Quotes & Sayings About Heroic Acts

We all recall the cruel stepmother in fairy tales. That archetype is often a necessary element in a fairy tale so that the heroine/hero can become a person of character and power. Stories of heroes and heroines often begin with a wound or loss or injustice and end with heroic acts of restoration. — David Richo

But despite their heroic acts, the Vietnam Veterans of America continued to struggle to establish a combat badge in honor of these brave pilots and medics. — Tim Holden

We don't have to engage in grand, heroic actions to participate in the process of change. Small acts, when multiplied by millions of people, can transform the world. — Howard Zinn

We have a few old mouth-to-mouth tales; we exhume from old trunks and boxes and drawers letters without salutation or signature, in which men and women who once lived and breathed are now merely initials or nicknames out of some now incomprehensible affection which sound to us like Sanskrit or Chocktaw; we see dimly people, the people in whose living blood and seed we ourselves lay dormant and waiting, in this shadowy attenuation of time possessing now heroic proportions, performing their acts of simple passion and simple violence, impervious to time and inexplicable. — William Faulkner

It is a remarkable feat to be able to see past the inhumanity of the behavior and recognize the humanity of the person committing the atrocious acts. This is not weakness. This is heroic strength, the noblest strength of the human spirit. — Desmond Tutu

In contrast to the "banality of evil," which posits that ordinary people can be responsible for the most despicable acts of cruelty and degradation of their fellows, I posit the "banality of heroism," which unfurls the banner of the heroic Everyman and Everywoman who heed the call to service to humanity when their time comes to act. When that bell rings, they will know that it rings for them. It sounds a call to uphold what is best in human nature that rises above the powerful pressures of Situation and System as the profound assertion of human dignity opposing evil. — Philip Zimbardo

My two main conclusions are that technology develops cumulatively, rather than in isolated heroic acts, and that it finds most of its uses after it has been invented, rather than being invented to meet a foreseen need. — Jared Diamond

Heroes come in all sizes, and you don't have to be a giant hero. You can be a very small hero. It's just as important to understand that accepting self-responsibi lity for the things you do, having good manners, caring about other people-these are heroic acts. Everybody has the choice of being a hero or not being a hero every day of their lives. — George Lucas

I'm all about entertaining and keeping a reader on the edge of their seat, so to me, the social issues have to be meaningful and give the book what's really 'at stake,' but ultimately it's not about them - it's always a personal story of everyday people thrust into life-threatening situations and having to perform heroic acts. — Andrew Gross

Let your heroes be known. Give praise and honor to those to whom it is rightly due. Spend more time posting stories about heroes than you do about the wrongs in the world. When we know about heroes and we see those who perform heroic acts, we too want to be heroes. There is a hero in all of us. Heroes are important. — John Patrick Hickey

Soil is not usually lost in slabs or heaps of magnificent tonnage. It is lost a little at a time over millions of acres by the careless acts of millions of people. It cannot be saved by heroic feats of gigantic technology, but only by millions of small acts and restraints, conditioned by small fidelities, skills, and desires. Soil loss is ultimately a cultural problem; it will be corrected only by cultural solutions. — Wendell Berry

Yet only the atrocities of the conquered are referred to as criminal acts; those of the conqueror are justified as necessary, heroic, and even worse, as the fulfillment of God's will. — Jim Fergus

There can never be enough written about heroic acts and heroic people, we all need the inspiration they give us. — Carey V. Azzara

What the writers do, and we hopefully can bring to life, is that they present characters who, on the surface, aren't always heroic and their acts aren't always devoid of selfishness. — Charlie Cox

Now it turns out that a few broadsheet film critics in Britain do indeed belong to a category of people who would have resisted Hitler when he came to power. So the great shame is, clearly film critics should have been running Austria at the time, because Hitler would have represented no problem to them at all. [The Guardian's] Peter Bradshaw would have known exactly what to do, and he would not have been remotely fallible to any Nazi who threatened his life. No, he would have died in heroic acts of individual resistance. So it's a privilege to live among people who enjoy such moral certainty. — David Hare

Remember, Monsieur that roses are not gathered except in the midst of thorns and that heroic acts of virtue are accomplished only in weakness. — Vincent De Paul

True loyalty consists not in bowing the knee to earthly greatness, or in heroic deeds to "gild the kingly knave, or garnish out the fool," but in noble, generous acts of honest purpose, where truth, honor, and virtue, and a nation's welfare, are dearer than life. — James Ellis

This penetrating vocabulary of "initiatory acts," "the infectiousness of the unconflicted person," "priority magic," and so on allows us to understand more subtly the dynamics of group sadism, the utter equanimity with which groups kill. It is not just that "father permits it" or "orders it." It is more: the magical heroic transformation of the world and of oneself. This is the illusion that man craves, as Freud said, and that makes the central person so effective a vehicle for group emotion. — Ernest Becker

Brave young women complete heroic acts everyday, with no one bearing witness. This was a chance to even the ledger, to share one small story the made the difference between starvation and survival for the families whose lives it changed. I wanted to pull the curtain back for readers on a place foreigners know more for its rocket attacks and roadside bombs than its countless quiet feats of courage. And to introduce them to the young women like Kamila Sidiqi who will go on. No matter what. — Gayle Tzemach Lemmon