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Heroism Quotes

Quotes tagged as "heroism" Showing 1-30 of 508
George Carlin
“I like it when a flower or a little tuft of grass grows through a crack in the concrete. It's so fuckin' heroic.”
George Carlin

J.M. Coetzee
“Become major, Paul. Live like a hero. That's what the classics teach us. Be a main character. Otherwise what is life for?”
J.M. Coetzee

Alfred Tennyson
“Though much is taken, much abides; and though
We are not now that strength which in old days
Moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are;
One equal temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.”
Alfred Lord Tennyson, Idylls of the King and a Selection of Poems

Gerard Way
“Heroes are ordinary people who make themselves extraordinary.”
Gerard Way

Jodi Picoult
“Heroes didn't leap tall buildings or stop bullets with an outstretched hand; they didn't wear boots and capes. They bled, and they bruised, and their superpowers were as simple as listening, or loving. Heroes were ordinary people who knew that even if their own lives were impossibly knotted, they could untangle someone else's. And maybe that one act could lead someone to rescue you right back.”
Jodi Picoult, Second Glance

Fred Rogers
“Anyone who does anything to help a child in his life is a hero to me.”
Fred Rogers

Ursula K. Le Guin
“Nobody who says, ‘I told you so’ has ever been, or will ever be, a hero.”
Ursula K. Le Guin

J.R.R. Tolkien
“Living by faith includes the call to something greater than cowardly self-preservation.”
J.R.R. Tolkien, J.R.R. Tolkien 4-Book Boxed Set: The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings

Peter S. Beagle
“The true secret in being a hero lies in knowing the order of things. The swineherd cannot already be wed to the princess when he embarks on his adventures, nor can the boy knock on the witch's door when she is already away on vacation. The wicked uncle cannot be found out and foiled before he does something wicked. Things must happen when it is time for them to happen. Quests may not simply be abandoned; prophecies may not be left to rot like unpicked fruit; unicorns may go unrescued for a very long time, but not forever. The happy ending cannot come in the middle of the story.”
Peter S. Beagle, The Last Unicorn

“The thing about a hero, is even when it doesn't look like there's a light at the end of the tunnel, he's going to keep digging, he's going to keep trying to do right and make up for what's gone before, just because that's who he is.”
Joss Whedon

Christopher Paolini
“One part brave, three parts fool!”
Christopher Paolini

Umberto Eco
“The real hero is always a hero by mistake; he dreams of being an honest coward like everybody else.”
Umberto Eco, Travels In Hyperreality

John Green
“We are like a bunch of dogs squirting on fire hydrants. We poison the groundwater with our toxic piss, marking everything MINE in a ridiculous attempt to survive our deaths. I can't stop pissing on fire hydrants...I am an animal like any other. Hazel is different. she walks lightly, old man. She walks lightly upon the earth. She knows the truth: We're as likely to hurt the universe as we are to help it, and we're not likely to do either.

People will say it's sad that she leaves a lesser scar, that fewer remember her, that she was loved deeply but not widely. But it's not sad. It's triumphant. It's heroic. Isn't that the real heroism?

The real heroes anyway aren't the people doing things; the real heroes are the people NOTICING things, paying attention.”
John Green, The Fault in Our Stars

Jim Butcher
“In the action business, when you don't want to say you ran like a mouse, you call it 'taking cover.' It's more heroic.”
Jim Butcher, Dead Beat

N.D. Wilson
“Sometimes standing against evil is more important than defeating it. The greatest heroes stand because it is right to do so, not because they believe they will walk away with their lives. Such selfless courage is a victory in itself.”
N.D. Wilson, Dandelion Fire

Criss Jami
“To be heroic is to be courageous enough to die for something; to be inspirational is to be crazy enough to live a little.”
Criss Jami, Venus in Arms

Tamora Pierce
“It's not just children who need heroes.”
Tamora Pierce

Piers Anthony
“Being terrified but going ahead and doing what must be done—that's courage. The one who feels no fear is a fool, and the one who lets fear rule him is a coward.”
Piers Anthony, Castle Roogna

David Foster Wallace
“The truth is that the heroism of your childhood entertainments was not true valor. It was theatre. The grand gesture, the moment of choice, the mortal danger, the external foe, the climactic battle whose outcome resolves all--all designed to appear heroic, to excite and gratify and audience. Gentlemen, welcome to the world of reality--there is no audience. No one to applaud, to admire. No one to see you. Do you understand? Here is the truth--actual heroism receives no ovation, entertains no one. No one queues up to see it. No one is interested.”
David Foster Wallace, The Pale King

Jim Butcher
“No one is an unjust villain in his own mind. Even - perhaps even especially - those who are the worst of us. Some of the cruelest tyrants in history were motivated by noble ideals, or made choices that they would call 'hard but necessary steps' for the good of their nation. We're all the hero of our own story.”
Jim Butcher, Turn Coat

Lloyd Alexander
“Long ago I yearned to be a hero without knowing, in truth, what a hero was. Now, perhaps, I understand it a little better. A grower of turnips or a shaper of clay, a Commot farmer or a king--every man is a hero if he strives more for others than for himself alone.
Once you told me that the seeking counts more than the finding. So, too, must the striving count more than the gain.”
Lloyd Alexander, The High King

Jim Butcher
“Harry Dresden. Saving the world, one act of random destruction at a time.”
Jim Butcher, Mean Streets

Joseph Campbell
“A hero is someone who has given his or her life to something bigger than oneself”
Joseph Campbell

Alan Moore
“As I see it, part of the art of being a hero is knowing when you don't need to be one anymore.”
Alan Moore, Watchmen

Bertolt Brecht
“Unhappy the land that is in need of heroes”
Bertolt Brecht, Galileo

Stephen E. Ambrose
“In one of his last newsletters, Mike Ranney wrote: "In thinking back on the days of Easy Company, I'm treasuring my remark to a grandson who asked, 'Grandpa, were you a hero in the war?'
No,'" I answered, 'but I served in a company of heroes.”
Stephen E. Ambrose, Band of Brothers: E Company, 506th Regiment, 101st Airborne from Normandy to Hitler's Eagle's Nest

Mariah Carey
“when you feel like hope is gone, look inside you and be strong and you'll finally see the truth- that hero lies in you.”
Mariah Carey

Florence Nightingale
“I am of certain convinced that the greatest heroes are those who do their duty in the daily grind of domestic affairs whilst the world whirls as a maddening dreidel.”
Florence Nightingale

Joe Abercrombie
“I'm a fucking coward."
"Maybe." Craw jerked his thumb over his shoulder at Whirrun's corpse. "There's a hero. Tell me who's better off.”
Joe Abercrombie, The Heroes

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