Hero quotes
3.2K quotes on this topic — from poets, philosophers, and thinkers across history.
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"To this military attitude of the soul we give the name of Heroism... It is a self-trust which slights the restraints of prudence, in the plenitude of its energy and power to repair the harms it may suffer. The hero is a mind of such balance that no disturbances can shake his will."
"The best bribe which London offers to-day to the imagination, is, that, in such a vast variety of people and conditions, one can believe there is room for persons of romantic character to exist, and that the poet, the mystic, and the hero may hope to confront their counterparts."
"The other terror that scares us from self-trust is our consistency; a reverence for our past act or word, because the eyes of others have no other data for computing our orbit than our past acts, and we are loath to disappoint them."
"The hero, the mythical subject, is constructed as human being and as male; he is the active principle of culture, the establisher of distinction, the creator of differences."
"...the proliferation of luminous fungi or iridescent crystals in deep caves where the torchlessly improvident hero needs to see is one of the most obvious intrusions of narrative causality into the physical universe."
"The true Christians are the true citizens, lofty of purpose, resolute in endeavor, ready for a hero's deeds, but never looking down on their task because it is cast in the day of small things; scornful of baseness, awake to their own duties as well as to their rights, following the higher law with reverence, and in this world doing all that in their power lies, so that when death comes they may feel that humanity is in some degree better because they lived."
"Some people are cowards... I think by and large a third of people are villains, a third are cowards, and a third are heroes. Now, a villain and a coward can choose to be a hero, but they've got to make that choice."
"Take away ambition and vanity, and where will be your heroes and patriots?"
"A hero is a man who stands up manfully against his father and in the end victoriously overcomes him."
"We have all the freedoms we want. But what we are missing is red ink: the language to articulate our non-freedom. The way we are taught to speak about freedom- war on terror and so on-falsifies freedom."
"What makes a hero truly great is that they never despair."
"I don't get the action... well, I never did get the big action hero parts. I was always locked into making the kids movies, which were a lot of fun."
"But if we come back, if German men come back, if British men come back, and Japs, and French, and all the other men, all of us talking, writing, painting, making movies of heroes, and cockroaches and foxholes and blood, then future generations will always be doomed to future Hitlers. It's never occurred to boys to have contempt for wars, to point to soldiers' pictures in history books, laughing at them. If German boys had learned to be contemptuous of violence, Hitler would have had to take up knitting to keep his ego warm."
"Some people are worried about the future of comics and some people are busy building it. That latter group are my heroes."
"The history of struggle is rich with stories of heroes and heroines - some of them leaders, some of them followers, all of them deserve to be remembered."
"No man is a hero to his valet de chamber"
"What passes for identity in America is a series of myths about one's heroic ancestors. It's astounding to me, for example, that so many people really appear to believe that the country was founded by a band of heroes who wanted to be free. That happens not to be true. What happened was that some people left Europe because they couldn't stay there any longer and had to go somewhere else to make it. That's all. They were hungry, they were poor, they were convicts. Those who were making it in England, for example, did not get on the Mayflower. That's how the country was settled."
"I am giving you examples of the fact that this creature man, who in his own selfish affairs is a coward to the backbone, will fight for an idea like a hero. . . . I tell you, gentlemen, if you can shew a man a piece of what he now calls God's work to do, and what he will later call by many new names, you can make him entirely reckless of the consequences to himself personally."
"Freedom was my first great desire. The second, which remains hidden within me to this day, tormenting me, was the desire for sanctity. Hero together with saint: such is mankind's supreme model."
"I like grey characters; fantasy for too long has been focused on very stereotypical heroes and villains."
