Courage Is Calling: Fortune Favors the Brave (The Stoic Virtues Series)

by Ryan Holiday

no one who acts with courage is ever alone.

When we follow our destiny, when we seize what is meant to be ours, we are never alone. We are walking alongside Hercules. We are following in the footsteps of the greats. We are guided by God, by the gods, by a guiding spirit, the same one that guided de Gaulle and Napoleon, Joan of Arc, Charlemagne, and every other great man and woman of history.

“I discovered that the world should be divided not into good and bad people but into cowards and non-cowards,” he wrote. “Ninety-five percent of cowards are capable of the vilest things, lethal things, at the mildest threat.”

The world is asking you about your courage. Every minute of every day. Your enemies are asking you this question. Your obstacles are too.

“I think that, as life is action and passion,” Holmes would write, “it is required of a man that he should share the passion and action of his time at peril of being judged not to have lived.”

We each receive our call. If we don’t answer it, then we deprive the world of something. Our failure of courage ripples out beyond us, into the lives of other people.

Preparation Makes You Brave

“Know-how is a help,”

Although fear can be explained away, it’s far more effective to replace it. With what? Competence. With training. With tasks. With a job that needs to be done.

Training is not just something that athletes and soldiers do. It is the key to overcoming fear in any and all situations.

What we are familiar with, we can manage. Danger can be mitigated by experience and by good training. Fear leads to aversion. Aversion to cowardice. Repetition leads to confidence. Confidence leads to courage.

Know-how is a help. But it’s preparation that makes you brave.

Sometimes the best place to start is somewhere small.

“Never lose an opportunity of urging a practical beginning, however small,” Florence Nightingale said, “for it is wonderful how often in such matters the mustard-seed germinates and roots itself.”

Fortune favors the bold,

Start small . . . on something big. Eliminate one problem. Move things one iota. Write one sentence. Send one letter. Make a spark. We can figure out what’s next after that. Your headlights illuminate just a few feet of the dark road in front of you, and yet that is enough for you to move forward and make continual progress.

Better to win a small battle than continually to defer for some larger, perfect battle in the future.

In the words of the decorated Navy SEAL Jocko Willink, to get over the fear, you go.

You just do. You leap into the dark. It is the only way.

Alea iacta est.

The Greek word for this kind of courage was parrhesia. It was the speaking of truth to power. It was refusing to buy the lie or to play it false.

To know the truth and not say the truth . . . this is to betray the truth.

No one was willing to call the bully a bully.

We need a population that refuses to tolerate propaganda, rationalizations, or cover-ups. People in every station who are willing to stand up and say, “This is not right. I won’t be a part of it.” We need you to say that.

Whatever you’re not changing, you’re choosing.

The well-behaved rarely make history.

They’re going to call you crazy—because courage is crazy. We have to be willing to look that way, to be true to who we are anyway. We can’t just not be afraid to be ourselves. We have to insist on it.

Once the event is underway, everything else comes naturally. Fulfilling your responsibilities. Putting one foot in front of the other.

You’ll be too busy to be afraid. Momentum starts working for you—not against you.

Courage is defined in the moment. In less than a moment. When we decide to step out or step up. To leap or to step back.

A person isn’t brave, generally. We are brave, specifically.

For a few seconds. For a few seconds of embarrassing bravery we can be gre...

advice: Do one thing each day that scares you.

And by demanding our rights—by fighting back against oppression or abuse or poor treatment—we’re not only being brave, we are, like Douglass, helping everyone who comes after us.

Because courage, like fear, is contagious.

One man with courage makes a majority.

You do what’s right, what is immediately in front of you, bravely, calmly, clearly.

As Marshall said, “The courage of any one man reflects in some degree the courage of all of those who are within his vision.”

You make a difference when you are brave. Because you make others brave in the process.

This is the rule: You decided to go. Now you have to own what happens. No excuses. No exceptions.

“The willingness to accept responsibility for one’s own life,” Joan Didion observed, “is the source from which self-respect springs.”

We said before that courage is contagious, but you have to be willing to catch it.

If you’re going to speak out: Sign your name. Sign your name on everything you do. That’s the brave—no, the basic—thing to do.

You break it, you buy it. You make the move, you own it. You say it, you stand behind it. You order it, you accept the blame. This is the source from which self-respect springs and leaders are made.

Raw defiance. It’s an underrated thing. It can go a long way.

You have agency. You have strength. You can make them regret ever tangling with you.

Fight for every yard. Fight for you.

audentis Fortuna iuvat in the Aeneid; fortis Fortuna adiuvat in one of Terence’s plays; ‘τοῖς τολμῶσιν ἡ τύχη ξύμφορος from Thucydides. To Pliny, the Roman admiral and author, Fortes fortuna iuvat.

Fortune favors the bold. Fortune favors the brave.

A little boldness now is worth a lot more than death-defying courage later.