Success Quote by Frank Moore Colby

Self-control can be a kind of provocation. Colby’s line needles a familiar social paradox: calm isn’t always calming. In a conflict, we like to imagine that the person who stays composed is the peacemaker. Colby points out the darker, more human reality: your steadiness can read as judgment, superiority, or even manipulation to someone already overheating.

The intent is partly corrective, partly consoling. It reframes a common experience - you stay measured, and the other person somehow escalates - as something structural, not personal failure. The subtext is about status and mirrors. Anger often wants company; it recruits. When you don’t join, you deprive the angry person of validation and the shared story that “we’re both right to be furious.” Your composure becomes a silent contrast that forces them to face their own loss of control. That’s embarrassing. Embarrassment often comes out as more rage.

As an educator, Colby would have seen this dynamic in miniature every day: the student baiting a reaction, the class watching for cracks, the authority figure whose calm is interpreted as coldness or condescension. The remark carries a classroom pragmatism: don’t assume that being reasonable will be rewarded. Sometimes it’s precisely what triggers resistance, because it shifts power. The person keeping their temper keeps their agency; the person losing it feels theirs slipping, and lashes out to reclaim it.

It’s a compact warning about emotional contagion, and a quiet defense of restraint as a discipline, not a personality trait.