Conscience is the root of all true courage

Conscience is the root of all true courage; if a man would be brave let him obey his conscience.
James Freeman Clarke

Courage at Christmas

New York Times

Published: December 25, 1987

A chill wind swirls through the rubble-strewn empty lots. A block away stand some gutted brick tenements, hollow as skulls. Across 160th Street, a forlorn little branch library sticks up out of the desolation. But here, in the old public school now called Argus Community, there is life.

There aren't many worse places than this corner of the South Bronx and there aren't many people laid lower than the young men on the third floor. They are addicted to drugs and are homeless and suffer mental problems. Yet here they sit, polite and neatly dressed, in the old classroom they call their family living room, talking about Christmas.

One young man - his initial is G. - won't ever forget last Christmas. He spent it in jail, for assault. ''I was in a cell by myself. The guard came along and threw in a sandwich. He said, 'Merry Christmas.' '' C., knees tight and hands folded in his lap, says softly that he spent 10 Christmases in jail, and another in Vietnam.

''I was here last Christmas,'' says B., a tall man in his 30's. ''The year before I lived in a garage and almost froze. I was doing $50 or $75 a day in drugs and still wasn't satisfied.'' He's been at Argus for 14 months, ''and I've been drug free the whole time. No time since I was 17 could I ever say that.''

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Courage without conscience is a wild beast.

Robert Ingersoll