A Quote by Joseph Epstein

Courage is nine-tenths context. What is courageous in one setting can be foolhardy in another and even cowardly in a third.

Joseph Epstein

Quote Topics

Another Context Courage Courageous Cowardly Even Foolhardy Nine Setting Third

Quote Author

Joseph Epstein
American - Writer
Born: January 9, 1937

I always say perseverance is nine-tenths of any art — not that it's much help to be nine-tenths an artist, of course.

Peter S. Beagle

Possession isn't nine-tenths of the law. It's nine-tenths of the problem.

John Lennon

this is what I know about courage: You don't have to think about courage to have it. You don't have to feel courageous to be courageous. You don't sit down and say you're going to be courageous. At the moment of action, you don't see it as a courageous act. Courage is the most hidden thing from your eye or mind until after it's done. There's some inner something that tells you what's right. You know you have to do it to survive as a human being. You have no choice.

Unita Blackwell

That's the way it is: life inculdes a lot of empty space. We are one-tenth living tissue, nine-tenths water; life is one-tenth Here and Now, nine-tenths a history lesson. For most of the time the Here and Now is neither now nor here.

Graham Swift

Courageous men never lose the zest for living even though their life situation is zestless; cowardly men, overwhelmed by the uncertainties of life, lose the will to live. We must constantly build dykes of courage to hold back the flood of fear.

Martin Luther King, Jr.

The essential component of being a DJ is setting the mood; it's playing to the context. So that if you're not able to adapt from one context to another, then you're not a DJ.

A-Trak

Be courageous, but not foolhardy. Walk proud as you are.

Maya Angelou

Every time you make the hard, correct decision you become a bit more courageous, and every time you make the easy, wrong decision you become a bit more cowardly. If you are CEO, these choices will lead to a courageous or cowardly company.

Ben Horowitz

Many survivors insist they're not courageous: 'If I were courageous I would have stopped the abuse.' 'If I were courageous, I wouldn't be scared'...Most of us have it mixed up. You don't start with courage and then face fear. You become courageous because you face your fear.

Laura Davies

You are horrified at our intending to do away with private property. But in your existing society, private property is already done away with for nine tenths of the population; its existence for the few is solely due to its non-existence in the hands of those nine tenths. You reproach us, therefore, with intending to do away with a form of property, the necessary condition for whose existence is the non-existence of any property for the immense majority of society.

Karl Marx

Nine-tenths of the appeal of pornography is due to the indecent feelings concerning sex which moralists inculcate in the young; the other tenth is physiological, and will occur in one way or another whatever the state of the law may be.

Bertrand Russell

You become courageous by doing courageous acts...Courage is a habit.

Mary Daly

We all admire the courageous person and quite often consider the individual who lacks courage, a coward. However, that is not how Earl Nightingale saw it. He said the opposite of courage was not cowardness, it was conformity. The next time you are encouraged to fall into line, to be a sport and everything in you says no - be courageous and go your own way. There is no compensation in conformity.