Photo courtesy of Ganatronic
This fourth of July, we celebrate the fearless American spirit by remembering some of the country’s greatest heroes and inspirational figures through their own words. Throughout the course of American history, the call to Be Fearless has empowered many and we hope that it will inspire you as well.
Share your own fearless quote here and then take the Be Fearless pledge!
We want the spirit of America to be efficient; we want American character to be efficient; we want American character to display itself in what I may, perhaps, be allowed to call spiritual efficiency - clear disinterested thinking and fearless action.
- President Woodrow T. Wilson
All life is an experiment. The more experiments you make the better.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson, writer
You gain strength, courage and confidence by every experience in which you really stop to look fear in the face. You are able to say to yourself, "I lived through this horror. I can take the next thing that comes along." You must do the thing you think you cannot do.
- Eleanor Roosevelt, activist
We fight in honorable fashion for the good of mankind; fearless of the future, unheeding of our individual fates, with unflinching hearts and undimmed eyes; we stand at Armageddon, and we battle for the Lord.
- President Theodore Roosevelt
Freedom of the press and of religious opinion should be inviolate: the policy of our country is peace and the ark of our salvation union are articles of faith upon which we are all now agreed… Except the Lord keep the city, the watchman waketh in vain.” With fervent supplications for His favor, to His overruling providence I commit with humble but fearless confidence my own fate and the future destinies of my country.
- President John Quincy Adams
I do not know the word “quit.” Either I never did, or I have abolished it.
- Susan Butcher, Iditarod winner, 1988
Fate loves the fearless.
- James Russell Lowell, poet
It is no paradox to say that although comparatively weak the new-born nation [America] was intrinsically strong. Inconsiderable in population and apparent resources, it was upheld by a broad and intelligent comprehension of rights and an all-pervading purpose to maintain them, stronger than armaments. It came from the furnace of the Revolution, tempered to the necessities of the times.
The thoughts of the men of that day were as practical as their sentiments were patriotic. They wasted no portion of their energies upon idle and delusive speculations, but with a firm and fearless step advanced beyond the governmental landmarks which had hitherto circumscribed the limits of human freedom and planted their standard, where it has stood against dangers which have threatened from abroad, and internal agitation, which has at times fearfully menaced at home. They proved themselves equal to the solution of the great problem, to understand which their minds had been illuminated by the dawning lights of the Revolution.
The object sought was not a thing dreamed of; it was a thing realized. They had exhibited only the power to achieve, but, what all history affirms to be so much more unusual, the capacity to maintain. The oppressed throughout the world from that day to the present have turned their eyes hitherward, not to find those lights extinguished or to fear lest they should wane, but to be constantly cheered by their steady and increasing radiance.
- Captain Benjamin Franklin Pierce (Character from M*A*S*H)