A Quote by Aristotle
Courage is the first virtue that makes all other virtues possible.
Related Quotes
Courage is the enforcing virtue, the one that makes possible all the other virtues common
to exceptional leaders: honesty, integrity, confidence, compassion and humility
The word courage comes from the same stem as the French word Coeur, meaning "heart." Thus just as one's heart, by pumping blood to one's arms, legs, and brain enables all the other physical organs to function, so courage makes possible all the psychological virtues. Without courage other values wither away into mere facsimiles of virtue.
The Romans used to say that courage is not the only virtue, but it's the only one that makes the other virtues possible.
Aristotle deemed courage to be the first virtue, because it makes all the other possible.
Courage is the most important of all the virtues, because without courage you can't practice any other virtue consistently. You can practice any virtue erratically, but nothing consistently without courage.
We live in the kind of world where courage is the most essential of virtues; without courage, the other virtues are useless.
The only thing is, people have to develop courage. It is most important of all the virtues. Because without courage, you can't practice any other virtues consistently.
Strength, Courage, Mastery, and Honor are the alpha virtues of men all over the world. They are the fundamental virtues of men because without them, no 'higher' virtues can be entertained. You need to be alive to philosophize. You can add to these virtues and you can create rules and moral codes to govern them, but if you remove them from the equation altogether you aren't just leaving behind the virtues that are specific to men, you are abandoning the virtues that make civilization possible.
Courage is not a virtue of value among other personal values like love or fidelity. It is the foundation that underlies and gives reality to all other virtues and personal values. Without courage our love pales into mere dependency. Without courage our fidelity becomes conformism.
I am convinced that courage is the most important of all the virtues. Because without courage, you cannot practice any other virtue consistently. You can be kind for a while; you can be generous for a while; you can be just for a while, or merciful for a while, even loving for a while. But it is only with courage that you can be persistently and insistently kind and generous and fair.
Moral virtues and intellectual virtues are very different from each other, and moral virtue has to do with motivation, not cognition. Moral virtue requires a human level of intelligence, but it doesn't require that one be an intelligent human.
Without courage, you cannot practice any other virtue. You have to have courage - courage of different kinds: first, intellectual courage, to sort out different values and make up your mind about which is the one which is right for you to follow. You have to have moral courage to stick up to that - no matter what comes in your way, no matter what the obstacle and the opposition is.
Humility is the foundation of all the other virtues hence, in the soul in which this virtue does not exist there cannot be any other virtue except in mere appearance.
Courage is not simply one of the virtues, but the form of every virtue at the testing point.
Nonviolence is not merely a personal virtue. It is also a social virtue to be cultivated like other virtues.
Loyalty saves us from the self-advantaging compromising of important relations - such as friendship, marital and professional commitments, group memberships, and so on. But as the Aristotelians would put it, its expression requires phronesis - wisdom not to allow it to compromise other important virtues ,there is something to the ancient doctrine of the unity of the virtues. I believe that is true of all virtues, but especially of the executive virtues - such as industriousness, sincerity, conscientiousness, and courage - which may become detached from substantive goods.
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