the combination of elements--woman, desert, camels, aloneness--hit some soft sport in this era's passionless, heartless, aching psyche. It fired the imaginations of people who seem themselves as alienated, powerless, unable to do anything about a world gone mad. And wouldn't it be my luck to pick just this combination. The reaction was totally unexpected and it was very, very weird. I was now public property. I was now a kind of symbol. I was now an object of ridicule for small-minded sexists, and I was a crazy, irresponsible adventurer (though not as crazy as I would have been had I failed). But worse than all that, I was now a mythical being who had done something courageous and outside the possibilities that ordinary people could hope for. And that was the antithesis of what I wanted to share. That anyone could do anything. If I could bumble my way across a desert, then anyone could do anything. And that was true especially for women, who have used cowardice for so long to protect themselves that it has become a habit. . Robyn Davidson

There was always a screen behind which one could hide– a superior who in turn had his superior– orders, instructions, duties, commands– and finally the many-headed monster, morale, necessity, hard reality, responsibility, or whatever it was called– there was always a screen behind which to evade the simple law of humanity. Erich Maria Remarque

Out of fear, out of the desire for approval, out of misguided notions of duty, people surrender themselves--their convictions and their aspirations--every day. There is nothing noble about it. It takes far more courage to fight for your values than to relinquish them. Nathaniel Branden

We do not ask. We want to be told. One of the most curious things in the structure of our psyche is that we all want to be told because we are the result of the propaganda of ten thousand years. We want to have our thinking confirmed and corroborated by another, whereas to ask a question is to ask it of yourself. Jiddu Krishnamurti

Man is weak. Purpose makes him strong. Raheel Farooq

This cult of the future is not only a weakness but a cowardice of the age. G.k. Chesterton

Leaving others alone is a sign of cowardice, whether you are involved in a war or in a relationship. Pratik Akkawar

Indeed, for the last three years, he had carefully avoided her, as a result of the natural cowardice so characteristic of the stronger sex... Gustave Flaubert

Do I know you? I know you clear through. I was born and raised in the South, and I’ve lived in the North; so I know the average all around. The average man’s a coward. Mark Twain

Men can be pitiless towards a woman whose body has eluded them, particularly if this is thanks to their own cowardice. Unknown

If it be well weighed, to say that a man lieth, is as much to say, as that he is brave towards God and a coward towards men. Michel De Montaigne

She loved sinking into her bed on evenings like this, but apparently she shouldn't, because it worried her aunts, who thought she ought to be out dancing. It worried her a little bit, too, because what if they were right, and because sometimes a great loneliness welled up in her and threatened all the dams she built to hold it back. You couldn't cure loneliness by wallowing in it, up above the world, on an island removed from everything. She knew that. But she had such a hard time with all the cures. They seemed rough and brusque and brutal, as if they abused her skin with a pot scrubber . forcing herself into a mass of people, a stranger among strangers. But it was much more tempting to curl up with a book under her thick white comforter. Still, sometimes after she curled up, she regretted her lack of courage and felt bleakly l . Laura Florand

It's obsequious little nicety-nice girls like me who allow assholes to run the world: Miss Harlot O'Harlots, billionaire phony tree huggers, hypocrite drug-snorting, weed-puffing peace activists who fund the mass-murdering drug cartels and perpetuate crushing poverty in dirt-poor banana republics. It's my petty fear of personal rejection that allows so many true evils to exist. My cowardice enables atrocities. Chuck Palahniuk

It's my petty fear of personal rejection that allows so many true evils to exist. My cowardice enables atrocities. Chuck Palahniuk

The nation that will insist on drawing a broad line of demarcation between the fighting man and the thinking man is liable to find its fighting done by fools and its thinking done by cowards. William Francis Butler

In a word, I was too cowardly to do what I knew to be right, as I had been too cowardly to avoid doing what I knew to be wrong. Charles Dickens

He had been driven hither by the impulse of that Remorse which dogged him everywhere, and whose own sister and closely linked companion was that Cowardice which invariably drew him back, with her tremulous gripe, just when the other impulse had hurried him to the verge of a disclosure. Nathaniel Hawthorne

We have made men proud of most vices, but not of cowardice. Whenever we have almost succeeded in doing so, God permits a war or an earthquake or some other calamity, and at once courage becomes so obviously lovely and important even in human eyes that all our work is undone, and there is still at least one vice of which they feel genuine shame. The danger of inducing cowardice in our patients, therefore, is lest we produce real self-knowledge and self-loathing, with consequent repentance and humility. C.s. Lewis

It is a mere cowardice to seek safety in negations. No character becomes strong in that way. You will be thrown into the world some day and then every rational satisfaction your nature that you deny now will assault like a savage appetite. George Eliot

Where choice is set between cowardice and violence, I would advise violence ... I prefer to use arms in defense of honor rather than remain the vile witness of dishonor... Mahatma Gandhi

Survival feels like cowardice. Ann Aguirre

Looking ahead to future applications of electronics, [de Forest] grew even gloomier. He believed that 'electron physiologists' would eventually be able to monitor and analyze 'thought or brain waves', allowing 'joy and grief to be measured in define, quantitative unit.' Ultimately, he concluded, 'a professor may be able to implant knowledge into the reluctant brains of his 22nd century pupils. What terrifying political possibilities may be lurking there! Let us be thankful that such things are only for posterity, not for us. Nicholas Carr

You and I both know, deep in your heart, you agree with me. And I will prove it with one hypothetical scenario: you are alone in a closet of your home. There`s a bright red button. You can push that button and presto all Negroes and Jews and all other colored people are instantly removed from the North American continent and returned to their native countries. You`d push it, wouldn`t you whitey? See? See? See? in the final analysis, you agree with me. But of course, you wouldn`t do antything to bring that scenario about, or any other scenario favorable to your Race. Frazier Glenn Miller

I'd never understood the injunction not to regret anything, couldn't see how that wasn't cowardice... Unknown

Do you see the irony at all, Tristan?’ I stare at him and shake my head. He seems determined not to speak again until I do. ‘What irony?’ I ask eventually, the words tumbling out in a hurried heap. ‘That I am to be shot as a coward while you get to live as one. John Boyne

Our doubts are traitors, and make us lose the good we oft might win, by fearing to attempt. William Shakespeare

So answer me, are you merely a cowardly Moses, pointing the way to the Promised Land but poisoned by doubt and so unable to cross the River Jordan? Tony Vigorito

They say cowardice is infectious; but then argument is, on the other hand, a great emboldener; Robert Louis Stevenson

Hatred is the coward's revenge for being intimidated. George Bernard Shaw

Each man must administer his hatred cautiously. Mine is equitable. I distribute it evenly among those who are frozen in the past and those who perspire in the present. Because while the former are hemorrhoidal in their sensibility, the latter are constipated in the brain. And they complement each other by both betraying the law of life that demands the immediate defecation of all useless detritus, be it antiquated illusion or contemporary cowardice. Juan Filloy

I think before I act---and then think again. I am not entirely a coward, but I do not lose myself in action as you do. John Christopher

Mercy and cowardice are the same, " she snapped out. "But you want their land, not their lives, no? Dead men can't obey. Joe Abercrombie

Pacifism is a virtue indistinguishable from cowardice. Brent Weeks

Superstition would seem to be simply cowardice in regard to the supernatural. Theophrastus

Most men wait to move until victory is guaranteed. John Eldredge

...For I do now know that it is cowardly. We do not have the right to think only of poetry on this earth. It is magical, but utterly selfish. Unknown

* *Do remember that dishonesty and cowardice always have to be paid for.* Don’t imagine that for years on end you can make yourself the boot-licking propagandist of the Soviet régime, or any other régime, and then suddenly return to mental decency. Once a whore, always a whore. George Orwell

The Western world has lost its civil courage, both as a whole and separately, in each country, each government, each political party and of course in the United Nations. Such a decline in courage is particularly noticeable among the ruling groups and the intellectual elite, causing an impression of loss of courage by the entire society. Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

Cowards are always much more dangerous than heroes. Lance Conrad

Politics really must be a rotten profession considering what awful moral cowards most politicians become as soon as they get the job. Martha Gellhorn

You have no enemies, you say? Alas, my friend, the boast is poor. He who has mingled in the fray of duty that the brave endure, must have made foes. If you have none, small is the work that you have done. You’ve hit no traitor on the hip. You’ve dashed no cup from perjured lip. You’ve never turned the wrong to right. You’ve been a coward in the fight. Charles Mackay

If you want a definition of what a coward is, it’s needing to push a whole class of people down so that you can walk on top of them. Andrea Dworkin

I always take credit for my acts of cruelty. To do otherwise is cowardice. Neal Shusterman

One who in a perilous emergency thinks with his legs. Ambrose Bierce

Personal liberty is the paramount essential to human dignity and human happiness. Edward G. BulwerLytton

Hereditary boundsmen! Know ye not Who would be free themselves must strike the blow? Lord Byron

And Freedom shrieked as Kosciusko fell! Thomas Campbell

In a free country there is much clamor with little suffering in a despotic state there is little complaint with much grievance. Lazare Carnot

For what avail the plough or sail Or land or life if freedom fail? Ralph Waldo Emerson

Ay call it holy ground The soil where first they trod They have left unstained what there they found - Freedom to worship God. Felicia D. Hemans

In the beauty of the lilies Christ was born across the sea With a glory in His bosom that transfigures you and me As He died to make men holy let us die to make men free While God is marching on. Julia Ward Howe

I am for freedom of religion and against all maneuvers to bring about a legal ascendancy of one sect over another. Thomas Jefferson

And ye shall know the truth and the truth shall make you free. Bible

Those who deny freedom to others deserve it not for themselves and under a just God cannot long retain it. Abraham Lincoln

... That this nation under God shall have a new birth of freedom. Abraham Lincoln

Since the general civilization of mankind I believe there are more instances of the abridgement of the freedom of the people by gradual and silent encroachments of those in power than by violent and sudden usurpations. James Madison

The only freedom which deserves the name is that of pursuing our own good in our own way so long as we do not attempt to deprive others of theirs or impede their efforts to obtain it. John Stuart Mill

We must be free or die who speak the tongue That Shakespeare spake the faith and morals hold Which Milton held. William Wordsworth

No amount of political freedom will satisfy the hungry masses. Vladimir Lenin

I would rather sit on a pumpkin and have it all to myself than to be crowded on a velvet cushion. Henry David Thoreau

Humor is the most engaging cowardice. Robert Frost

Fear has its use but cowardice has none. Mahatma Gandhi

Valor lies just halfway between rashness and cowardice. Miguel De Cervantes

Courage stands halfway between cowardice and rashness, one of which is a lack, the other an excess of courage. Plutarch