Being a hero is about the shortest lived profession on earth.
—Will Rogers (1879–1935) American Actor, Rancher, Humorist
Heroes are not known by the loftiness of their carriage; the greatest braggarts are generally the merest cowards.
—Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712–78) Swiss-born French Philosopher
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
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
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
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.
—Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749–1832) German Poet
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
The main thing about being a hero is to know when to die.
—Will Rogers (1879–1935) American Actor, Rancher, Humorist
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
No nobler feeling than this of admiration for one higher than himself dwells in the breast of man. It is to this hour, and at all hours, the vivifying influence in man’s life.
—Thomas Carlyle (1795–1881) Scottish Historian, Essayist
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) American Military Leader
What is our task? To make Britain a fit country for heroes to live in.
—David Lloyd George (1863–1945) British Liberal Statesman
One must think like a hero to behave like a merely decent human being.
—May Sarton (1912–95) American Children’s Books Writer, Poet, Novelist
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 hero is no braver than an ordinary man, but he is braver five minutes longer.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–82) American Philosopher
A coward gets scared and quits. A hero gets scared, but still goes on.
—Unknown
You cannot be a hero without being a coward.
—George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950) Irish Playwright
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
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
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
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 heroes in evil as well as in good.
—Francois de La Rochefoucauld (1613–80) French Writer
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
How many famous and high-spirited heroes have lived a day too long?
—Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712–78) Swiss-born French Philosopher
What is a society without a heroic dimension?
—Jean Baudrillard (1929–2007) French Sociologist, Philosopher
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 feels and never reasons, and therefore is always right.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–82) American Philosopher
Unhappy the land that is in need of heroes.
—Bertolt Brecht (1898–1956) German Poet, Playwright, Theater Personality
No heroine can create a hero through love of one, but she can give birth to one.
—Jean Paul (1763–1825) German Novelist, Humorist
The “paper tiger” hero, James Bond, offering the whites a triumphant image of themselves, is saying what many whites want desperately to hear reaffirmed: I am still the White Man, lord of the land, licensed to kill, and the world is still an empire at my feet.
—Eldridge Cleaver (1935–98) American Author, Activist
One brave deed makes no hero.
—John Greenleaf Whittier (1807–92) American Quaker Poet, Abolitionist
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
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
We relish news of our heroes, forgetting that we are extraordinary to somebody too.
—Helen Hayes (1900–93) American Actor, Philanthropist
The idol of today pushes the hero of yesterday out of our recollection; and will, in turn, be supplanted by his successor of tomorrow.
—Washington Irving (1783–1859) American Essayist, Biographer, Historian
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
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
Aspire rather to be a hero than merely appear one.
—Baltasar Gracian (1601–58) Spanish Scholar, Prose Writer
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
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
Heroism is the divine relation which, in all times, unites a great man to other men.
—Thomas Carlyle (1795–1881) Scottish Historian, 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
Heroism is not only in the man, but in the occasion.
—Calvin Coolidge (1872–1933) American Head of State, Lawyer
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
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 war the heroes always outnumber the soldiers ten to one.
—H. L. Mencken (1880–1956) American Journalist, Literary Critic
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
I am convinced that a light supper, a good night’s sleep, and a fine morning, have sometimes made a hero of the same man, who, by an indigestion, a restless night, and rainy morning, would have proved a coward.
—Earl of Chesterfield (1694–1773) English Statesman, Man of Letters