Blog

A New Measure of Power

Community Courage Individual Nonviolence Society

Operating on fear is an issue of character. Courage is not merely, or primarily, the absence of fear. It is the taking on of tasks and concerns that are larger than the fear. It is discovering how to face your fears and moving through them as a whole person. That is what is essential.

Rev. James Lawson
Nonviolence Strategist of the U.S. Civil Rights Movement

The Question of Courage

Courage Individual Society

The politics of courage is with us today. People still care intensely about courage, and we're still trying to stack the deck in our own favor. Determining who has courage, what actions count, who gets the prize, is disputed now no less than in the Iliad. Look whom we call heroes and claim are courageous.
William Ian Miller

Courage and Cowardice

Courage Individual

In my own life, thoughts on courage tend to settle like dust not on the positive virtue, but on its negative partner. On cowardice. And my cowardice almost invariably takes the same form: a shrinking from social awkwardness, a flight from any situation in which I might be embarrassed or humiliated.
Anthony McGowan

Mahatma Gandhi - The Courage of Nonviolence

Courage Individual Nonviolence

Nonviolence is the highest form of humility; it is supreme courage. The essence of Gandhi's teachings was fearlessness. The Mahatma taught that "the strong are never vindictive" and that dialogue can only be engaged in by the brave.
Daisaku Ikeda

Peace in the World Is Everybody’s Business

Individual Nonviolence

We have to have dreams, and we must have the capacity to make the dream a reality. When people told me in Ireland, “You can never do this,” I used to say, “Watch my smoke!” Don’t tell me I can’t do this, because I know that every single human being is capable of doing magnificent stuff, and there are no ordinary people.

Betty Williams
Recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize in 1976 for her work to bring peace in her native Northern Ireland.