Motivational Quotes

Heroes and heroism

There are heroes in evil as well as in good.

- La Rochefoucauld, Francois De

Best Quotes about Heroes and heroism

The more characteristic American hero in the earlier day, and the more beloved type at all times, was not the hustler but the whittler.

Sullivan, Mark

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

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

Rousseau, Jean Jacques

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

Rogers, Will

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

Disraeli, Benjamin

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

It's true that heroes are inspiring, but mustn't they also do some rescuing if they are to be worthy of their name? Would Wonder Woman matter if she only sent commiserating telegrams to the distressed?

Winterson, Jeanette

Listen, my friend, there are two races of beings. The masses teeming and happy --common clay, if you like --eating, breeding, working, counting their pennies; people who just live; ordinary people; people you can't imagine dead. And then there are the others --the noble ones, the heroes. The ones you can quite well imagine lying shot, pale and tragic; one minute triumphant with a guard of honor, and the next being marched away between two gendarmes.

Anouilh, Jean

Aspire rather to be a hero than merely appear one.

Gracian, Baltasar

10.

Unhappy the land that is in need of heroes.

Brecht, Bertolt

11.

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.

Hawthorne, Nathaniel

12.

Let us therefore brace ourselves to our duty, and so bear ourselves that if the British Empire and its Commonwealth last for a thousand years, men will still say, This was their finest hour.

Churchill, Winston

13.

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.

14.

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

15.

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

Miller, Henry

16.

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

Mencken, H. L.

17.

What is a society without a heroic dimension?

Baudrillard, Jean

18.

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

19.

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

Johnson, Gerald W.

20.

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

21.

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

22.

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

Hayes, Helen

23.

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

Jordan, Michael

24.

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

Rogers, Will

25.

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

Durrell, Lawrence

26.

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

Coolidge, Calvin

27.

What is a hero without love for mankind.

Lessing, Doris

28.

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

29.

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.

Dworkin, Andrea

30.

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

Rousseau, Jean Jacques

31.

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

32.

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

33.

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

34.

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

Proverb, English

35.

The hero draws inspiration from the virtue of his ancestors.

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von

36.

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.

37.

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

38.

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

39.

What makes a hero truly great is that they never despair.

Thompson, Roy

40.

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

George, David Lloyd

41.

You cannot be a hero without being a coward.

Shaw, George Bernard

42.

To have no heroes is to have no aspiration, to live on the momentum of the past, to be thrown back upon routine, sensuality, and the narrow self.

Cooley, Charles Horton

43.

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

44.

There are heroes in evil as well as in good.

La Rochefoucauld, Francois De

45.

One murder makes a villain, millions often a hero.

Porteous, Bishop

46.

A hero is someone right who doesn't change.

Foreman, George

47.

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

Rogers, Will

48.

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

Andrews, C. D.

49.

A hero is someone we can admire without apology.

Kelley, Kitty

50.

The world's battlefields have been in the heart chiefly; more heroism has been displayed in the household and the closet, than on the most memorable battlefields in history.

Beecher, Henry Ward