Be Bold! 60+ Bravery Quotes To Help Summon Your Courage

Think back to the last time you were brave. Maybe it was summoning up the grit to pull yourself out of a slump. Or perhaps it was just taking care of day-to-day life, from mommy-ing to cleaning. Moms are constantly brave for their children — often because we have no choice. Sometimes, though, even the toughest moms need pep talks. Enter bravery quotes. No matter what you’re attempting to overcome, no matter who you’re brave for (even if it’s just for yourself), bravery quotes can serve as inspiration.

Historically, the term “brave” has often been a term used to describe the actions of men. We have boy names that mean brave, and there are entire annals in history books dedicated to the bravery of men. But, thankfully, the world is shifting and growing in its perception. We’re taking more time to go back and uncover the courage of so many other humans throughout history — courage that, in many cases, has been falsely attributed to men or glossed over entirely. Now, our kids get to grow up hearing the stories of brave women like Sybil Ludington, Joan of Arc, Rosa Parks, Amelia Earhart, Harriet Tubman, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Sylvia Rae Rivera, and more (the list seriously goes on and on and on). Even Disney’s movie, Brave, was about a girl. One could argue that girls like Merida have a special kind of bravery because they do brave things when no one else thinks they can — sometimes even when they doubt themselves.

If you need a little Merida-like courage, keep reading. The following bravery quotes come from across the globe and have been spoken (or written) by some extraordinary men, women, and non-binary folks.

Bravery Quotes for a Quick Boost of Courage

1. “Be bold. And mighty forces will come to your aid.” — Basil King
2. “Success is not final, failure is not fatal: It is the courage to continue that counts.” — Winston S. Churchill
3. “It is curious that physical courage should be so common in the world and moral courage so rare.” — Mark Twain
4. “I could live my whole life being so comfortable doing things I’ve already worked hard to not be nervous at, or I could continue to push the envelop and make myself comfortable and learn and see what I’m capable of, and acting is definitely that.” — Ruby Rose
5. “You can, you should and, if you’re brave enough to start, you will.” — Stephen King
6. “Don’t be afraid of being scared. To be afraid is a sign of common sense. Only complete idiots are not afraid of anything.” — Carlos Ruiz Zafón
7. “Without fear, there cannot be courage.” — Christopher Paolini
8. “Bran thought about it. ‘Can a man still be brave if he’s afraid?’ ‘That is the only time a man can be brave,’ his father told him.” — George R.R. Martin
9. “A coward is incapable of exhibiting love; it is the prerogative of the brave.” — Mahatma Gandhi
10. “Scared is what you’re feeling. Brave is what you’re doing.” — Emma Donoghue
11. “In Will’s experience, when someone who ought to be afraid wasn’t, the reason was rarely bravery. Usually, it meant that they knew something you didn’t.” — Cassandra Clare
12. “The bravest thing I ever did was continuing my life when I wanted to die.” — Juliette Lewis
13. “And one has to understand that braveness is not the absence of fear but rather the strength to keep on going forward despite the fear.” — Paulo Coelho
14. “One of the scariest things in life is when you come to the realization that the only thing that can save you is yourself.” — Demi Lovato
15. “Fear cuts deeper than swords.” — George R.R. Martin
16. “Being brave means that knowing when you fail, you won’t fail forever.” — Lana Del Rey
17. “No man is brave that has never walked a hundred miles. If you want to know the truth of who you are, walk until not a person knows your name. Travel is the great leveler, the great teacher, bitter as medicine, crueler than mirror-glass. A long stretch of road will teach you more about yourself than a hundred years of quiet introspection.” — Patrick Rothfuss
18. “It was bewildering and humbling to keep discovering how many brave things people can fail to talk themselves out of doing.” — Rob Sheffield
19. “Courage is found in unlikely places.” — J.R.R Tolkien
20. “It is hard to be brave when you’re only a very small animal.” — A.A. Milne
21. “I want to be someone strong and brave enough to make hard choices. But I want to be fair and loving enough to make the right ones.” — Amy Engel
22. “A brave man acknowledges the strength of others.” — Veronica Roth
23. “He who is brave is free.” — Seneca
24. “I learned that courage was not the absence of fear, but the triumph over it. The brave man is not he who does not feel afraid, but he who conquers that fear.” — Nelson Mandela
25. “You’re strong; you’re a Kelly Clarkson song. You got this!” — Jonathan Van Ness
26. “My point is that love is the most powerful motivator in the world. It spurs mortals to greatness. Their noblest, bravest acts are done for love.” — Rick Riordan
27. “We have to be braver than we think we can be, because God is constantly calling us to be more than we are.” — Madeleine L’Engle
28. “Courage is being scared to death, but saddling up anyway.” — John Wayne
29. “There is a great difference between being fearless and being brave.” — Patrick Rothfuss
30. “I wanted you to see something about her — I wanted you to see what real courage is, instead of getting the idea that courage is a man with a gun in his hand. It’s when you know you’re licked before you begin, but you begin anyway, and you see it through no matter what. You rarely win, but sometimes you do. Mrs. Dubose won all 98 pounds of her. According to her views, she died beholden to nothing and nobody. She was the bravest person I ever knew.” — Harper Lee
31. “You have to be the bravest person in the world to go out every day, being yourself when no one likes who you are.” — Matthew Dicks
32. “It is hard to fail, but it is worse never to have tried to succeed.” — Theodore Roosevelt
33. “The future doesn’t belong to the light-hearted. It belongs to the brave.” — Ronald Reagan
34. “To be brave is to love someone unconditionally, without expecting anything in return. To just give. That takes courage, because we don’t want to fall on our faces or leave ourselves open to hurt.” — Madonna
35. “I believe that the most important single thing, beyond discipline and creativity, is daring to dare.” — Maya Angelou
36. “Until you’re ready to look foolish, you’ll never have the possibility of being great.” — Cher
37. “You are on the floor crying, and you have been on the floor crying for days. And that is you being brave. That is you getting through it as best you know how. No one else can decide what your tough looks like.” — Clementine von Radics
38. “Bravery is measured by how hard you try, not by whether you actually succeed.” — Nancy Straight
39. “To believe yourself brave is to be brave; it is the one only essential thing.” — Mark Twain
40. “You can turn your life around. You can go through hell and back. It is possible. Never underestimate yourself. I believe in you.” — Demi Lovato
41. “It takes courage to grow up and become who you really are.” — e.e. cummings
42. “Bravery is the ability to look fear and hurt in the face and say, ‘Move aside, you are in the way.'” — Melissa Tumino
43. “You can’t be brave if you’ve only had wonderful things happen to you.” — Mary Tyler Moore
44. “It’s OK to be crazy and scared and brave at the same time.” — Kelly Epperson
45. “Bravery is the audacity to be unhindered by failures, and to walk with freedom, strength, and hope, in the face of the things unknown.” — Morgan Harper Nichols
46. “If you fear nothing, then you are not brave. You are merely too foolish to be afraid.” — Laurell K. Hamilton
47. “The bravest are surely those who have the clearest vision of what is before them, glory and danger alike, and yet notwithstanding go out to meet it.” — Thucydides
48. “Don’t you see? You can’t be brave without being afraid. The brave ones are always afraid. But they do what they must, even so.” — Teri Hall
49. “When you’re brave, you empower others around you to be brave too.” — Unknown
50. “Those who can truly be accounted brave are those who best know the meaning of what is sweet in life and what is terrible, and then go out, undeterred, to meet what is to come.” — Pericles
51. “To be a brave man, good and bad luck are like his left and right hand. He uses both.” — St. Catherine of Siena
52. “Owning our story and loving ourselves through that process is the bravest thing we’ll ever do.” — Brene Brown
53. “Be brave. Without bravery, you will never know the world as richly as it longs to be known. Without bravery, your life will remain small — far smaller than you probably wanted your life to be.” — Elizabeth Gilbert
54. “If you can’t be brave, be determined. And you’ll end up in the same place.” — Lisa Scottoline
55. “But 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 Clemens
56. “Luck always favors the brave. And you must remember that brave are the people who follow their heart; brave are the people who take chances in life. Which also means you have to say no sometimes. I believe the power of no is greater than yes.” — Preity Zinta
57. “Courage is contagious. When a brave man takes a stand, the spines of others are often stiffened.” — Billy Graham
58. “If it must be done, it’s best done bravely.” — Courtney Milan
59. “I think she’s brave. I think that nobody has ever believed what she could be capable of. All her life, nobody was listening.” — Lauren DeStefano
60. “Until that moment, she had never thought she could do it. Never thought she would be brave enough or scared enough, or desperate enough to dare.” — Neil Gaiman
61. “Keep in mind that many people have died for their beliefs; it’s actually quite common. The real courage is in living and suffering for what you believe.” — Christopher Paolini, Eragon
62. “Before I knew you, I thought brave was not being afraid. You’ve taught me that bravery is being terrified and doing it anyway.” — Laurell K. Hamilton, Blood Noir