Patrick Leahy Quotes

One thing that's great about firefighters: If they don't have the equipment they desperately need, they don't have the help, they don't care. They'll do it on their own.

We learned to be patient observers like the owl. We learned cleverness from the crow, and courage from the jay, who will attack an owl ten times its size to drive it off its territory. But above all of them ranked the chickadee because of its indomitable spirit.

He was always sort of a scrappy little kid wasn't he? A bit of a fighter?

The more wit the less courage.

Courage is the greatest of all virtues, because if you haven't courage, you may not have an opportunity to use any of the others.

Courage is the most important of the virtues because it is the one that makes all the others possible.

My mother was really courageous.

Some people call me scrappy - and that's because I am.

Great men, great nations, have not been boasters and buffoons, but perceivers of the terror of life, and have manned themselves to face it.

But you can’t put fight into a man’s guts if he hasn’t any fight in him. There are some of us so cowardly that you can’t ever make heroes of us, not even if you frighten us to death. We know too much, maybe. There are some of us who don’t live in the moment, who live a little ahead, or a little behind.

Textbook survival says stay still, don't take any chances, wait for rescue. That's a boring TV show. My thing was always, "Listen, shoelace, dead squirrel and no other way down this rock face. You can do this!"

To this military attitude of the soul we give the name of Heroism... It is a self-trust which slights the restraints of prudence, in the plenitude of its energy and power to repair the harms it may suffer. The hero is a mind of such balance that no disturbances can shake his will.

When the will defies fear, when duty throws the gauntlet down to fate, when honor scorns to compromise with death - that is heroism.

Courage is rightly esteemed the first of human qualities - because it is the quality which guarantees all others.

Heroism is endurance for one moment more.

My heroes are always ready, willing, and able to execute moves necessary to get themselves out of deep trouble.

Courage is not simply one of the virtues, but the form of every virtue at the testing point.

Part of courage is simple consistency.

Heroes are never perfect, but they're brave, they're authentic, they're courageous, determined, discreet, and they've got grit.

Courage is always rewarded.

When I get the possibility of using a character like Bruce Wayne or Dick Grayson, I try and think about what's most exciting or interesting about them as a person, so I try and think what they are at their core, or what piece of their psychology do I gravitate toward that I respect, and I'm excited by it when I read books about them.

If you have men who will only come if they know there is a good road, I don't want them. I want men who will come if there is no road at all.

Courage is the first of human qualities because it is the quality which guarantees the others.

A hero has faced it all: he need not be undefeated, but he must be undaunted.

Courage easily finds its own eloquence.