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

by Ryan Holiday

“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.”

We claim we debate so we can get to the right decision, that we need more information. In truth, we are delaying.

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.

The architect Daniel Burnham is said to have advised his students to make no little plans. He was telling them to think big. To tackle big problems. Not to get stuck on the onesie-twosies of life, but to try to reach. To do something so new and different that it scared them.

it is important we understand that courage, as a virtue, must be weighed against the equally essential virtue of moderation.

Indeed, Aristotle used courage to illustrate the concept of temperance. Courage, he said, was the midpoint between two vices—cowardice being the best known, but recklessness being equally dangerous.

Caution and care are not antonyms for courage but complements.

hurdles are the perfect opportunity for the brave to win stunning victories.

Where would we be without people brave enough to challenge the odds? If every entrepreneur, activist, and general listened to the predictions, what kind of world would this be? If every oncologist faced the facts of their diagnoses, no patient would ever be saved. If every team down in the fourth quarter believed they were beaten, there would never be any comebacks. If every RAF pilot had looked at the numbers in 1940—a one-in-ten chance of dying in each sortie—would Britain have been able to hold out?

You can’t let this period make you bitter. You have to make sure it makes you better.

Is it too on the nose to point out what word is contained inside encouragement?