📚The Book in 3 Bullets

• Courage is the management of and the triumph over fear.

• It takes courage to stand out, to be different, to be a revolutionary. People will undoubtedly question the bold, but it is the bold that are responsible for history and any great accomplishment.

• If you are afraid of doing something, that is a sign that you must do it. Growth doesn’t occur in states of complacency; it takes place through obstacles and challenging ourselves.

👤Who Should Read It?

• Anyone who is afraid to raise eyebrows, to stand up for what they think is right, or to challenge the status quo. This book can help instill courage, and why this Stoic virtue is worth pursuing.

✍️ My Top Quotes

• Let other people worry over what they will say about you. They will say it in any case.

• There was never a groundbreaking business that wasn’t loudly predicted to fail.

• When fear is defined, it can be defeated.

• It’s very easy to judge. It’s very hard to know.

• All growth is a leap in the dark. If you’re afraid of that, you’ll never do anything worthwhile.

• If you wish to improve, be content to appear clueless or stupid.

• One man with courage makes a majority.

• Always do what you are afraid of.

• Violence is rarely the answer—but when it is, it’s the only answer.

• If we only did what we were sure of, if we only proceeded when things were favorable, then history would never be made.

📖 Summary & Notes

• A scare is a temporary rush of feeling. Fear is a state of being, and to allow it to rule is a disgrace.

  • One helps you—makes you alert, wakes you up, informs you of danger. The other drags you down, weakens you, and even paralyzes you.

• Defeat fear with logic. See what you’re fearing for what it is: it’s just a bad article, it’s just money, it’s just a meeting with people yelling. Is that something to be afraid of?

• Most of what is beloved now was looked down on at the time of its creation or adoption by people who now pretend that never happened. Don’t be afraid to challenge the status quo.

• People would rather be complicit in a crime than speak up. People would rather stay in a job they hate than explain why they quit to do something less certain.

• There are always more of them before they are counted. The obstacles, the enemies, the critics—they are not as numerous as you think.

• Practice fear setting. A task that makes you define and articulate the nightmares, anxieties, and doubts that hold us back.

• The unexpected blows land most heavily and painfully. So by expecting, by defining, by wrestling with what can happen, we are making it less scary and less dangerous at the same time.

• Aristotle said that the optimistic are the most vulnerable, because “when the result does not turn out as expected, they run away.”

• Don’t worry about whether things will be hard. Because they will be. Instead, focus on the fact that these things will help you. This is why you needn’t fear them.

• When we imagine everything, when we catastrophize endlessly, we are miserable and most afraid. When we focus on what we have to carry and do we are too busy to worry, too busy working.

• If we are going to indict anyone for their cowardice, let it be silently, by example. Waste not a second questioning another man’s courage. Put that scrutiny solely on your own.

• If you fear that there isn’t anything you can do, chances are you will do nothing.

• The brave don’t despair. They believe. They are not cynical, they care. They think there is stuff worth dying for—that good and evil exist. They know that life has problems but would rather be part of the solution than a bystander.

• Think carefully about your options, then choose one. Don’t live in misery by second-guessing or not choosing at all.

• You’re a fool if you think staying on the good side of bad people is a safe bet.

• All certainty is uncertain. You’re not safe. You never will be. In putting safety above everything, we actually put ourselves in danger. Of being forgotten. Of never coming close.

• Our fears point us, like a self-indicting arrow, in the direction of the right thing to do.

• Fear alerts us to danger, but also to opportunity. If it wasn’t scary, everyone would do it. If it was easy, there wouldn’t be any growth in it.

• By definition, each of us is original. Our DNA has never existed before on this planet. No one has ever had our unique set of experiences. Choose to be yourself. Choose to raise eyebrows.

• Be original. Be yourself. To be anything else is to be a coward. Don’t let the opinion of cowards influence what you think or do.

• When a student asks a question, they learn something they didn’t know. When the friend reveals a vulnerability to another, the friendship gets stronger.

• Courage, much like fear, is contagious.

• Repetition leads to confidence. Confidence leads to courage.

• Life is too short to start at the small end of things. Go for the hard problems, the ambitious projects.

• Your headlights illuminate just a few feet of the dark road in front of you, and yet that is enough for you to move forward and make continual progress.

• The well-behaved rarely make history.

• Some of us are afraid to be different. Most everyone is afraid to be difficult. But there is freedom in those traits. Freedom to fight, aggressively, repeatedly, for what we believe in. To insist on a higher standard. To not compromise.

• For a few seconds of embarrassing bravery, we can be great. And that is enough.

• Make courage a habit. When we make things automatic, then there is less for us to think about—less room for us to do the wrong thing.

• No one is more miserable than the person who has made cop-outs and cowardice their go-to decision.

• Whatever it is, whatever you’re doing, you must pursue it aggressively. To succeed, you must take the offensive. Even when you’re being cautious, it must come with the assumption of constant advance, and instant move toward victory always.

• Fortune favors the bold. Fortune favors the brave.

• All the great commanders and entrepreneurs of history were successful because of the risks they took. Because while they may have been scared, they weren’t afraid.

• They will laugh at you. Losers have always gotten together in little groups and talked about winners. The hopeless have always mocked the hopeful.

• Any attempt at action is better than inaction. An attempt can go wrong, but inaction inevitably results in failure.

• If you don’t believe you can do something, it’s not only unlikely that you can do it, it’s guaranteed that you won’t even try.

• Even Gandhi, a man of incredible gentleness and restraint, knew there was a line that must sometimes be crossed. Where there is only a choice between cowardice and violence, choose violence.

• Sometimes physical courage is required to protect moral courage.

• No situation is hopeless, we’re never without agency. We can always bravely pack up and move.

• Do your job. We all have different duties. Duty is not just doing what you swore in your oath, or not doing what is proscribed by law, it is what is demanded of us as decent human beings. Our duty is to do the right thing—right now.

• 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?

• Sometimes we must be brave enough to defy the odds, but we do this only when there is a real chance of success. And we do it rarely when we have no other choice.

• The difference between raw courage and the heroic lies in the who. Who was it for? Was it truly selfless? There is a logic to heroism, even as illogical as it is to override your own self-preservation.

• A confrontation that doesn’t need to happen, shouldn’t happen.

• The braver thing is not to fight. People want to read books about wars. Not the diplomacy that prevented them from happening.

• Our duty is never just to be the best ourselves, but to help others realize their best. Even if, as is sometimes the case, this effort comes at our own expense.

• It takes courage to depart from the conventional path; it’s heroic when you do it for selfless reasons.

• Leaders are dealers in hope. Nobody wants to live in a world without a tomorrow, without a reason to continue, without some dot on the horizon they're aiming at.

• Hemingway said that while it is certainly possible to be destroyed—by life, by the enemy, by a bad break—no one can defeat us. That’s our call and in our power. And it only happens when we give up.