Motivational Quotes

Heroes and heroism

They wouldn't be heroes if they were infallible, in fact they wouldn't be heroes if they weren't miserable wretched dogs, the pariahs of the earth, besides which the only reason to build up an idol is to tear it down again.

- Bangs, Lester

Best Quotes about Heroes and heroism

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.

James, William

A hero is someone right who doesn't change.

Foreman, George

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

Hayes, Helen

You lived too long, we have supped full with heroes, they waste their deaths on us.

Andrews, C. D.

The poetry of heroism appeals irresistibly to those who don't go to a war, and even more to those whom the war is making enormously wealthy. It's always so.

Celine, Louis-Ferdinand

One must think like a hero to behave like a merely decent human being.

Sarton, May

What with making their way and enjoying what they have won, heroes have no time to think. But the sons of heroes --ah, they have all the necessary leisure.

Huxley, Aldous

A hero is a man who is afraid to run away.

Proverb, English

Heroes are not known by the loftiness of their carriage; the greatest braggarts are generally the merest cowards.

Rousseau, Jean Jacques

10.

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

Hegel, Georg

11.

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.

Lavater, Johann Kaspar

12.

Bardot, Byron, Hitler, Hemingway, Monroe, Sade: we do not require our heroes to be subtle, just to be big. Then we can depend on someone to make them subtle.

Enright, D. J.

13.

In war the heroes always outnumber the soldiers ten to one.

Mencken, H. L.

14.

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

Rogers, Will

15.

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.

Mailer, Norman

16.

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.

Adler, Felix

17.

A hero is someone we can admire without apology.

Kelley, Kitty

18.

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

Jordan, Michael

19.

Now stiff on a pillar with a phallic air nelson stylites in Trafalgar square reminds the British what once they were.

Durrell, Lawrence

20.

Heroes are created by popular demand, sometimes out of the scantiest materials.

Johnson, Gerald W.

21.

It is said, that no one is a hero to their butler. The reason is, that it requires a hero to recognize a hero. The butler, however, will probably know well how to estimate his equals.

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von

22.

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

George, David Lloyd

23.

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.

24.

It doesn't take a hero to order men into battle. It takes a hero to be one of those men who goes into battle.

Schwarzkopf, Norman

25.

One murder makes a villain, millions often a hero.

Porteous, Bishop

26.

The ordinary man is involved in action, the hero acts. An immense difference.

Miller, Henry

27.

What is a society without a heroic dimension?

Baudrillard, Jean

28.

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.

Cleaver, Eldridge

29.

If we are marked to die, we are enough to do our country loss; and if to live, the fewer men, the greater share of honor.

Shakespeare, William

30.

There are heroes in evil as well as in good.

La Rochefoucauld, Francois De

31.

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.

Noonan, Peggy

32.

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

Rogers, Will

33.

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

Lamartine, Alphonse De

34.

Had we lived I should have had a tale to tell of the hardihood, endurance and courage of my companions which would have stirred the heart of every Englishman. These rough notes and our dead bodies must tell the tale.

Scott, Robert Falcon

35.

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 Ilyich

36.

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.

Renan, Ernest

37.

The hero draws inspiration from the virtue of his ancestors.

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von

38.

Heroism is the divine relation which, in all times, unites a great man to other men.

Carlyle, Thomas

39.

You cannot be a hero without being a coward.

Shaw, George Bernard

40.

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

Coolidge, Calvin

41.

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.

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

42.

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

Hegel, Georg

43.

A boy doesn't have to go to war to be a hero; he can say he doesn't like pie when he sees there isn't enough to go around.

Howe, Edgar Watson

44.

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

Bonaparte, Napoleon

45.

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.

Eliot, George

46.

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

Irving, Washington

47.

We can't all be heroes, because somebody has to sit on the curb and clap as they go by.

Rogers, Will

48.

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

Horton, Doug

49.

How many famous and high-spirited heroes have lived a day too long?