“The brave man chooses his line and withstands danger either because to do so is honourable, or because not to do so is base.”
Aristotle, c. 340 BC · Greek philosopher of the virtues
Chapter 3
On Courage
“To see what is right and not to do it is want of courage.”
Confucius, c. 479 BC · Chinese teacher of the Analects
“Men are disturbed not by the things which happen, but by the opinions about the things.”
Epictetus, c. 135 AD · Greek Stoic, born into slavery
“In a place where there are no men, strive to be a man.”
Hillel, c. 200 AD · Jewish sage of Jerusalem, first century BCE
“Strengthen the female mind by enlarging it, and there will be an end to blind obedience.”
Mary Wollstonecraft, 1792 · English writer, first great argument for women's education
“I had reasoned this out in my mind; there was one of two things I had a right to, liberty or death; if I could not have one, I would have the other.”
Harriet Tubman, 1869 · conductor on the Underground Railroad, as recorded by her biographer
“Somebody must show that the Afro-American race is more sinned against than sinning, and it seems to have fallen upon me to do so.”
Ida B. Wells, 1892 · journalist who kept writing after being driven from Memphis
“To sin by silence, when we should protest, makes cowards out of men.”
Ella Wheeler Wilcox, 1914 · American poet and suffrage campaigner
Facing a unanimous group giving an obviously wrong answer, about a third of judgments went along with the group. One person who broke the unanimity cut that conformity sharply.
Solomon Asch, 1956 · social psychologist, line-judgment conformity studies
Security footage of 219 real street conflicts in three countries was coded frame by frame. In roughly nine cases out of ten, somebody stepped in.
Richard Philpot and colleagues, 2020 · criminologists, CCTV study in England, the Netherlands and South Africa
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