A decline in courage may be the most striking feature that an outside
observer notices in the West today… Such a decline in courage is
particularly noticeable among the ruling and intellectual elites,
causing an impression of a loss of courage by the entire society. There
are many courageous individuals, but they have no determining influence
on public life… Political and intellectual functionaries exhibit this
depression, passivity, and perplexity in their actions and in their
statements, and even more so in their self-serving rationales as to how
realistic, reasonable, and intellectually and even morally justified it
is to base state policies on weakness and cowardice… Must one point out
that from ancient times a decline in courage has been considered the
first symptom of the end?
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn's 1978 Harvard Graduation address.
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