Every entrepreneur needs courage. It takes courage to quit your day job. It takes courage to start a business. It takes courage to remain flexible. It takes courage to pivot. It's fair to say that without courage, there would no entrepreneurs.

With that in mind, here are some quotes that inspire me to take risk in my life and in business:

  1. Alfred North Whitehead: "True courage is not the brutal force of vulgar heroes, but the firm resolve of virtue and reason."
  2. Aristotle: "Courage is the first of human qualities because it is the quality which guarantees the others."
  3. Ben Horowitz: "Hire sales people who are really smart problem solvers, but lack courage, hunger and competitiveness, and your company will go out of business."
  4. Benjamin Disraeli: "Courage is fire, and bullying is smoke."
  5. Benjamin Franklin: "How few there are who have courage enough to own their faults, or resolution enough to mend them."
  6. Billy Graham: "Courage is contagious. When a brave man takes a stand, the spines of others are often stiffened."
  7. Bruce Lee: "Mistakes are always forgivable, if one has the courage to admit them."
  8. Catherine the Great: "I beg you take courage; the brave soul can mend even disaster."
  9. Charles Lindbergh: "Is he alone who has courage on his right hand and faith on his left hand?"
  10. Charlie Chaplin: "Failure is unimportant. It takes courage to make a fool of yourself."
  11. Chester W Nimitz: "God grant me the courage not to give up what I think is right even though I think it is hopeless."
  12. Christopher Morley: "The courage of the poet is to keep ajar the door that leads into madness."
  13. Confucius: "Faced with what is right, to leave it undone shows a lack of courage."
  14. Dale Carnegie: "Inaction breeds doubt and fear. Action breeds confidence and courage. If you want to conquer fear, do not sit home and think about it. Go out and get busy."
  15. Daniel J Boorstin: "The courage to imagine the otherwise is our greatest resource, adding color and suspense to all our life."
  16. David Ben-Gurion: "Courage is a special kind of knowledge: the knowledge of how to fear what ought to be feared and how not to fear what ought not to be feared."
  17. David Letterman: "There's only one requirement of any of us, and that is to be courageous. Because courage, as you might know, defines all other human behavior."
  18. Dean Koontz: "Nothing gives us courage more readily than the desire to avoid looking like a damn fool."
  19. Earl Nightingale: "All you need is the plan, the road map, and the courage to press on to your destination."
  20. Eleanor Roosevelt: "You have to accept whatever comes and the only important thing is that you meet it with courage and with the best that you have to give."
  21. EM Forster: "Either life entails courage, or it ceases to be life."
  22. Erich Fromm: "Creativity requires the courage to let go of certainties."
  23. Erma Bombeck: "It takes a lot of courage to show your dreams to someone else."
  24. EW Hornung: "Money lost, little lost. Honour lost, much lost. Pluck lost, all lost."
  25. Giacomo Casanova: "It is only necessary to have courage, for strength without self-confidence is useless."
  26. Gilbert K Chesterton: "Courage is almost a contradiction in terms. It means a strong desire to live taking the form of readiness to die."
  27. Gilbert K Chesterton: "The paradox of courage is that a man must be a little careless of his life even in order to keep it."
  28. Harry S Truman: "America was not built on fear. America was built on courage, on imagination and an unbeatable determination to do the job at hand."
  29. Hermann Hesse: "People with courage and character always seem sinister to the rest."
  30. Horace: "It is courage, courage, courage, that raises the blood of life to crimson splendor. Live bravely and present a brave front to adversity."
  31. Jack Handey: "Never give up. Keep trying and pushing and struggling, even if you don't know what your goal is or why you would want to achieve it."
  32. James Freeman Clarke: "Conscience is the root of all true courage; if a man would be brave let him obey his conscience."
  33. Jenna Jameson: "My definition of courage is never letting anyone define you."
  34. Jim Hightower: "The opposite for courage is not cowardice, it is conformity. Even a dead fish can go with the flow."
  35. JK Rowling: "It takes a great deal of bravery to stand up to our enemies, but just as much to stand up to our friends."
  36. John Quincy Adams: "Courage and perseverance have a magical talisman, before which difficulties disappear and obstacles vanish into air."
  37. John Wayne: "Courage is being scared to death and saddling up anyway."
  38. John Wooden: "Success is never final, failure is never fatal. It's courage that counts."
  39. Jonas Salk: "Hope lies in dreams, in imagination, and in the courage of those who dare to make dreams into reality."
  40. Joseph Smith, Jr.: "Never be discouraged. If I were sunk in the lowest pits of Nova Scotia, with the Rocky Mountains piled on me, I would hang on, exercise faith, and keep up good courage, and I would come out on top."
  41. JRR Tolkien: "Courage is found in unlikely places."
  42. Lady Gaga: "My courage and my bravery at a young age was the thing I was bullied for, a kind of 'Who do you think you are?'"
  43. Lao Tzu: "Being deeply loved by someone gives you strength, while loving someone deeply gives you courage."
  44. Les Brown: "A lot of people do not muster the courage to live their dreams because they are afraid to die."
  45. Louis D Brandeis: "Those who won our independence believed liberty to be the secret of happiness and courage to be the secret of liberty."
  46. Margaret Mitchell: "With enough courage, you can do without a reputation."
  47. Marie Antoinette: "Courage! I have shown it for years; think you I shall lose it at the moment when my sufferings are to end?"
  48. Mark Twain: "Courage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear, not absence of fear."
  49. Martin Luther King, Jr.: "We must build dikes of courage to hold back the flood of fear."
  50. Maya Angelou: "Without courage, we cannot practice any other virtue with consistency. We can't be kind, true, merciful, generous, or honest."
  51. Mickey Mantle: "A team is where a boy can prove his courage on his own. A gang is where a coward goes to hide."
  52. Miguel de Cervantes: "He who loses wealth loses much; he who loses a friend loses more; but he that loses his courage loses all."
  53. Muhammad Ali: "He who is not courageous enough to take risks will accomplish nothing in life."
  54. Napoleon Bonaparte: "It requires more courage to suffer than to die."
  55. Nelson Mandela: "Courage is 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."
  56. Oliver Wendell Holmes: "Have the courage to act instead of react."
  57. Ovid: "Courage conquers all things: it even gives strength to the body."
  58. Pablo Casals: "It takes courage for a person to listen to his own goodness and act on it."
  59. Pericles: "Freedom is the sure possession of those alone who have the courage to defend it."
  60. Plutarch: "Courage consists not in hazarding without fear; but being resolutely minded in a just cause."
  61. Ralph Waldo Emerson: "Every man has his own courage, and is betrayed because he seeks in himself the courage of other persons."
  62. Robert Louis Stevenson: "Give us courage and gaiety and the quiet mind, spare to us our friends, soften to us our enemies."
  63. Ronald Reagan: "There are no easy answers, but there are simple answers. We must have the courage to do what we know is morally right."
  64. Ruth Gordon: "Courage is very important. Like a muscle, it is strengthened by use."
  65. Samuel Johnson: "He that fails in his endeavors after wealth or power will not long retain either honesty or courage."
  66. Sean Penn: "We've let the blade of our innocence dull over time, and it's only in innocence that you find any kind of magic, any kind of courage."
  67. Sinclair Lewis: "Pugnacity is a form of courage, but a very bad form."
  68. Socrates: "He is a man of courage who does not run away, but remains at his post and fights against the enemy."
  69. Steve Jobs: "Don't let the noise of others' opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition."
  70. Suze Orman: "In all realms of life it takes courage to stretch your limits, express your power, and fulfill your potential."
  71. Theodore Roosevelt: "It is only through labor and painful effort, by grim energy and resolute courage, that we move on to better things."
  72. Thomas Aquinas: "The principal act of courage is to endure and withstand dangers doggedly rather than to attack them."
  73. Timothy Dalton: "Real courage is knowing what faces you and knowing how to face it."
  74. Umberto Eco: "Nothing gives a fearful man more courage than another's fear."
  75. Victor Hugo: "Have courage for the great sorrows of life and patience for the small ones; and when you have laboriously accomplished your daily task, go to sleep in peace."
  76. Winston Churchill: "Courage is what it takes to stand up and speak; courage is also what it takes to sit down and listen."
  77. Zig Ziglar: "Courage is on display every day, and only the courageous wring the most out of life."