What is Moral Courage?

1. What is Moral Courage? . When you do something that is morally courageous, you feel good because you had just helped somebody who needed help.

2. Moral courage is the courage to do what's right, no matter what the cost. "Taking action when your values are put to the test." (Rushworth M. Kidder)

3. Some people express moral courage by helping people, standing up for someone else other than yourself and not going with the flow. Sometimes people just do it and that is what moral courage is.

4. You don't think, you just do it on the spur of the moment. If someone were to crash in the middle of the road you wouldn’t think about the passing cars, and you would just run in.

5. Some people who were morally courageous were Martin Luther King, Jackie Robinson, John F. Kennedy, Abraham Lincoln, Rosa Parks, all the people currently fighting oppression, and maybe you as you stand up for what is right!

6. Six types of courage Physical Courage: This is the courage most people think of first: bravery at the risk of bodily harm or death. It involves developing physical strength, resiliency and strength.

7. "If you’re worried about falling off the bike you'd never get on." Lance Armstrong • "A hero is no braver than an ordinary man, but he is braver five minutes longer." Ralph Waldo Emerson • "Courage is being scared to death and saddling up anyway." John Wayne

8. Social Courage This type of courage is also very familiar to most of us as it involves the risk of social embarrassment or exclusion, unpopularity or rejection. It also involves leadership.

9. "Courage is what it takes to stand up and speak; courage is also what it takes to sit down and listen." —Winston Churchill • "Every man has his own courage, and is betrayed because he seeks in himself the courage of other persons." —Ralph Waldo Emerson

10. Intellectual courage. • This speaks to our willingness to engage with challenging ideas, to question our thinking, and to the risk of making mistakes. It means telling and knowing the truth.

11. Nothing in life is to be feared. It is only to be understood."— Marie Curie • "The conventional view serves to protect us from the painful job of thinking."— John Kenneth Galbraith • "If you believe everything you read, you better not read."— Japanese proverb

12. Moral courage. This involves doing the right thing, particularly when risks involve shame, opposition, or the disapproval of others. Here we enter into ethics and integrity, the resolution to match word and action with values and ideals. It is not about who we claim to be to our children and to others, but who we reveal ourselves to be through our words and actions

13. He who does not punish evil commands it to be done." —Leonardo da Vinci • "Perfect courage means doing unwitnessed what we would be capable of with the world looking on."— La Rochefoucauld • "The sad truth is that most evil is done by people who never make up their mind to be good or evil." — Hannah Arendt

14. Emotional courage. This type of courage opens us to feeling the full spectrum of positive emotions, at the risk of encountering the negative ones. It is strongly correlated with happiness.

15. The opposite of love is not hate, it's indifference."— Elie Wiesel • "We can only be said to be alive in those moments when our hearts are conscious of our treasures." — Thornton Wilder

16. Spiritual courage. This fortifies us when we grapple with questions about faith, purpose, and meaning, either in a religious or nonreligious framework

17. “This is my simple religion. There is no need for temples; no need for complicated philosophy. Our own brain, our own heart is our temple; the philosophy is kindness."— His Holiness the Dalai Lama • "Here is a test to find whether your purpose in life is finished: if you are alive, it isn't."— Richard Bach