Eric Greitens Quotes

I learned that moral courage is harder than physical courage.

The depth and strength of a human character are defined by its moral reserves. People reveal themselves completely only when they are thrown out of the customary conditions of their life, for only then do they have to fall back on their reserves.

Man can have strength of character only as he is capable of controlling his faculties; of choosing a rational end; and, in its pursuit, of holding fast to his integrity against al! the might of external nature.

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

Now on life's dreary plain. We must wait, like the Stoic, Brave, enduring, and strong, Till the soul's strength heroic Bend the fetters of wrong

Prosperity is a more refined and severer test of character than adversity as one hour of summer sunshine produces greater corruption than the longest winter day.

Above all, we must realize that no arsenal, or no weapon in the arsenals of the world, is so formidable as the will and moral courage of free men and women. It is a weapon our adversaries in today's world do not have.

In a sense, all of us have the capacity to be courageous.

Weakness of attitude becomes weakness of character; it becomes lack of power to act with courage proportionate to danger. All this must lead to the destruction of our intellectual life unless the danger summons up strong personalities able to fill the lukewarm and discouraged with new strength and resolution.

Strong men greet war, tempest, hard times. They wish, as Pindar said, to tread the floors of hell, with necessities as hard as iron.

People with self-respect exhibit a certain toughness, a kind of moral nerve; they display what was once called *character,* a quality which, although approved in the abstract, sometimes loses ground to the other, more instantly negotiable virtues.... character--the willingness to accept responsibility for one's own life--is the source from which self-respect springs.

A big part of honesty is self-discipline, personal resolve, and taking pride in who you are as a person and what each action means to your character.

Everything can be taken from you in a second, but the human spirit is so strong. War can teach you so much about evil, and so much about good.

In every person who comes near you look for what is good and strong.

Be strong, saith my heart; I am a soldier; I have seen worse sights than this.

The effect of great and inevitable misfortune is to elevate those souls which it does not deprive of all virtue.

Optimism is true moral courage.

I, for one, love strength, daring, fortitude. I do not want people to kill the fight in them; I want them to fight for right things.

Great occasions rally great principles, and brace the mind to a lofty bearing, a bearing that is even above itself. But trials that make no occasion at all, leave it to show the goodness and beauty it has in its own disposition. And here precisely is the superhuman glory of Christ as a character, that He is just as perfect, exhibits just as great a spirit in little trials as in great ones.

My theory is, strong people don't need strong leaders.

Our culture, therefore, must not omit the arming of the man. Let him hear in season, that he is born into the state of war, and that the commonwealth and his own well-being require that he should not go dancing in the weeds of peace, but warned, self- collected, and neither defying nor dreading the thunder, let him take both reputation and life in his hand, and, with perfect urbanity, dare the gibbet and the mob by the absolute truth of his speech, and the rectitude of his behaviour.

What I like to believe, and what I do firmly hold to, is that in us all we do have the ability to remain honorable, no matter what has been done to us. No matter what horrors we've witnessed.

I've learned that every single trial offers us a chance to either turn away from what we know to be true, or to stand strong in who we are...

A man with no enemies is a man with no character.

Optimism is the true moral courage