82 quotes about Heroes and Heroism



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.
Email this quotation to a friend     View quote | Adler, Felix quotes
      Related items on Amazon USABooks from this quotation author on Amazon US or UKBooks from this quote author on Amazon UK

You lived too long, we have supped full with heroes, they waste their deaths on us.
Email this quotation to a friend     View quote | Andrews, C. D. quotes
      Related items on Amazon USABooks from this quotation author on Amazon US or UKBooks from this quote author on Amazon UK

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.
Email this quotation to a friend     View quote | Anouilh, Jean quotes
      Related items on Amazon USABooks from this quotation author on Amazon US or UKBooks from this quote author on Amazon UK

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.
Email this quotation to a friend     View quote | Bangs, Lester quotes
      Related items on Amazon USABooks from this quotation author on Amazon US or UKBooks from this quote author on Amazon UK

Everyone is necessarily the hero of his own life story.
Email this quotation to a friend     View quote | Barth, John quotes
      Related items on Amazon USABooks from this quotation author on Amazon US or UKBooks from this quote author on Amazon UK

What is a society without a heroic dimension?
Email this quotation to a friend     View quote | Baudrillard, Jean quotes
      Related items on Amazon USABooks from this quotation author on Amazon US or UKBooks from this quote author on Amazon UK

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.
Email this quotation to a friend     View quote | Beecher, Henry Ward quotes
      Related items on Amazon USABooks from this quotation author on Amazon US or UKBooks from this quote author on Amazon UK

True heroism consists in being superior to the ills of life, in whatever shape they may challenge us to combat.
Email this quotation to a friend     View quote | Bonaparte, Napoleon quotes
      Related items on Amazon USABooks from this quotation author on Amazon US or UKBooks from this quote author on Amazon UK

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.
Email this quotation to a friend     View quote | Boorstin, Daniel J. quotes
      Related items on Amazon USABooks from this quotation author on Amazon US or UKBooks from this quote author on Amazon UK

Unhappy the land that is in need of heroes.
Email this quotation to a friend     View quote | Brecht, Bertolt quotes
      Related items on Amazon USABooks from this quotation author on Amazon US or UKBooks from this quote author on Amazon UK

Heroism is the divine relation which, in all times, unites a great man to other men.
Email this quotation to a friend     View quote | Carlyle, Thomas quotes
      Related items on Amazon USABooks from this quotation author on Amazon US or UKBooks from this quote author on Amazon UK

The poetry of heroism appeals irresistibly to those who don't go to a war, and even more to those whom the war is making enormously wealthy. It's always so.
Email this quotation to a friend     View quote | Celine, Louis-Ferdinand quotes
      Related items on Amazon USABooks from this quotation author on Amazon US or UKBooks from this quote author on Amazon UK

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.
Email this quotation to a friend     View quote | Chandler, Raymond quotes
      Related items on Amazon USABooks from this quotation author on Amazon US or UKBooks from this quote author on Amazon UK

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.
Email this quotation to a friend     View quote | Chesterfield, Lord quotes
      Related items on Amazon USABooks from this quotation author on Amazon US or UKBooks from this quote author on Amazon UK

Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few.
Email this quotation to a friend     View quote | Churchill, Winston quotes
      Related items on Amazon USABooks from this quotation author on Amazon US or UKBooks from this quote author on Amazon UK

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.
Email this quotation to a friend     View quote | Churchill, Winston quotes
      Related items on Amazon USABooks from this quotation author on Amazon US or UKBooks from this quote author on Amazon UK

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.
Email this quotation to a friend     View quote | Cleaver, Eldridge quotes
      Related items on Amazon USABooks from this quotation author on Amazon US or UKBooks from this quote author on Amazon UK

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.
Email this quotation to a friend     View quote | Cooley, Charles Horton quotes
      Related items on Amazon USABooks from this quotation author on Amazon US or UKBooks from this quote author on Amazon UK

Heroism is not only in the man, but in the occasion.
Email this quotation to a friend     View quote | Coolidge, Calvin quotes
      Related items on Amazon USABooks from this quotation author on Amazon US or UKBooks from this quote author on Amazon UK

The legacy of heroes is the memory of a great name and the inheritance of a great example.
Email this quotation to a friend     View quote | Disraeli, Benjamin quotes
      Related items on Amazon USABooks from this quotation author on Amazon US or UKBooks from this quote author on Amazon UK

Now stiff on a pillar with a phallic air nelson stylites in Trafalgar square reminds the British what once they were.
Email this quotation to a friend     View quote | Durrell, Lawrence quotes
      Related items on Amazon USABooks from this quotation author on Amazon US or UKBooks from this quote author on Amazon UK

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.
Email this quotation to a friend     View quote | Dworkin, Andrea quotes
      Related items on Amazon USABooks from this quotation author on Amazon US or UKBooks from this quote author on Amazon UK

I think of a hero as someone who understands the degree of responsibility that comes with his freedom.
Email this quotation to a friend     View quote | Dylan, Bob quotes
      Related items on Amazon USABooks from this quotation author on Amazon US or UKBooks from this quote author on Amazon UK

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.
Email this quotation to a friend     View quote | Eliot, George quotes
      Related items on Amazon USABooks from this quotation author on Amazon US or UKBooks from this quote author on Amazon UK

Every hero becomes a bore at last.
Email this quotation to a friend     View quote | Emerson, Ralph Waldo quotes
      Related items on Amazon USABooks from this quotation author on Amazon US or UKBooks from this quote author on Amazon UK

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.
Email this quotation to a friend     View quote | Emerson, Ralph Waldo quotes
      Related items on Amazon USABooks from this quotation author on Amazon US or UKBooks from this quote author on Amazon UK

A hero is no braver than an ordinary man, but he is braver five minutes longer.
Email this quotation to a friend     View quote | Emerson, Ralph Waldo quotes
      Related items on Amazon USABooks from this quotation author on Amazon US or UKBooks from this quote author on Amazon UK

Heroism feels and never reasons, and therefore is always right.
Email this quotation to a friend     View quote | Emerson, Ralph Waldo quotes
      Related items on Amazon USABooks from this quotation author on Amazon US or UKBooks from this quote author on Amazon UK

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.
Email this quotation to a friend     View quote | Enright, D. J. quotes
      Related items on Amazon USABooks from this quotation author on Amazon US or UKBooks from this quote author on Amazon UK

A hero is someone right who doesn't change.
Email this quotation to a friend     View quote | Foreman, George quotes
      Related items on Amazon USABooks from this quotation author on Amazon US or UKBooks from this quote author on Amazon UK

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.
Email this quotation to a friend     View quote | Garibaldi, Giuseppe quotes
      Related items on Amazon USABooks from this quotation author on Amazon US or UKBooks from this quote author on Amazon UK

The fame of heroes owes little to the extent of their conquests and all to the success of the tributes paid to them.
Email this quotation to a friend     View quote | Genet, Jean quotes
      Related items on Amazon USABooks from this quotation author on Amazon US or UKBooks from this quote author on Amazon UK

What is our task? To make Britain a fit country for heroes to live in.
Email this quotation to a friend     View quote | George, David Lloyd quotes
      Related items on Amazon USABooks from this quotation author on Amazon US or UKBooks from this quote author on Amazon UK

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.
Email this quotation to a friend     View quote | Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von quotes
      Related items on Amazon USABooks from this quotation author on Amazon US or UKBooks from this quote author on Amazon UK

The hero draws inspiration from the virtue of his ancestors.
Email this quotation to a friend     View quote | Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von quotes
      Related items on Amazon USABooks from this quotation author on Amazon US or UKBooks from this quote author on Amazon UK

Aspire rather to be a hero than merely appear one.
Email this quotation to a friend     View quote | Gracian, Baltasar quotes
      Related items on Amazon USABooks from this quotation author on Amazon US or UKBooks from this quote author on Amazon UK

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.
Email this quotation to a friend     View quote | Hawthorne, Nathaniel quotes
      Related items on Amazon USABooks from this quotation author on Amazon US or UKBooks from this quote author on Amazon UK

We relish news of our heroes, forgetting that we are extraordinary to somebody too.
Email this quotation to a friend     View quote | Hayes, Helen quotes
      Related items on Amazon USABooks from this quotation author on Amazon US or UKBooks from this quote author on Amazon UK

No man is a hero to his valet. This is not because the hero is no hero, but because the valet is a valet.
Email this quotation to a friend     View quote | Hegel, Georg quotes
      Related items on Amazon USABooks from this quotation author on Amazon US or UKBooks from this quote author on Amazon UK

Once the state has been founded, there can no longer be any heroes. They come on the scene only in uncivilized conditions.
Email this quotation to a friend     View quote | Hegel, Georg quotes
      Related items on Amazon USABooks from this quotation author on Amazon US or UKBooks from this quote author on Amazon UK

Be your own hero, it's cheaper than a movie ticket.
Email this quotation to a friend     View quote | Horton, Doug quotes
      Related items on Amazon USABooks from this quotation author on Amazon US or UKBooks from this quote author on Amazon UK

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.
Email this quotation to a friend     View quote | Howe, Edgar Watson quotes
      Related items on Amazon USABooks from this quotation author on Amazon US or UKBooks from this quote author on Amazon UK

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.
Email this quotation to a friend     View quote | Huxley, Aldous quotes
      Related items on Amazon USABooks from this quotation author on Amazon US or UKBooks from this quote author on Amazon UK

The idol of today pushes the hero of yesterday out of our recollection; and will, in turn, be supplanted by his successor of tomorrow.
Email this quotation to a friend     View quote | Irving, Washington quotes
      Related items on Amazon USABooks from this quotation author on Amazon US or UKBooks from this quote author on Amazon UK

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.
Email this quotation to a friend     View quote | James, William quotes
      Related items on Amazon USABooks from this quotation author on Amazon US or UKBooks from this quote author on Amazon UK

Heroes are created by popular demand, sometimes out of the scantiest materials.
Email this quotation to a friend     View quote | Johnson, Gerald W. quotes
      Related items on Amazon USABooks from this quotation author on Amazon US or UKBooks from this quote author on Amazon UK

Claret is the liquor for boys; port for men; but he who aspires to be a hero must drink brandy.
Email this quotation to a friend     View quote | Johnson, Samuel quotes
      Related items on Amazon USABooks from this quotation author on Amazon US or UKBooks from this quote author on Amazon UK

My heroes are and were my parents. I can't see having anyone else as my heroes.
Email this quotation to a friend     View quote | Jordan, Michael quotes
      Related items on Amazon USABooks from this quotation author on Amazon US or UKBooks from this quote author on Amazon UK

A hero is someone we can admire without apology.
Email this quotation to a friend     View quote | Kelley, Kitty quotes
      Related items on Amazon USABooks from this quotation author on Amazon US or UKBooks from this quote author on Amazon UK

There are heroes in evil as well as in good.
Email this quotation to a friend     View quote | La Rochefoucauld, Francois De quotes
      Related items on Amazon USABooks from this quotation author on Amazon US or UKBooks from this quote author on Amazon UK

Sometimes, when one person is missing, the whole world seems depopulated.
Email this quotation to a friend     View quote | Lamartine, Alphonse De quotes
      Related items on Amazon USABooks from this quotation author on Amazon US or UKBooks from this quote author on Amazon UK

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.
Email this quotation to a friend     View quote | Lavater, Johann Kaspar quotes
      Related items on Amazon USABooks from this quotation author on Amazon US or UKBooks from this quote author on Amazon UK

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.
Email this quotation to a friend     View quote | Lenin, Vladimir Ilyich quotes
      Related items on Amazon USABooks from this quotation author on Amazon US or UKBooks from this quote author on Amazon UK

What is a hero without love for mankind.
Email this quotation to a friend     View quote | Lessing, Doris quotes
      Related items on Amazon USABooks from this quotation author on Amazon US or UKBooks from this quote author on Amazon UK

And how can man die better than facing fearful odds, for the ashes of his fathers, and the temples of his Gods?
Email this quotation to a friend     View quote | Macaulay, Thomas B. quotes
      Related items on Amazon USABooks from this quotation author on Amazon US or UKBooks from this quote author on Amazon UK

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.
Email this quotation to a friend     View quote | Mailer, Norman quotes
      Related items on Amazon USABooks from this quotation author on Amazon US or UKBooks from this quote author on Amazon UK

In war the heroes always outnumber the soldiers ten to one.
Email this quotation to a friend     View quote | Mencken, H. L. quotes
      Related items on Amazon USABooks from this quotation author on Amazon US or UKBooks from this quote author on Amazon UK

The ordinary man is involved in action, the hero acts. An immense difference.
Email this quotation to a friend     View quote | Miller, Henry quotes
      Related items on Amazon USABooks from this quotation author on Amazon US or UKBooks from this quote author on Amazon UK

Calculation never made a hero.
Email this quotation to a friend     View quote | Newman, John Henry quotes
      Related items on Amazon USABooks from this quotation author on Amazon US or UKBooks from this quote author on Amazon UK

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.
Email this quotation to a friend     View quote | Noonan, Peggy quotes
      Related items on Amazon USABooks from this quotation author on Amazon US or UKBooks from this quote author on Amazon UK

No heroine can create a hero through love of one, but she can give birth to one.
Email this quotation to a friend     View quote | Paul, Jean quotes
      Related items on Amazon USABooks from this quotation author on Amazon US or UKBooks from this quote author on Amazon UK

One murder makes a villain, millions often a hero.
Email this quotation to a friend     View quote | Porteous, Bishop quotes
      Related items on Amazon USABooks from this quotation author on Amazon US or UKBooks from this quote author on Amazon UK

A hero is a man who is afraid to run away.
Email this quotation to a friend     View quote | Proverb, English quotes
      Related items on Amazon USABooks from this quotation author on Amazon US or UKBooks from this quote author on Amazon UK

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.
Email this quotation to a friend     View quote | Renan, Ernest quotes
      Related items on Amazon USABooks from this quotation author on Amazon US or UKBooks from this quote author on Amazon UK

The main thing about being a hero is to know when to die.
Email this quotation to a friend     View quote | Rogers, Will quotes
      Related items on Amazon USABooks from this quotation author on Amazon US or UKBooks from this quote author on Amazon UK

Being a hero is about the shortest lived profession on earth.
Email this quotation to a friend     View quote | Rogers, Will quotes
      Related items on Amazon USABooks from this quotation author on Amazon US or UKBooks from this quote author on Amazon UK

We can't all be heroes, because somebody has to sit on the curb and clap as they go by.
Email this quotation to a friend     View quote | Rogers, Will quotes
      Related items on Amazon USABooks from this quotation author on Amazon US or UKBooks from this quote author on Amazon UK

Heroes are not known by the loftiness of their carriage; the greatest braggarts are generally the merest cowards.
Email this quotation to a friend     View quote | Rousseau, Jean Jacques quotes
      Related items on Amazon USABooks from this quotation author on Amazon US or UKBooks from this quote author on Amazon UK

How many famous and high-spirited heroes have lived a day too long?
Email this quotation to a friend     View quote | Rousseau, Jean Jacques quotes
      Related items on Amazon USABooks from this quotation author on Amazon US or UKBooks from this quote author on Amazon UK

One must think like a hero to behave like a merely decent human being.
Email this quotation to a friend     View quote | Sarton, May quotes
      Related items on Amazon USABooks from this quotation author on Amazon US or UKBooks from this quote author on Amazon UK

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.
Email this quotation to a friend     View quote | Schwarzkopf, Norman quotes
      Related items on Amazon USABooks from this quotation author on Amazon US or UKBooks from this quote author on Amazon UK

Had we lived I should have had a tale to tell of the hardihood, endurance and courage of my companions which would have stirred the heart of every Englishman. These rough notes and our dead bodies must tell the tale.
Email this quotation to a friend     View quote | Scott, Robert Falcon quotes
      Related items on Amazon USABooks from this quotation author on Amazon US or UKBooks from this quote author on Amazon UK

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.
Email this quotation to a friend     View quote | Shakespeare, William quotes
      Related items on Amazon USABooks from this quotation author on Amazon US or UKBooks from this quote author on Amazon UK

You cannot be a hero without being a coward.
Email this quotation to a friend     View quote | Shaw, George Bernard quotes
      Related items on Amazon USABooks from this quotation author on Amazon US or UKBooks from this quote author on Amazon UK

The more characteristic American hero in the earlier day, and the more beloved type at all times, was not the hustler but the whittler.
Email this quotation to a friend     View quote | Sullivan, Mark quotes
      Related items on Amazon USABooks from this quotation author on Amazon US or UKBooks from this quote author on Amazon UK

What makes a hero truly great is that they never despair.
Email this quotation to a friend     View quote | Thompson, Roy quotes
      Related items on Amazon USABooks from this quotation author on Amazon US or UKBooks from this quote author on Amazon UK

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.
Email this quotation to a friend     View quote | Unknown, Source quotes
      Related items on Amazon USABooks from this quotation author on Amazon US or UKBooks from this quote author on Amazon UK

A big man has no time really to do anything but just sit and be big.
Email this quotation to a friend     View quote | Unknown, Source quotes
      Related items on Amazon USABooks from this quotation author on Amazon US or UKBooks from this quote author on Amazon UK

Show me a hero and I will write you a tragedy.
Email this quotation to a friend     View quote | Unknown, Source quotes
      Related items on Amazon USABooks from this quotation author on Amazon US or UKBooks from this quote author on Amazon UK

One brave deed makes no hero.
Email this quotation to a friend     View quote | Whittier, John Greenleaf quotes
      Related items on Amazon USABooks from this quotation author on Amazon US or UKBooks from this quote author on Amazon UK

The opportunities for heroism are limited in this kind of world: the most people can do is sometimes not to be as weak as they've been at other times.
Email this quotation to a friend