You will find as you grow older that courage is the rarest of all qualities to be found in public life.

Nerve is scarce wherever there is much to lose, and prominent roles come with plenty. Most people in them are competent and careful, and careful is the problem: the cost of speaking up is immediate and personal, while the cost of staying quiet is spread thin across everyone. Years of watching that tends to lower what you expect, though it need not lower what you value.

Rather than waiting for someone visible to be brave, look at the room you are in. Where are you the one with something to lose by saying the true thing? Say one of those things this week, plainly, without a speech around it.