Heroes Quotes

What does seem to me poisonous, what breeds a type of patriotism that is pernicious if it lasts but not likely to last long in an educated adult, is the perfectly serious indoctrination of the young in knowably false or biased history - the heroic legend drably disguised as text-book fact. With this creeps in the tacit assumption that other nations have not equally their heroes; perhaps even the belief - surely it is very bad biology - that we can literally 'inherit' tradition.

C.S. Lewis

Unconsciously we all have a standard by which we measure other men, and if we examine closely we find that this standard is a very simple one, and is this: we admire them, we envy them, for great qualities we ourselves lack. Hero worship consists in just that. Our heroes are men who do things which we recognize, with regret, and sometimes with a secret shame, that we cannot do. We find not much in ourselves to admire, we are always privately wanting to be like somebody else. If everybody was satisfied with himself, there would be no heroes.

Mark Twain

...the proliferation of luminous fungi or iridescent crystals in deep caves where the torchlessly improvident hero needs to see is one of the most obvious intrusions of narrative causality into the physical universe.

Terry Pratchett

Heroes may not be braver than anyone else. They're just braver five minutes longer.

Ronald Reagan

Nothingever happened on this globe, for good, at which some people did not have their fill of laughter in the onset; and knowing that such as these would be blind anyway, he thought it quite as well that they should wrinkle up their eyes in grins, as have a malady in the less attractive forms.

Charles Dickens

Such patience have the heroes who begin, Sailing the first toward lands which others win. Jubal must dare as great beginners dare, Strike form's first way in matter rude and bare, And, yearning vaguely toward the plenteous choir Of the world's harvest, make one poor small lyre.

George Eliot

Like all real heroes, Charley had a fatal flaw. He refused to believe that he had gonorrhea, whereas the truth was that he did.

Kurt Vonnegut

That is why embittered people find heroes and madmen a perennial source of fascination, for they have no fear of life or death. Both heroes and madmen are indifferent to danger and will forge ahead regardless of what other people say.

Paulo Coelho

I wish that the people who sing about the deeds of heroes would think about the people who have to clear up after them.

Terry Pratchett

No, what he didn't like about heroes was that they were usually suicidally gloomy when sober and homicidally insane when drunk.

Terry Pratchett

Lamech's sons were heroes of their race: Jubal, the eldest, bore upon his face The look of that calm river-god, the Nile, Mildly secure in power that needs not guile.

George Eliot

Some men worship rank, some worship heroes, some worship power, some worship God, and over these ideals they dispute, but they all worship money.

Mark Twain

Heroes and victims are the product of the mood they were in when opportunity came or when circumstances were at their worst.

Orson Scott Card

The women of Afghanistan, Iraq, and Iran who risk their lives and their beauty to defy the foulness of theocracy. Ayaan Hirsi Ali and Azar Nafisi as their ideal feminine model.

Christopher Hitchens