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How many famous and high-spirited heroes have lived a day too long?
-Jean Jacques Rousseau
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Everybody loves a hero. People line up for them, cheer them, scream their names. And, years later tell how they stood for hours in the cold rain just to catch a glimpse of the one who taught them to hold on a second longer. I believe there's a hero in all of us who keeps us honest, gives us strength, makes us noble, and finally allows us to die with pride, even though sometimes we have to be steady, and give up the thing we want the most. Even our dreams.
-Alvin Sargent
Spider-Man 2
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One must think like a hero to behave like a merely decent human being.
-May Sarton
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To say that there is a case for heroes is not to say that there is a case for hero worship. The surrender of decision, the unquestioning submission to leadership, the prostration of the average man before the Great Man -- these are the diseases of heroism, and they are fatal to human dignity. History amply shows that it is possible to have heroes without turning them into gods. And history shows, too, that when a society, in flight from hero worship, decides to do without great men at all, it gets into troubles of its own.
-Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr.
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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.
-Gen. H. Norman Schwarzkopf
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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.
-Robert Falcon Scott
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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
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You cannot be a hero without being a coward.
-George Bernard Shaw
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More than any time in recent history, America's destiny is not of our own choosing. We did not seek nor did we provoke an assault on our freedom and our way of life. We did not expect nor did we invite a confrontation with evil. Yet the true measure of a people's strength is how they rise to master that moment when it does arive...The streets of heaven are too crowded with angels, but every time we think we have measured our capacity to meet a challenge, we look up and we're reminded that that capacity may well be limitless. This is a time for American heroes. We will do what is hard. We will achieve what is great. This is a time for American heroes and we reach for the stars...
-Aaron Sorkin
West Wing (20 Hours in America: I & II; aired September 25, 2002)
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The more characteristic American hero in the earlier day, and the more beloved type at all times, was not the hustler but the whittler.
-Mark Sullivan
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What makes a hero truly great is that they never despair.
-Roy Thompson
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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.
-Source Unknown
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A big man has no time really to do anything but just sit and be big.
-Source Unknown
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Show me a hero and I will write you a tragedy.
-Source Unknown
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One brave deed makes no hero.
-John Greenleaf Whittier
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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.
-Angus Wilson
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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
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I have come to think that great men are characterized precisely by the extreme position which they take, and that their heroism consists in holding to that extremity throughout their lives.
-Marguerite Yourcenar
Memoirs of Hadrian, novel
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Books about Heroes/Heroism
