False Heroes Quotes & Sayings

Our discontent begins by finding false villains whom we can accuse of deceiving us. Next we find false heroes whom we expect to liberate us. The hardest, most discomfiting discovery is that each of us must emancipate himself. — Daniel J. Boorstin

A blaze first pleases and then tires the sight. — Samuel Johnson

What were her biggest fears and concerns? What goals were most important to her? What trade-offs was she willing to make, and what ones was she not? Not everyone is able to answer such questions, — Atul Gawande

One false step, and you'll fall all the way to Tartarus - and believe me, unlike the Doors of Death, this would be a one-way trip, a very hard fall! I will not have you dying before you tell me your plan for my artwork. — Rick Riordan

All boys wish to be manly; but they often try to become so by copying the vices of men rather than their virtues. They see men drinking, smoking, swearing; so these poor little fellows sedulously imitate such bad habits, thinking they are making themselves more like men. They mistake rudeness for strength, disrespect to parents for independence. They read wretched stories about boy brigands and boy detectives, and fancy themselves heroes when they break the laws, and become troublesome and mischievous. Out of such false influences the criminal classes are recruited. Many a little boy who only wishes to be manly, becomes corrupted and debased by the bad examples around him and the bad literature which he reads. The cure for this is to give him good books, show him truly noble examples from life and history, and make him understand how infinitely above this mock-manliness is the true courage which ennobles human nature. — James Clarke

It [moonlight] had a tentative grip on their shadows, as though the irregular shapes had been borrowed momentarily from the dark expanses left and right. — Scott Wyatt

Most people in the ancient world, did not make a sharp distinction between myth and reality. The two were intimately tied together in their spiritual experience. That is to say, they were less interested in what actually happened, than in what it meant. It would have been perfectly normal, indeed expected, for a writer in the ancient world, to tell tales of gods and heroes, whose fundamental facts would have been recognized as false, but whose underlying message would have been seen as true. — Reza Aslan

I've never met a soldier who knew he was a hero. It's not false modesty. They simply decide to do something that they know they must do, usually for there comrades, because if they don't, those people will suffer in some way. For them, that compulsion is far stronger than any fear. The fact we find it exceptional is a sad indictment of the human race. I'd like to live in a world of heroes. If we did, there would be no wars. — Karen Traviss

Most people say, "Show, don't tell," but I stand by Show and Tell, because when writers put their work out into the world, they're like kids bringing their broken unicorns and chewed-up teddy bears into class in the sad hope that someone else will love them as much as they do. — Colson Whitehead

No man burdens his mind with small matters unless he has some very good reason for doing so. — Arthur Conan Doyle

What does seem to me poisonous, what breeds a type of patriotism that is pernicious if it lasts but not likely to last long in an educated adult, is the perfectly serious indoctrination of the young in knowably false or biased history - the heroic legend drably disguised as text-book fact. With this creeps in the tacit assumption that other nations have not equally their heroes; perhaps even the belief - surely it is very bad biology - that we can literally 'inherit' tradition. — C.S. Lewis

A constellation of Utopians is a group which only seems a group to us because we seek familiar institutions in their government, as we use the shapes of beasts and heroes to make false sense of the sea of stars. — Ada Palmer

Sometimes, by celebrating the evangelical heroes of the faith, we have inadvertently communicated something false: if it's not big and audacious and officially sanctioned, it's not good enough for God. — Sarah Bessey

Curing cancer affects good cells too in the short run but makes a life flourish in the long term. Curing corruption affects good people too in the short run but makes a nation flourish in the long term. — Vikrmn

We had a few calls saying election precincts had closed early. But it turned out that the callers were in the wrong places. Some people went to the old locations of a church, rather than the new one. We called the polling locations as well as the church pastor and they verified they were still open. — Jane Anderson

We fall asleep to fairy tales, and the world rotates and revolves and time passes and we grow up and we understand that they are false. There are not heroes and princesses and villains. It's not that easy. — Amy Zhang

Ambition is an uncomfortable companion many times. He creates a discontent with present surroundings and achievements; he is never satisfied but always pressing forward to better things in the future. Restless, energetic, purposeful, it is ambition that makes of the creature a real man. — Lyndon B. Johnson

It's an individual sport (golf), so it's the exact opposite of baseball. If you hit a bad shot, you can't say, 'Well, this happened.' It's just you. It's your shot. You can't point the finger at anybody but yourself. — Albert Belle

But it also demonstrates how difficult it is to correct a false belief after people have made an emotional investment in that belief being true. When our heroes turn out to be sleazebags, self-deception is easier than facing the facts. — Jon Krakauer

But though I might fill the world with dragons I never had the slighest real doubt that heroes ought to fight with dragons.
I must stop to challenge many child-lovers for cruelty to children. It is quite false to say that the child dislikes the fable because it is moral. Very often he likes the moral more than the fable. Adults are reading their own weary mockery into a mind still vigorous enough to be entirely serious. — G.K. Chesterton

Did Jane Austen ruin lives by giving people false expectations about love? Were her heroes just too good to be true? Could a real man of flesh and blood ever hope to live up to such paragons? And were books with happy endings cruel? Did they give their readers a warped view of the world and what they could expect from it? — Victoria Connelly

Any systems approaching perfect self-control also approaches perfect self-frustration. — Alan Watts

My father pulled into Pearl Harbor four days after the bombing, and he said, everything was still burning. He said they never told the public how bad it was. It was really bad. — John Lasseter

I feel that one of the best things a person can do for another is to create a job. So you do OK commercially, and then you try to make a difference of some sort. — Craig Newmark

It was usual to be obedient to authority, to obey a legal letter. But Rachaela left her bills
unpaid until the threats began. She ignored the money-envelopes stuck through the door for starving
children and the sick. — Tanith Lee

In telling these stories of our Nation's past, however, let's not be so zealous in correcting liberal historians that we create our own historical revisionism. If the Founding Fathers were alive today, some of them would not want to go to the typical Evangelical church. Some were influenced by the pagan Enlightenment, as well as the Protestant Reformation. one historical figure (not a Founding Father) who's been misrepresented in our quest to find Christian heroes is Johnny Appleseed. He's routinely pictured as a nice man who went around scattering apple seeds everywhere and toting a Bible under his arm. The fact is, Johnny Appleseed was a missionary for Swedenbogrism, a spiritist cult. This cult taught many false doctrines and claimed that the writings of the Apostle Paul had no place in the Bible. When a child hears that Johnny Appleseed is a 'godly hero' and then discovers that he was in fact a cult member, what will he logically conclude about everything he's been taught? — Gregg Harris