The plasticity of ceramics is a long sought-after phenomenon at the macro-scale and is thought to be inherently controlled by their strong bonds which endow them with high strength and very limited deformability which are known in general as mutually exclusive properties of materials. This phenomenon has been investigated in differently oriented grains of a recently developed (Hf-Ta-Zr-Nb)C high-entropy carbide and compared with the binary (Hf-Ta)C and constituent monocarbides of TaC and HfC during micropillar compression. The samples were prepared by spark plasma sintering and the crystallographic orientation of grains was determined by electron backscatter diffraction (EBSD). Micropillars were milled out from grains of {001} and {101} orientations using a focused ion beam (FIB) technique. Micropillar compression test of near {001} oriented grains revealed that (Hf-Ta-Zr-Nb)C had a significantly enhanced yield strength (~6 GPa GPa) compared to the corresponding base monocarbides (3-4 GPa) while maintaining a similar ductility to the least brittle monocarbide (TaC) during the operation of {110}<1-10> slip systems. Grains of {101} orientation exhibited significantly improved yield strength compared to the {001} type facets (~13 GPa for (Hf-Ta-Zr-Nb)C) with the operation of the {111}<1-10> ‘ductile’ type slip operation. The strength enhancement obtained in binary (Hf-Ta)C and high-entropy (Hf-Ta-Zr-Nb)C systems was explained by the increased Peierls stress of an a/2<1-10>{110} edge dislocation due to larger atomic randomness with the increasing number of elements at the dislocation core. This study revealed that the hardness and strength of high-entropy carbide ceramics could go beyond the constituent monocarbides while their plasticity could be also improved via the promotion of dislocation slip on the {111} planes.