quotations about heroes
Those who say that we're in a time when there are no heroes, they just don't know where to look.
RONALD REAGAN
First Inaugural Address, Jan. 20, 1981
The hero sees values beyond what's possible. That's the nature of a hero. It kills him, of course, ultimately. But it makes the whole struggle of humanity worthwhile.
JOHN GARDNER
Grendel
Worship your heroes from afar; contact withers them.
MME. NECKER
attributed, Day's Collacon
Another definition of a hero is someone who is concerned about other people's well-being, and will go out of his or her way to help them -- even if there is no chance of a reward. That person who helps others simply because it should or must be done, and because it is the right thing to do, is indeed without a doubt, a real superhero.
STAN LEE
Cyberspacers
A hero. You want to be one of those rare human beings who make history, rather than merely watch it flow around them like water around a rock.
DAN SIMMONS
Endymion
A hero is someone who has given his or her life to something bigger than oneself.
JOSEPH CAMPBELL
The Power of Myth
A hero is a man who does what he can.
ROMAIN ROLLAND
"Youth,", Dawn
Nature seldom makes a hero and Fortune does not always proclaim those that she makes.
QUEEN CHRISTINA
Maxims of a Queen
A hero is brave in deeds as well as words.
AESOP
"The Hunter and the Woodman", Aesop's Fables
In the heat of battle, heroes emerge, sometimes from the most unlikely of sources.
BRIAN HERBERT & KEVIN J. ANDERSON
The Butlerian Jihad
He who says, "I know no fear," is no hero. No man knows courage unless he does know fear, and has that in him which is superior to fear, and conquers it.
LYMAN ABBOTT
The Theology of an Evolutionist
Heroism is endurance for one moment more.
GEORGE KENNAN
"The Problems of Suicide,", McClure's Magazine, 1908
True heroism is remarkably sober, very undramatic. It is not the urge to surpass all others at whatever cost, but the urge to serve others at whatever cost.
ARTHUR ASHE
attributed, Worth Repeating
A hero is someone who does what must be done, and needs no other reason.
CHRISTOPHER GOLDEN & NANCY HOLDER
Sons of Entropy
Heroes don't get anything but dead.
LAURELL K. HAMILTON
The Lunatic Cafe
The blessed work of helping the world forward happily does not wait to be done by perfect men; and I should imagine that neither Luther nor John Bunyan, for example, would have satisfied the modern demand for an ideal hero, who believes nothing but what is true, feels nothing but what is exalted, and does nothing but what is graceful. The real heroes of God's making, are quite different: they have their natural heritage of love and conscience which they drew in with their mother's milk; they know one or two of those deep spiritual truths which are only to be won by long wrestling with their own sins and their own sorrows; they have earned faith and strength so far as they have done genuine work; but the rest is dry barren theory, blank prejudice, vague hearsay. Their insight is blended with mere opinion; their sympathy is perhaps confined in narrow conduits of doctrine, instead of flowing forth with the freedom of a stream that blesses every weed in its course; obstinacy or self-assertion will often interfuse itself with their grandest impulses; and their very deeds of self-sacrifice are sometimes only the rebound of a passionate egoism.
GEORGE ELIOT
Janet's Repentance
Show me a hero and I will write you a tragedy.
F. SCOTT FITZGERALD
Notebooks
A real hero is someone who gets up even when he can't.
JARED LETO
Twitter post, Nov. 29, 2010
We do not have to become heroes overnight. Just a step at a time, meeting each thing that comes up ... discovering we have the strength to stare it down.
ELEANOR ROOSEVELT
You Learn by Living
There are no heroes ... in life, the monsters win.
GEORGE R. R. MARTIN
A Game of Thrones