“Nothing in life is to be feared. It is only to be understood.”
~ Marie Curie (She was the first woman to receive a Nobel Prize, and she recevied TWO of them in her life! There is a book by a Harvard classmate of mine, Sarah Dry, about Marie Curie.)
“Courage is very important. Like a muscle, it is strengthened by use.”
~ Ruth Gordon
“Failure seldom stops you. What stops you is the fear of failure.”
~ Jack Lemmon
“Do not fear mistakes, there are none.”
~ Miles Davis
To my mind, I don’t think the Marie Curie quote belongs filed under “courage.” To me, the word “courage” has within its meaning the idea of overcoming fear. I don’t think you’re necessarily courageous unless you’re dealing with something that makes you scared to death.
But of course, I don’t know what the context of her quote was. I imagine Curie was talking about the natural world, and understanding it, not about personal experiences and courage.
Don’t forget that her death came almost certainly of her long, long exposure to radiation. Perhaps she should have been afraid! (That was meant as a joke since at the time, I don’t think people realized how dangerous radiation was.)
Oh, and her daughter also won the Nobel!
WOW! Her daughter too!
Lila, yea, I see what you mean by saying that her quote could have been about the natural world. I don’t know the context either. Incredible about her daughter also!
“You gain strength, courage, and confidence by every experience by 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.’â€
– Eleanor Roosevelt
Thanks, Thao, for this quote. This particular quote is very realistic, right? Here’s a good link from Time’s 100 people of the century about her. Also, in another place, I read that she wrote her 500-word column My Day six days a week for about thirty years. That’s pretty cool.
“The greatest mistake you can make in life is to be continually fearing you will make one.”
~ Elbert Hubbard