Heroes/heroism Quotes

The characteristic of genuine heroism is its persistency. All men have wandering impulses, fits and starts of generosity. But when you have resolved to be great, abide by yourself, and do not weakly try to reconcile yourself with the world. The heroic cannot be the common, nor the common the heroic.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Most people aren't appreciated enough, and the bravest things we do in our lives are usually known only to ourselves. No one throws ticker tape on the man who chose to be faithful to his wife, on the lawyer who didn't take the drug money, or the daughter who held her tongue again and again. All this anonymous heroism.

Peggy Noonan

No man is a hero to his valet. This is not because the hero is no hero, but because the valet is a valet.

G. W. F. Hegel

Once the state has been founded, there can no longer be any heroes. They come on the scene only in uncivilized conditions.

G. W. F. Hegel

Aspire rather to be a hero than merely appear one.

Baltasar Gracian

The idol of today pushes the hero of yesterday out of our recollection; and will, in turn, be supplanted by his successor of tomorrow.

Washington Irving

Unhappy the land that is in need of heroes.

Bertolt Brecht

Be your own hero, it's cheaper than a movie ticket.

Doug Horton

True heroism is remarkably sober, very undramatic. It is not the urge to surpass all others at whatever cost, but the urge to serve others, at whatever cost.

Arthur Ashe

The paper tiger hero, James Bond, offering the whites a triumphant image of themselves, is saying what many whites want desperately to hear reaffirmed: I am still the White Man, lord of the land, licensed to kill, and the world is still an empire at my feet.

Eldridge Cleaver

The prudent see only the difficulties, the bold only the advantages, of a great enterprise; the hero sees both; diminishes the former and makes the latter preponderate, and so conquers.

Johann Kaspar Lavater

Down these mean streets a man must go who is not himself mean, who is neither tarnished nor afraid... He is the hero, he is everything. He must be a complete man and a common man and yet an unusual man. He must be, to use a rather weathered phrase, a man of honor, by instinct, by inevitability, without thought of it, and certainly without saying it. He must be the best man in his world and a good enough man for any world.

Raymond Chandler

One murder makes a villain, millions often a hero.

Bishop Beilby Porteus

Being a hero is about the shortest lived profession on earth.

Will Rogers

The main thing about being a hero is to know when to die.

Will Rogers

These heroes are dead. They died for liberty - they died for us. They are at rest. They sleep in the land they made free, under the flag they rendered stainless, under the solemn pines, the sad hemlocks, the tearful willows, and the embracing vines. They sleep beneath the shadows of the clouds, careless alike of sunshine or of storm, each in the windowless Place of Rest. Earth may run red with other wars - they are at peace. In the midst of battle, in the roar of conflict, they found the serenity of death. I have one sentiment for soldiers living and dead: cheers for the living; tears for the dead.

Robert G. Ingersoll

I think of a hero as someone who understands the degree of responsibility that comes with his freedom.

Bob Dylan

All our lives we fought against exalting the individual, against the elevation of the single person, and long ago we were over and done with the business of a hero, and here it comes up again: the glorification of one personality. This is not good at all. I am just like everybody else.

Lenin (Vladimir Ulyanov)

The legacy of heroes is the memory of a great name and the inheritance of a great example.

Benjamin Disraeli

What is our task? To make Britain a fit country for heroes to live in.

David Lloyd George