Heroes/heroism Quotes

A man can be a hero if he is a scientist, or a soldier, or a drug addict, or a disc jockey, or a crummy mediocre politician. A man can be a hero because he suffers and despairs; or because he thinks logically and analytically; or because he is sensitive; or because he is cruel. Wealth establishes a man as a hero, and so does poverty. Virtually any circumstance in a man's life will make him a hero to some group of people and has a mythic rendering in the culture -- in literature, art, theater, or the daily newspapers.

Andrea Dworkin

I have come to think that great men are characterized precisely by the extreme position which they take, and that their heroism consists in holding to that extremity throughout their lives.

Marguerite Yourcenar, Memoirs of

In our world of big names, our true heroes tend to be anonymous. In this life of illusion and quasi-illusion, the person of solid virtues who can be admired for something more substantial than his well-knowness often proves to be the unsung hero: the teacher, the nurse, the mother, the honest cop, the hard worker at lonely, underpaid, unglamorous, unpublicized jobs.

Daniel J. Boorstin

Heroism is not only in the man, but in the occasion.

Calvin Coolidge

Ultimately a hero is a man who would argue with the gods, and so awakens devils to contest his vision. The more a man can achieve, the more he may be certain that the devil will inhabit a part of his creation.

Norman Mailer

My heroes are and were my parents. I can't see having anyone else as my heroes.

Michael Jordan

Sometimes, when one person is missing, the whole world seems depopulated.

Alphonse de Lamartine

We relish news of our heroes, forgetting that we are extraordinary to somebody too.

Helen Hayes

The greatest obstacle to being heroic is the doubt whether one may not be going to prove one's self a fool; the truest heroism is to resist the doubt; and the profoundest wisdom, to know when it ought to be resisted, and when it be obeyed.

Nathaniel Hawthorne

The hero is one who kindles a great light in the world, who sets up blazing torches in the dark streets of life for men to see by.

Felix Adler

As a rule, all heroism is due to a lack of reflection, and thus it is necessary to maintain a mass of imbeciles. If they once understand themselves the ruling men will be lost.

Ernest Renan

Children demand that their heroes should be freckleless, and easily believe them so: perhaps a first discovery to the contrary is less revolutionary shock to a passionate child than the threatened downfall of habitual beliefs which makes the world seem to totter for us in maturer life.

George Eliot

The high sentiments always win in the end, the leaders who offer blood, toil, tears and sweat always get more out of their followers than those who offer safety and a good time. When it comes to the pinch, human beings are heroic.

George Orwell, The Art of Donald

All the heroes, the fire fighters and police men are dying. Don't forget them, many are still alive.

James Dye

What is a society without a heroic dimension?

Jean Baudrillard

True heroism consists in being superior to the ills of life, in whatever shape they may challenge us to combat.

Napoleon Bonaparte

What is a hero without love for mankind.

Doris Lessing

Mankind's common instinct for reality has always held the world to be essentially a theatre for heroism. In heroism, we feel, life's supreme mystery is hidden. We tolerate no one who has no capacity whatever for it in any direction. On the other hand, no matter what a man's frailties otherwise may be, if he be willing to risk death, and still more if he suffer it heroically, in the service he has chosen, the fact consecrates him forever.

William James

The great destroyers of nations and men are comfort, plenty and security. A coward gets scared and quits. A hero gets scared, but still goes on.

Source Unknown

A big man has no time really to do anything but just sit and be big.

Source Unknown