A decline in courage may be the most striking feature that an outside observer notices in the West today.

The Western world has lost its civic courage, both as a whole and separately, in each country, in each government, in each political party, and, of course, in the United Nations.

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.

Alexander Solzhenitsyn, famous Russian dissident writer, Nobel prize and Templeton Prize winner, Harvard University address (1979)