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What is Moral Courage? .

 When you do something that is morally courageous, you feel good because you
had just helped somebody who needed help.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)

 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.

 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.

 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!

Six types of courage

1. 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.
 "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

2. 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.
 "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

3. 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.
 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
4. 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
 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

5. 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.
 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

6. Spiritual courage. This fortifies us when we grapple with questions about faith,


purpose, and meaning, either in a religious or nonreligious framework
 “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
https://www.slideserve.com/noleta/what-is-moral-courage

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