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The Courage to Stand Alone.

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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.

The leaders we respect the most are those who stood for something and were able to stand for their convictions even though the general consensus was against them. They were willing to die for what they stood for and they ultimately paid for their courage to stand for their conviction sometimes with their life. Nelson Mandela was imprisoned for 27 years for his values, Muhammed Alli refused to be drafted into the military owing to his religious beliefs and ethical opposition to the Vietnam War in turn not fighting for four years and not performing at the height of his career, Rosa Park’s civil disobedience to resist bus segregation sparked the Montgomery bus boycott, President Abraham Lincoln preserved the American union through the civil war and abolished slavery, and Martin Luther King Jnr. had a dream but ultimately paid with his life.

“To be nobody but yourself in a world which is doing its best day and night to make you like everybody else means to fight the hardest battle which any human being can fight and never stop fighting.” ― E.E. Cummings