Decline in Courage, the First Symptom of the End

SOURCE: Quoted in "A Catholic Call to Courage" by Jeremy Kee.

https://www.crisismagazine.com/2019/a-catholic-call-to-courage

KEYWORD:  courage, virtue, distinct, ethics, morality, values

Quote from Alexander Solzhenitsyn to the graduating class of Harvard in 1978:

"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?"