quotations about heroes
Alongside the statement about one man's poison being another man's high, one might as well add that one man's saint can be another man's sore and one man's hero can turn out to be that man's biggest hangup.
KEN KESEY
Sometimes a Great Notion
'Tis as easy to be heroes as to sit the idle slaves.
JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL
"The Present Crisis"
The real hero is always a hero by mistake; he dreams of being an honest coward like everybody else.
UMBERTO ECO
"Why Are They Laughing in Those Cages?", Travels in Hyperreality
Crowds speak in heroes.
GERALD STANLEY LEE
Crowds
Heroism works in contradiction to the voice of mankind, and in contradiction, for a time, to the voice of the great and good. Heroism is an obedience to a secret impulse of an individual's character. Now to no other man can its wisdom appear as it does to him, for every man must be supposed to see a little further on his own proper path than any one else. Therefore, just and wise men take umbrage at his act, until after some little time be past: then they see it to be in unison with their acts. All prudent men see that the action is clean contrary to a sensual prosperity; for every heroic act measures itself by its contempt of some external good. But it finds its own success at last, and then the prudent also extol.
RALPH WALDO EMERSON
"Heroism", Essays
Ultimately a hero is a man who would argue with the gods, and so awakens devils to contest his vision.
NORMAN MAILER
preface, The Presidential Papers
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 to be obeyed.
NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE
The Blithedale Romance
Nobody, they say, is a hero to his valet.
JOHANN WOLFGANG VON GOETHE
attributed, Day's Collacon
Self-trust is the essence of heroism. It is the state of the soul at war, and its ultimate objects are the last defiance of falsehood and wrong, and the power to bear all that can be inflicted by evil agents. It speaks the truth, and it is just, generous, hospitable, temperate, scornful of petty calculations, and scornful of being scorned. It persists; it is of an undaunted boldness, and of a fortitude not to be wearied out.
RALPH WALDO EMERSON
"Heroism", Essays
There are men who bloom in chaos. You call them heroes or villains, depending on which side wins the war, but until the battle call they are but normal men who long for action, who lust for the opportunity to throw off the routine of their normal lives like a cocoon and come into their own. They sense a destiny larger than themselves, but only when structures collapse around them do these men become warriors.
GUILLERMO DEL TORO & CHUCK HOGAN
The Fall
Unbounded courage and compassion join'd / Tempering each other in the victor's mind / Alternately proclaim him good and great / And make the hero and the man complete.
JOSEPH ADDISON
The Campaign
The heroes will always be remembered. The best. The best and the worst. And a few who were a bit of both.
GEORGE R. R. MARTIN
A Feast for Crows
Dead people can be our heroes because they cant disappoint us later; they only improve over time, as we forget more and more about them.
VERONICA ROTH
Four: A Divergent Story Collection
Unhappy the land that needs heroes.
BERTOLT BRECHT
Life of Galileo
Though nothing, nothing will keep us together
We can beat them, forever and ever
Oh, we can be heroes just for one day.
DAVID BOWIE & BRIAN ENO
"Heroes"
If there's one thing I can't stand it's a hero without a cause. People like that just make trouble so that they can solve it.
JEANETTE WINTERSON
Written on the Body
The real hero is the man who fights even though he is scared. Some men get over their fright in a minute under fire. For some, it takes an hour. For some, it takes days. But a real man will never let his fear of death overpower his honor, his sense of duty to his country, and his innate manhood. Battle is the most magnificent competition in which a human being can indulge. It brings out all that is best and it removes all that is base.
GEORGE S. PATTON
speech to the Third Army, June 5, 1944
No, what he didn't like about heroes was that they were usually suicidally gloomy when sober and homicidally insane when drunk.
TERRY PRATCHETT
The Color of Magic
In the hero stories, the call to go on a journey takes the form of a loss, an error, a wound, an unexplainable longing, or a sense of a mission. When any of these happens to us, we are being summoned to make a transition. It will always mean leaving something behind.... The paradox here is that loss is a path to gain.
DAVID RICHO
How to Be an Adult
Our heroes are the men who do things which we recognize, with regret, and sometimes with a secret shame, that we cannot do.
MARK TWAIN
The Autobiography of Mark Twain