Then come the hard choices: What do I believe? To what extent am I ready to live up to my beliefs? How far am I ready to support them? Are there times when I lack the courage to stand up and be counted because I fear loss of prestige or popularity, of alienating my neighbors, of hurting my business or professional standing?

it's easy to stand in the crowd but it takes courage to stand alone

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

Common experience shows how much rarer is moral courage than physical bravery. A thousand men will march to the mouth of the cannon where one man will dare espouse an unpopular cause.

As for moral courage, it is very rare, he said, to find that kind found at 2 o'clock in the morning; that is to say, courage in the face of the unexpected.

When you have decided what you believe, what you feel must be done, have the courage to stand alone and be counted.

For any marginalized group to change the story that society tells about them takes courage and perseverance.

There are moments in our lives when we summon the courage to make choices that go against reason, against common sense and the wise counsel of people we trust. But we lean forward nonetheless because, despite all risks and rational argument, we believe that the path we are choosing is the right and best thing to do. We refuse to be bystanders, even if we do not know exactly where our actions will lead.

We forget that there is much more patriotism in having the audacity to differ from the majority than in running before the crowd; we forget that in the resistance of the minority some of the biggest things in our own history have been accomplished, and the man who looks on the Stars and Stripes and doesn't hold a right to say nay to his neighbor, even if the neighbor is of the larger party, has forgotten the history of his country.

How few there are who have courage enough to own their faults, or resolution enough to mend them.

What is needed is just the courage to face inconsistencies and to avoid running away from them just because “that’s the way it was always done”.

I have extremely little courage myself, much less than you; but I have found that whenever, after a long struggle, I have screwed my courage up to do something I always felt much freer & happy after it.

Courage is found in unlikely places.

It takes courage to say what has to be said.