Courage is an inner resolution to go forward despite obstacles; Cowardice is submissive surrender to circumstances. Courage breeds creativity; Cowardice represses fear and is mastered by it. Cowardice asks the question, is it safe? Expediency ask the question, is it politic? Vanity asks the question, is it popular? But conscience ask the question, is it right? And there comes a time when we must take a position that is neither safe, nor politic, nor popular, but one must take it because it is right. – Dr. Martin Luther King Jnr.
When Steve Jobs was 20, he co-founded Apple with his childhood friend Steve Wozniak. Within 10 years, the company had grown into a $2 billion company with over 4,000 employees. At 30, he was fired from the company due to a power struggle with the company’s then-CEO, John Sculley, and its board of directors. It was a devastating experience. He felt rejected, but he still was in love with his craft, so he decided to start over again. In his 2008 StanfordUniversity Commencement Speech 1, noted that getting fired from Apple was the best that could have happened to him then:
I didn’t see it then, but it turned out that getting fired from Apple was the best thing that could have ever happened to me. The heaviness of being successful was replaced by the lightness of being a beginner again, less sure about everything. It freed me to enter one of the most creative periods of my life.