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Courage (n.): Mental or moral strength to venture, persevere, and withstand danger, fear or difficulty; the ability to control your fear in a dangerous or difficult situation.
The use of the word courage declined from the 1800 to its lowest in the 1980s, but has been gaining in popularity again since the 2000s. Poet David Whyte says courage “is a word that tempts us to think outwardly, to run bravely against opposing fire, to do something under besieging circumstances, and perhaps, above all, to be seen to be doing it in public, to show courage: to be celebrated in story, rewarded with medals, given the accolade. But to look to its linguistic origins is to look in a more interior direction.” The word courage, in fact, comes from the old Norman French word coeur, meaning heart.
Origin and etymology of courage: c. 1300, corage, denoting the heart, as the seat of feelings. -from french, courage, cœur - from latin cor (heart). In Middle English, the word was used broadly for "what is in one's mind or thoughts," hence "bravery," but also "wrath, pride, confidence, lustiness," or any sort of inclination.
[Sources: Merriam Webster, Cambridge Dictionary, Etymonline]
“Without the person of outspoken opinion, however, without the critic, without the visionary, without the nonconformist, any society of whatever degree of perfection must fall into decay. Its habits (let us say virtues) will inevitably become entrenched, tyrannical; its controls will become inaccessible to the ordinary citizen.” — Ben Shahn
“Certain kinds of trauma visited on peoples are so deep, so cruel, that unlike money, unlike vengeance, even unlike justice, or rights, or the goodwill of others, only writers can translate such trauma and turn sorrow into meaning, sharpening the moral imagination.” — Toni Morrison
Xenophile (n.): A person who has a love of foreign people and culture; A person with an interest in celebrating people's differences.
“Don’t you see that the whole aim of Newspeak is to narrow the range of thought? In the end we shall make thoughtcrime literally impossible, because there will be no words in which to express it.” — George Orwell, Nineteen Eighty-Four
“[People] fall into a cult of big hero/rockstar worship and don’t appreciate the efforts of small local ‘invisible’ everyday heroes and their small acts.” — Manish Jain
