Then out spake brave Horatius,
The Captain of the Gate:
To every man upon this earth
Death cometh soon or late.
And how can man die better
Than facing fearful odds,
For the ashes of his fathers,
And the temples of his Gods.
—Thomas Babington Macaulay, 1st Baron Macaulay (1800–59) English Historian, Essayist, Philanthropist
The hero is the 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. The saint is the man who walks through the dark paths of the world, himself a light.
—Felix Adler (1851–1933) German-Born American Philosopher
What is a society without a heroic dimension?
—Jean Baudrillard (1929–2007) French Sociologist, Philosopher
We can’t all be heroes, because somebody has to sit on the curb and clap as they go by.
—Will Rogers (1879–1935) American Actor, Rancher, Humorist
In our world of big names, curiously, our true heroes tend to be anonymous. In this life of illusion and quasi-illusion, the person of solid virtues who can be admired for something more substantial than his well-knownness often proves to be the unsung hero: the teacher, the nurse, the mother, the honest cop, the hard worker at lonely, underpaid, unglamorous, unpublicized jobs.
—Daniel J. Boorstin (1914–2004) American Historian, Academic, Attorney, Writer
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 farther 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 (1803–82) American Philosopher
In war the heroes always outnumber the soldiers ten to one.
—H. L. Mencken (1880–1956) American Journalist, Literary Critic
What is a hero without love for mankind.
—Doris Lessing (1919–2013) British Novelist, Poet
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.
—Henry Ward Beecher (1813–87) American Clergyman, Writer
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.
—E. W. Howe (1853–1937) American Novelist, Editor
Sometimes, when one person is missing, the whole world seems depopulated.
—Alphonse de Lamartine (1790–1869) French Poet, Politician, Historian
These heroes are dead. They died for liberty – they died for us. They are at rest. They sleep in the land they made free, under the flag they rendered stainless, under the solemn pines, the sad hemlocks, the tearful willows, and the embracing vines. They sleep beneath the shadows of the clouds, careless alike of sunshine or of storm, each in the windowless Place of Rest. Earth may run red with other wars – they are at peace. In the midst of battle, in the roar of conflict, they found the serenity of death. I have one sentiment for soldiers living and dead: cheers for the living; tears for the dead.
—Robert G. Ingersoll (1833–99) American Lawyer, Orator, Agnostic
The legacy of heroes is the memory of a great name and the inheritance of a great example.
—Benjamin Franklin (1706–90) American Political Leader, Inventor, Diplomat
Suicide is a crime the most revolting to the feelings; nor does any reason suggest itself to our understanding by which it can be justified. It certainly originates in that species of fear which we denominate poltroonery. For what claim can that man have to courage who trembles at the frowns of fortunes? True heroism consists in being superior to the ills of life in whatever shape they may challenge him to combat.
—Napoleon I (1769–1821) Emperor of France
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?
—Jeanette Winterson (b.1959) English Novelist, Journalist
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.
—George Eliot (Mary Anne Evans) (1819–80) English Novelist
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.
—Charles Cooley (1864–1929) American Sociologist
Heroism is not only in the man, but in the occasion.
—Calvin Coolidge (1872–1933) American Head of State, Lawyer
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.
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616) British Playwright
Now stiff on a pillar with a phallic air nelson stylites in Trafalgar square reminds the British what once they were.
—Lawrence Durrell (1912–90) British Biographer, Poet, Playwright, Novelist
One murder makes a villain. Millions a hero.
—Beilby Porteus (1731–1809) Anglican Bishop of London
We relish news of our heroes, forgetting that we are extraordinary to somebody too.
—Helen Hayes (1900–93) American Actor, Philanthropist
Once the state has been founded, there can no longer be any heroes. They come on the scene only in uncivilized conditions.
—Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770–1831) German Philosopher
I think of a hero as someone who understands the degree of responsibility that comes with their freedom.
—Bob Dylan (b.1941) American Singer-songwriter
A coward gets scared and quits. A hero gets scared, but still goes on.
—Unknown
I offer neither pay, nor quarters, nor food; I offer only hunger, thirst, forced marches, battles and death. Let him who loves his country with his heart, and not merely with his lips, follow me.
—Giuseppe Garibaldi (1807–82) Italian Revolutionary, Soldier, Politician
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.
—Jean Anouilh (1910–87) French Dramatist
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.
—William James (1842–1910) American Philosopher, Psychologist, Physician
There are obstinate and unknown braves who defend themselves inch by inch in the shadows against the fatal invasion of want and turpitude. There are noble and mysterious triumphs which no eye sees. No renown rewards, and no flourish of trumpets salutes. Life, misfortune, isolation, abandonment, and poverty and battlefields which have their heroes.
—Victor Hugo (1802–85) French Novelist
All sorts of Heroes are intrinsically of the same material; that given a great soul, open to the Divine Significance of Life, then there is given a man fit to speak of this, to sing of this, to fight and work for this, in a great, victorious, enduring manner; there is given a Hero,—the outward shape of whom will depend on the time and the environment he finds himself in.
—Thomas Carlyle (1795–1881) Scottish Historian, Essayist
The high sentiments always win in the end, the leaders who offer blood, toil, tears and sweat always get more out of their followers than those who offer safety and a good time. When it comes to the pinch, human beings are heroic.
—George Orwell (1903–50) English Novelist, Journalist
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.
—Norman Mailer (1923–2007) American Novelist Essayist
My heroes are and were my parents. I can’t see having anyone else as my heroes.
—Michael Jordan (b.1963) American Sportsperson, Businessperson
One brave deed makes no hero.
—John Greenleaf Whittier (1807–92) American Quaker Poet, Abolitionist
Claret is the liquor for boys; port for men; but he who aspires to be a hero must drink brandy.
—Samuel Johnson (1709–84) British Essayist
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.
—Vladimir Lenin (1870–1924) Russian Revolutionary Leader
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.
—Aldous Huxley (1894–1963) English Humanist, Pacifist, Essayist, Short Story Writer, Satirist
What is our task? To make Britain a fit country for heroes to live in.
—David Lloyd George (1863–1945) British Liberal Statesman
The main thing about being a hero is to know when to die.
—Will Rogers (1879–1935) American Actor, Rancher, Humorist
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.
—Johann Kaspar Lavater (1741–1801) Swiss Theologian, Poet
Being a hero is about the shortest lived profession on earth.
—Will Rogers (1879–1935) American Actor, Rancher, Humorist
Down these mean streets a man must go who is not himself mean, who is neither tarnished nor afraid… He is the hero, he is everything. He must be a complete man and a common man and yet an unusual man. He must be, to use a rather weathered phrase, a man of honor, by instinct, by inevitability, without thought of it, and certainly without saying it. He must be the best man in his world and a good enough man for any world.
—Raymond Chandler (1888–1959) American Novelist
A big man has no time really to do anything but just sit and be big.
—Unknown
A hero is a man who is afraid to run away.
—English Proverb
The hero draws inspiration from the virtue of his ancestors.
—Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749–1832) German Poet
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.
—H. Norman Schwarzkopf (1934–2012) United States Army General
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 (1943–93) American Tennis Player
No man is a hero to his valet. This is not because the hero is no hero, but because the valet is a valet.
—Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770–1831) German Philosopher
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 (1804–64) American Novelist, Short Story Writer
A hero is no braver than an ordinary man, but he is braver five minutes longer.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–82) American Philosopher