Courage is not the absence of fear but the awareness that something else is more important
Not originally Covey — actually Ambrose RedmoonAmbrose Redmoon1933–1996 · pen name of James Neil Hollingworth, American beatnik writer & rock band manager
The half of this sentence that makes it memorable — “something else is more important” — was published in 1991 by James Neil Hollingworth, writing as Ambrose Redmoon, in his essay “No Peaceful Warriors!” for Gnosis #21: “Courage is not the absence of fear, but rather the judgment that something else is more important than one’s fear” (Wikipedia reproduces the full passage ↗). Stephen Covey did later print a close cousin of the line, in his foreword to Alex Pattakos’s Prisoners of Our Thoughts — but the publisher’s own excerpt of that foreword reads “the awareness there is something more important,” not the wording that travels under his name.
“Courage is not the absence of fear, but rather the judgment that something else is more important than one's fear.” Ambrose Redmoon (James Neil Hollingworth), "No Peaceful Warriors!", Gnosis #21, Fall 1991 — commonly seen as "Courage is not the absence of fear but the awareness that something else is more important" and miscredited to Stephen Covey. Via Quotle.info
⚠ The slide-ready mistake: crediting this to Stephen Covey. Use the credit shown above instead.
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In context
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Minimalist
Minimalist editorial slide for the quote "Courage is not the absence of fear but the awareness that something else is more important". Clean background, a single muted accent color, generous negative space, subtle paper or linen texture, no literal illustration — let the words carry it. Reserve clear space for a serif quote and a small credit line. No lettering in the image itself.
Provenance
The source
Work
No Peaceful Warriors!
Author
James Neil Hollingworth, writing as Ambrose Redmoon
Published in
Gnosis, no. 21 (Fall 1991)
Later echoed by
Stephen Covey, foreword to Prisoners of Our Thoughts (Berrett-Koehler, 2004)
I find such expressions as ‘peaceful warrior’ offensive, trivializing, and insulting. ‘Peaceful warrior’ is far more than a contradiction in terms. The function of a warrior is to eliminate an exterior enemy presence. Cowardice is a serious vice. Courage is not the absence of fear, but rather the judgment that something else is more important than one’s fear. The timid presume it is lack of fear that allows the brave to act when the timid do not. But to take action when one is not afraid is easy. To refrain when afraid is also easy. To take action regardless of fear is brave.
↑ the famous line is one sentence out of nine
The essay is a polemic, not a pep talk. The quotable sentence sits inside an argument about cowardice and the misuse of the word ‘warrior’ — which is why the standalone version, and the smoothed-over Covey rewording, both read so much softer than the original.
The independent WIST quotation database ↗ records the same attribution and the same source under Redmoon — Gnosis, “No Peaceful Warriors!” (Fall 1991) — though it prints the closing clause as “than fear” rather than the “than one’s fear” we quote as verbatim.
Wikiquote’s Stephen Covey page ↗ carries the popular wording sourced to his foreword to Pattakos’s Prisoners of our Thoughts (2004), p. x — and adds the note that the statement “has also been attributed to James Neil Hollingsworth (AKA: Ambrose Redmoon)” in Gnosis #21, 1991.
Reading the Covey text itself changes the picture: Berrett-Koehler’s excerpt of the second edition ↗ (copyright 2010) prints “the awareness there is something more important,” not “the awareness that something else is more important.” We were unable to obtain the 2004 first edition to check whether its page x differs.
“No Peaceful Warriors!” appeared in Gnosis #21 in the autumn of 1991 and remains under copyright; the passage is quoted here for identification and comment. Covey’s later foreword is separately in copyright to his estate and Berrett-Koehler Publishers, so neither wording of this sentence is in the public domain.
Rights status is our research, not legal advice — and copyright varies by country and edition. For commercial or published use, confirm with the rightsholder. See terms.
Fact-check
How Covey ended up with it
This is not a fabrication — both men really did put a sentence like this into print. What went wrong is the order, and the wording.
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Overwhelmingly credited to Stephen Covey later, and re-worded
Covey did write a version, in his foreword to Alex Pattakos’s Prisoners of Our Thoughts. But Berrett-Koehler’s own excerpt of the second edition ↗ (copyright 2010) renders it “From this commander we learn that courage is not the absence of fear but the awareness there is something more important” — and he presents it as a lesson from a retiring base commander, not as a line of his own coining.
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Filed by quote sites under The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People wrong book
Goodreads ↗ displays “Courage isn’t absenct of fear, it is the awareness that something else is important” — typo included — credited to Covey and attached to his 1989 bestseller, while the sourced reference works point instead to the 2004 foreword.
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Often muddled with Mark Twain different line
Twain’s “Courage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear—not absence of fear” is genuine, and older — an 1894 chapter epigraph in Pudd’nhead Wilson, per Quote Investigator ↗. It is a relative of this sentence, not a source for it: Twain has no “something else is more important.”
✓The thought — and the ‘something else is more important’ construction that makes it quotable — belongs to James Neil Hollingworth — ‘Ambrose Redmoon’ ↗, who printed “the judgment that something else is more important than one’s fear” in Gnosis #21, Fall 1991, thirteen years before Covey. The exact popular wording, with ‘awareness’ in it, is the wording Wikiquote attributes to Covey’s 2004 foreword at p. x — and the 2010 edition of that foreword reads “the awareness there is something more important.” Priority is Redmoon’s; the familiar phrasing is Covey’s.
Context
An insult that became an inspirational poster
Redmoon was not writing inspiration. “No Peaceful Warriors!” opens by calling the phrase ‘peaceful warrior’ “offensive, trivializing, and insulting,” and the famous sentence arrives mid-argument, wedged between “Cowardice is a serious vice” and a flat dismissal of people who mistake fearlessness for bravery. Lifted out of that setting and set in a serif font over a mountain photograph, it reads as gentle encouragement. In place, it is a rebuke.
The irony is that Redmoon’s point was about credit going to the wrong thing — the timid, he wrote, assume the brave simply do not feel fear. His sentence then suffered the same fate: the words survived, the name did not, and the credit drifted to whichever famous author a reader had heard of. Stephen Covey, whose books sold in the tens of millions, was the obvious landing place.
To take action regardless of fear is brave.
Why the Covey wording keeps drifting
Covey’s foreword tells the story of a base commander, a colonel in his thirtieth year, who took on an unpopular change effort because his dying father had asked him not to “do life like I did.” The sentence follows as a moral: from this commander we learn that courage is not the absence of fear but the awareness there is something more important. It is a lesson drawn from a conversation, not a claim to have coined an aphorism — and Covey attaches no earlier author to it.
Because the line was never framed as a quotation in the first place, nothing anchored its exact wording. Quote sites trimmed the introductory clause, smoothed “there is something more important” into the more quotable “that something else is more important” — which is Redmoon’s construction — and then began attaching it to whichever Covey book they had heard of. Goodreads files a version with a typo in it under The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People (1989), a book published fifteen years before the foreword.
Explore
Filed under
More provenance-checked quotes on the same theme, each with its reuse status.
1933–1996 · American writer, beatnik & rock band manager
James Neil Hollingworth (3 January 1933 – 28 February 1996) was an American beatnik and hippie who managed the psychedelic folk-rock bands Quicksilver Messenger Service and the Ace of Cups until a 1967 car crash near Muir Beach, California left him paraplegic. He wrote under the pen name Ambrose Hollingworth Redmoon, and founded a survivalist and occult “Six-Day School” high on Mount Shasta. His 1991 Gnosis essay “No Peaceful Warriors!” — a bad-tempered attack on the then-fashionable phrase ‘peaceful warrior’ — produced the one sentence for which he is now universally known, and almost never credited.
For writers & researchers
Cite this
Primary source
Ambrose Redmoon [James Neil Hollingworth], “No Peaceful Warriors!” Gnosis, no. 21 (Fall 1991). The wording popularly credited to Stephen Covey is cited by reference works to his foreword in Alex Pattakos, Prisoners of Our Thoughts: Viktor Frankl’s Principles at Work (San Francisco: Berrett-Koehler, 2004), p. x.
This verification page
Quotle.info. “Who really said ‘Courage is not the absence of fear but the awareness that something else is more important’?” Last verified 25 Aug 2026. https://quotle.info/who-said/courage-is-not-the-absence-of-fear-but-the-awareness-that/