“Must one point out,” the writer and Soviet dissident Alexander Solzhenitsyn said, “that from ancient times a decline in courage has been considered the first symptom of the end?” Conversely, the greatest moments in human history all share one thing—whether it’s landing on the moon or civil rights, the final stand at Thermopylae or the art of the Renaissance: The bravery of ordinary men and women. People who did what needed to be done. People who said, “If not me, then who?”
