Cowardice Quotes

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

There are five dangerous faults which may affect a general:(1) Recklessness, which leads to destruction;(2) cowardice, which leads to capture;(3) a hasty temper, which can be provoked by insults;(4) a delicacy of honor which is sensitive to shame;(5) over-solicitude for his men, which exposes him to worry and trouble.

~ Sun Tzu

She has her helmet, shield and sword. Does she finish him or take pity on the gutless thing before her?Does she set fire and smoke him out, forcing him to fight, or does she let him live with himself and take satisfaction from knowing that he has never been in a real fight in his life and that one day he will have to face his demons in person, along with the consequences, and that both can be far more painful than anything she could ever do to him.

~ Donna Lynn Hope

For the next two weeks, the world and all other issues would be omitted. We were two people alone in a hospital room. We allowed no visitors. We had two weeks of near-silence with each other and my increasing helplessness. I tended to tangle the IV and misplace the oxygen tube. As I started to say earlier, I could feel no sensible interest in the future. The moments became extraordinarily dimensionless - not without value but flat and a great deal emptier. When you learn you're fatally ill, time becomes very confusing, perhaps uninteresting, pedestrian. But my not caring if I lived or died hurt Ellen. And I was grateful that I could indulge my cowardice toward death in terms of living for her.

~ Harold Brodkey

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

People run away from the love game because they know they won't win the race.

~ Michael Bassey Johnson

A cowardly critique starts with a compliment.

~ Mokokoma Mokhonoana

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

Conscience and cowardice are really the same things, Basil. Conscience is the trade-name of the firm. That is all.

~ Oscar Wilde

Pacifism is a virtue indistinguishable from cowardice.

~ Brent Weeks

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

~ Theophrastus

There is nothing like a conflict to do the difficult work for you. It is an underrated remedy, cowardly as we are, but it makes everything so much easier.

~ Jens Christian Grøndahl

Haters and bullies are always cowards, you know. They like to pick on little guys.

~ Scylar Tyberius

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.

~ Hélène Berr

The thing about me is – essentially, I’m a coward.I am. I can’t stand weird stuff, anything that’s not normal. […]I’m a coward, and I’ve faced it, and I’ve learn to accept it. And I’m okay with that, as long as nothing happens so I have to start feeling ashamed about it, or guilty.I don’t think my parents know this about me. […]But the other thing is, I just hate it when people are disappointed in me.

~ Kristen D. Randle

Be not intimidated...nor suffer yourselves to be wheedled out of your liberties by any pretense of politeness, delicacy, or decency. These, as they are often used, are but three different names for hypocrisy, chicanery and cowardice.

~ John Adams

* *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

Explanations are for cowards.

~ J. Ross Clara

I traded cowardice for cruelty, I traded weakness for ferocity.

~ Veronica Roth

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

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

~ Veronica Roth

Only cowards cave. The brave get assassinated.

~ Donna Lynn Hope

In short Donald Trump lies compulsively in large part because of who and what he is - a coward. This is why Mike Brzezinski said recently, He brings nothing to the table.

~ Gizmo

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

~ Neal Shusterman

Such a brute should underneath all his braggart tricks, his viciousness, his vileness, be a coward. But I am convinced that he was not. Because even cowardice requires a certain degree of sensitivity, and a certain value for life.

~ Warren Eyster

Humor is the most engaging cowardice.

~ Robert Frost

Patience has its limits. Take it too far, and it's cowardice.

~ George Jackson

Patience has its limits, take it too far and it's cowardice.

~ Holbrook Jackson

Fear has its use but cowardice has none.

~ Mahatma Gandhi

Falsehood is cowardice, the truth courage.

~ Hosea Ballou

Valor lies just halfway between rashness and cowardice.

~ Miguel De Cervantes

Courage enlarges, cowardice diminishes resources. In desperate straits the fears of the timid aggravate the dangers that imperil the brave.

~ Christian Nestell Bovee