Quotes & Sayings About Heroic Ideals

There are no heroes, Tian Haoli. Grand Secretary Shi was both courageous and cowardly, capable and foolish. Wang Xiuchu was both an opportunistic survivor and a man of greatness of spirit. I'm mostly selfish and vain, but sometimes even I surprise myself. We're all just ordinary men - well, I'm an ordinary demon - faced with extraordinary choices. In those moments, sometimes heroic ideals demand that we become their avatars. — Ken Liu

The breakage and agony rending us today will be our salvation if they drive us by new routes to meet it ... As of old we must be our own seers, musicians and explorers, and to an extent vaster than ever before. This is the purpose to which we are being summoned to harness our world-body! ... Heroic responses in ideals and in conduct are a choice of regal dignity in the presence of a new earth and Heaven. — Helen Keller

Europe is equal to its historical task. Against the anti-spiritual, anti-heroic 'ideals' of America-Jewry, Europe pits its metaphysical ideas, its faith in its Destiny, its ethical principles, its heroism. Fearlessly, Europe falls in for battle, knowing it is armed with the mightiest weapon ever forged by History: the superpersonal Destiny of the European organism. Our European Mission is to create the Culture-State-Nation-Imperium of the West, and thereby we shall perform such deeds, accomplish such works, and so transform our world that our distant posterity, when they behold the remains of our buildings and ramparts, will tell their grandchildren that on the soil of Europe once dwelt a tribe of gods. — Francis Parker Yockey

History is not made by great dreams, but by the petty wants of all respectable, moderately thievish and selfish people, that is, of everyone. All our ideas, loves, plans, heroic ideals, all these lofty things are worthless. — Karel Capek

The image of the tragic artist who lays down his tools rather than fall short of his impeccable ideals holds no romance for me. I don't see this path as heroic. I think it's far more honorable to stay in the game - even if you're objectively losing the game - than to excuse yourself from participation because of your delicate sensibilities. But in order to stay in the game, you must let go of your fantasy of perfection. — Elizabeth Gilbert

Democracy forever teases us with the contrast between its ideals and its realities, between its heroic possibilities and its sorry achievements. — Agnes Repplier