He had the essential masculine quality of courage to a supreme degree. Nobody has ever done and nobody in all human probability will ever do such reckless feats of daring. His whole life was one long succession of them.
--
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, in The Strand Magazine (August 1927) Vol. 74, p. 134Harry Houdini
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" No human being can give an eternal resolution to another or take it from him; If someone objects to that then one might just as well be silent if there is no probability of winning others, he thereby has merely shown that although his life very likely thrived and prospered in probability and everyone of his undertakings in the service of probability went forward, he has never really ventured and consequently has never had or given himself the opportunity to consider that probability is an illusion, but to venture the truth is what gives human life and the human situation pith and meaning, to venture is the fountainhead of inspiration, whereas probability is the sworn enemy of enthusiasm, the mirage whereby the sensate person drags out time and keeps the eternal away, whereby he cheats God, himself, and his generation: cheats God of the honor, himself of liberating annihilation, and his generation of the equality of conditions."
Soren Aabye Kierkegaard
What I want to impress on our youth is the necessity of thoroughly preparing themselves for their life's work. As a rule they bluff their way through life , pulling plums out of life's pudding by hook or by crook. They seem to hold the notion that knowledge is not essential to great achievements as courage. They overvalue courage forgetting that without knowledge it is only recklessness...Less bluff, more study.
Epifanio de los Santos
There is no human quality more attractive than the courage of the weak.
Gene Wolfe
Courage is rightly esteemed the first of human qualities, because, as has been said, 'it is the quality which guarantees all others.'
Winston Churchill
The human being, on the other hand, is firmly located in a temporal process. He has an image of the past which extends back far beyond the limits of his own life and experience, and he likewise has an image of the future. Closely associated with the time structure of his image is the image of the structure of relationships. Because we are aware of time, we are also aware of cause and effect, of contiguity and succession, of cycles and repetition. The image of man is also characterized by a much greater degree of self-consciousness and of self-awareness than that of the lower animals. We not only know, but we know that we know. This reflective character of the human image is unique, and is what leads to philosophy.
Kenneth Boulding
Houdini, Harry
Houghton, Richard Monckton Milnes
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