Keep your head when all about you are losing theirs

This famous expression is an exhortation to retain your composure when others around you are panicking. It was coined by Rudyard Kipling in his poem If written in 1895. It was the first of the many ‘ifs’ in the poem. “If you can keep your head when all about you are losing theirs and blaming it on you”. If you could conquer this and the other ‘ifs’ in the poem, Kipling concluded, “Yours is the Earth and everything’s that’s in it. And - which is more - you’ll be a Man, my son! ”