50 Audacity Quotes for a Heavy Dose of Motivation

By Norbert Juma

Master quote curator and editor on a mission to inspire

Published June 15, 2023

Audacity quotes are inspirational, which means they can also offer you a heavy dose of motivation.

These quotes are carefully selected to help you get the best possible experience.

In addition to our quotes section, we’re also sharing insight into the term audacity.

If interested, please continue reading!

What is Audacity?

Audacity is used with reference to actions or people that are daring and bold.

It is a quality of being fearless and daring.

An individual with this feeling is always willing to push boundaries and take risks.

If people are demonstrating audacity, they are trying to show their confidence, courage, and determination to challenge the status quo.

Origin

This word originated from the Latin word “Audax,” which means “daring” or “bold.”

The word audacity has been used in an array of contexts in different areas of our lives.

For instance, this term is widely used in political movements, artistic expressions, and military conquests.

Politics and Audacity

In politics, audacity is usually associated with those leaders who want to make bold decisions.

For instance, President John F. Kennedy is still remembered for his audacious decision to step on the moon within a decade.

Similarly, Martin Luther King Jr. was a famous civil rights leader who demonstrated audacity by challenging racial inequality or social injustice.

Audacity in Everyday Life

Audacity also plays a critical role in our daily life.

We can demonstrate audacity in a variety of ways, and a few of them are listed below.

You can speak up when you see something wrong.
It is also considered to be an act of audacity if you make tough decisions to achieve your goal.
You can also stand up for others who are the victims of social injustice.

Audacity in Entertainment Industry

When it comes to the world of entertainment, audacity is usually linked to the sense of originality and creativity that an artist carries.

There are artists who can take challenges and risks when creating something for their viewers or audience.

For instance, musicians like Prince and Jimi Hendrix were popular for their innovative and bold approaches to music.

On the other hand, filmmakers like Stanley Kubrick and Quentin Tarantino pushed the boundaries when challenging the traditional way of telling a story.

Top 10 Audacity Quotes

Let’s start with the top 10 audacity quotes.

1. “Success is the child of audacity.” — Benjamin Disraeli

2. “Audacity, more audacity, always audacity.” — Georges Danton

3. “Fear created gods; audacity created kings.” — Prosper Jolyot de Crebillon

4. “The first quality that is needed is audacity.” — Winston Churchill

5. “Audacity augments courage; hesitation, fear.” — Publilius Syrus

6. “There’s a fine line between audacity and idiocy.” — Jim Butcher

7. “Love: the skillful audacity required to share an inner life.” — Gertrude Stein

8. “I think that when you have the audacity, you will get polarization.” — Lee Daniels

9. “With audacity, one can undertake anything, but not do everything.” — Napoleon Bonaparte

10. “Tact in audacity is knowing how far you can go without going too far.” — Jean Cocteau

Audacity Quotes Showing Advantages

These audacity quotes reveal the immense advantages of taking risks and seizing opportunities to achieve greatness.

11. “Audacity is the currency for authoritarians.” — Van Jones

12. “Audacity is of all qualities the most youthful.” — Ellen Glasgow

13. “In war, nothing is impossible, provided you use audacity.” — George S. Patton

14. “Every great advance in science has issued from a new audacity of imagination.” — John Dewey

15. “All too often, it is audacity and not talent that moves an artist to center stage.” — Julia Cameron

16. “This beginning with Audacity, or being thrown into the middle of it, is already a very great part of the art of painting.” — Winston Churchill

17. “The skyscrapers began to rise again, frailly massive, elegantly utilitarian, images in their grace, audacity, and inconclusiveness, of the whole character of the people who produce them.” — Malcolm Muggeridge

18. “[Six principles that make for a good story:] 1. Absence of lengthy verbiage of a political-social-economic nature; 2. total objectivity; 3. truthful descriptions of persons and objects; 4. extreme brevity; 5. audacity and originality: flee the stereotype; 6. compassion.” — Anton Chekhov

19. “Barack Obama said yesterday that the economy was ‘going to get worse before it gets better.’ See, that’s when you know the campaign is really over. Remember before the election? ‘The audacity of hope!’ ‘Yes, we can!’ ‘A change we can believe in!’ Now it’s, ‘We’re all screwed.’” — Jay Leno

20. “Self-definition and self-determination is about the many varied decisions that we make to compose and journey toward ourselves, about the audacity and strength to proclaim, create, and evolve into who we know ourselves to be. It’s okay if your personal definition is in a constant state of flux as you navigate the world.” — Janet Mock

Audacity Quotes that Include Useful Information

Discover valuable insights and information through these audacity quotes that inspire courage and boldness in pursuing one’s goals and dreams.

21. “Crime, once exposed, has no refuge but in audacity.” — Tacitus

22. “Audacity succeeds as often as it fails; in life, it has an even chance.” — Napoleon Bonaparte

23. “Mistakes you commit through audacity are easily corrected with more audacity.” — Paulo Coelho

24. “In every artist, there is a touch of audacity without which no talent is conceivable.” — Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

25. “Innocence alone dares commit certain acts of audacity. Virtue, when tutored, is as calculating as vice.” — Honore de Balzac

26. “There are few performers who would have had the audacity even to bring up the fact that they had been poorly reviewed.” — Sandra Bernhard

27. “What paralyzes life is lack of faith and audacity. The difficulty lies not in solving problems but identifying them.” — Pierre Teilhard de Chardin

28. “The Hollies, after I left in 1968, had the audacity, the gall, to have three number one records after I left. Thanks a lot, guys.” — Graham Nash

29. “These people have elevated audacity to symphonic and operatic levels. The Florida Supreme Court relied on a new law to resolve the election dispute down there.” — Vincent Bugliosi

30. “If you defy the system long enough, you’ll be rewarded. At first, life takes revenge and reduces you to a sniveling mess. But keep sniveling, have the madness, the audacity, to do what interests you, forget about your pension, and eventually life will say, all right, we’ll let you do it.” — Jo Coudert

Audacity Quotes Based on Personal Experiences

These quotes are about the personal audacity of the authors, and you can take inspiration from their personal experiences.

31. “When I had no roof, I made audacity my roof.” — Robert Pinsky

32. “Because there are 7 billion 47 million people on the planet. And I have the audacity to think I matter. I know it’s a lie, but I prefer it to the alternative.” — George Watsky

33. “I don’t want to call it audacity, it’s too good a term, to appoint Jefferson Beauregard Sessions as attorney general should damn well be respectful of John Lewis.” — Katrina Vanden Heuvel

34. “I have the audacity to believe that peoples everywhere can have three meals a day for their bodies, education, and culture for their minds, and dignity, equality and freedom for their spirits.” — Martin Luther King, Jr.

35. “Anything can happen: anything. Or nothing. Who can say? The world, monstrous, is made that way and, in the end, consumes us all. Who am I, administrated or not, to have the audacity to survive it?” — Brian Evenson

36. “I know that if I ever have the audacity to blame fate or God for holding a gun to my temple, I also have the wherewithal to remind myself that if I end up with a hole in my head, I was the one who pulled the trigger.” — Tiffanie DeBartolo

More Audacity Quotes Based on Personal Experiences

Learning from the experiences of others can be a strong encouragement in our lives.

37. “I can understand how some people might resent me for having the audacity to continue playing music, but it’d take a lot more than that to stop me from doing it. I started Foo Fighters because I didn’t want to retreat.” — Dave Grohl

38. “I received your letter of June 10th. I have never talked to a Jesuit priest in my life, and I am astonished by the audacity to tell such lies about me. From the viewpoint of a Jesuit priest, I am, of course, and have always been an atheist.” — Albert Einstein

39. “I am delighted, one more time, by the daring of my species and the audacity of our flying machines. There is poetry and music in our technology, a beauty as touching as that of an eagle, moss campion, raven or yonder limestone boulder shining under the Arctic sun.” — Edward Abbey

40. “As far as I was concerned, the Panthers were ‘baaaaaad’. The Party was more than bad; it was bodacious. The sheer audacity of walking onto the California Senate floor with rifles, demanding that Black people have the right to bear arms and the right to self-defense, made me sit back and take a long look at them.” — Assata Shakur

Audacity Quotes On Truth, Courage, and Change

These audacity quotes inspire truth, courage, and change, urging us to embrace our audacious side and make bold moves to pursue our goals.

41. “There are some power-abusing, corrupt monsters in our federal government that despise me because I have the audacity to speak the truth.” — Ted Nugent

42. “We forfeit the right to worship God as long as we continue to humiliate negroes. … The hour calls for moral grandeur and spiritual audacity.” — Abraham Joshua Heschel

43. “To pay compliments to the one we love is the first method of caressing, a demi-audacity venturing. A compliment is something like a kiss through a veil.” — Victor Hugo

44. “The only way we really create change is to enter any situation with the humility to listen and to recognize the world as it is, and then the audacity to dream what it could be.” — Jacqueline Novogratz

45. “You must be practically a hero to retain your composure in the midst of universal panic. But just try to scream and tear around when everyone else is going about his business — that takes a lot of audacity.” — Lidiya Ginzburg

46. “The fly ought to be used as the symbol of impertinence and audacity; for whilst all other animals shun man more than anything else, and run away even before he comes near them, the fly lights upon his very nose.” — Arthur Schopenhauer

Additional Audacity Quotes On Truth, Courage, and Change

These final quotes will provide inspiration and motivation for you to live bold.

47. “All miracles are promised to faith, and what is faith except the audacity of will which does not hesitate in the darkness, but advances towards the light in spite of all ordeals, and surmounting all obstacles?” — Eliphas Levi

48. “So with imagination, ingenuity, and audacity, explore, discover, change the world. And have fun while you’re at it. Always take time out to love and to live. You’re going to be busy, but never forget family and friends.” — Daniel Goldin

49. “Luckily, unreasonable expectations go hand in hand with naive young scientists. The more naive, the better – otherwise, we would never have the audacity to try and build a 22,000-mile-high space elevator or some sprawling underwater hotel.” — Daniel H. Wilson

50. “If you are unsure of a course of action, do not attempt it. Your doubts and hesitations will infect your execution. Timidity is dangerous: Better to enter with boldness. Any mistakes you commit through audacity are easily corrected with more audacity. Everyone admires the bold; no one honors the timid.” — Robert Greene