Just Another Hero Quotes & Sayings

The prize-story experience had seemed to open a way which might, after long traveling and much uphill work, lead to this delightful chateau en Espagne. But the novel disaster quenched her courage for a time, for public opinion is a giant which has frightened stouter-hearted Jacks on bigger beanstalks than hers. Like that immortal hero, she reposed awhile after the first attempt, which resulted in a tumble and the least lovely of the giant's treasures, if I remember rightly. But the 'up again and take another — Louisa May Alcott

I wish heroes didn't exist. Whenever we need a hero, it's because there's a problem that needs to be solved; it's because two groups of people, or two countries, are hurting one another, so a hero is needed to save us. If everyone were at peace, if everyone were happy, why would we need heroes? The world is better off without heroes. — Jet Li

There was nothing that I ever did, no conscious effort to do one kind of behavior or another, I can't explain what it was, but I can explain that the thinking of the time was that we didn't want to emulate our heroes. That wasn't kosher. 'Don't try to play the old cliches, play like yourself' - that's what people were saying — Larry Coryell

There was another reason why I wasn't ready to tell you all this that night in the airport."
"What other reason?"
"Guess what today is?"
"Um, Tuesday?"
"Even better. It comes around once every four years. Last day of February? Ringing any bells?" He let that settle for a long moment before he curled his face into the half grin she loved so much. "It's leap day, baby. — Marie Force

I thought what would be really just choice for a revamp and a reboot is 'The Greatest American Hero.' I think I'd be just that kind of perfect not prepared for this kind of thing, but thrust into circumstances he's not prepared for ... that's another niche of mine. Unpreparedness. Not knowing what to do. I'm good at being that guy. — Nathan Fillion

The hero's journey always begins with the call. One way or another, a guide must come to say, 'Look, you're in Sleepy Land. Wake. Come on a trip. There is a whole aspect of your consciousness, your being, that's not been touched. So you're at home here? Well, there's not enough of you there.' And so it starts. — Joseph Campbell

The year 1896 ... marked the beginning of what has been aptly termed the heroic age of Physical Science. Never before in the history of physics has there been witnessed such a period of intense activity when discoveries of fundamental importance have followed one another with such bewildering rapidity. — Ernest Rutherford

That would be no good," said the wizard, "not without a mighty
Warrior, even a Hero. I tried to find one; but warriors are busy fighting
one another in distant lands, and in this neighbourhood heroes are scarce, or simply not to be found. — J.R.R. Tolkien

One shot, one kill. Anything more is a waste." He ejected the fired cartridge, chambered a fresh round. "Find the others." The corner of Ian's mouth kicked up in a sardonic half smile and he lifted the scope again. "This doesn't mean we're friends. I still think you're window-licking insane, Hero." "And I still think you're an evil motherfucker, so we're even. Now find me another target. — Tonya Burrows

In the world of so-called villains, what we need is not another hero. What we need is to stop the influx of people who dress themselves as menaces and proceed to harm others. — Vironika Tugaleva

There's also a part of me that's self-destructive, and another part that's a hero who's going to stand up for a principle. — Terrence Howard

There are a lot of writers who just want to do their own thing and avoid the rest of the Marvel Universe. But for me that was one of the things I loved about Marvel: that shared universe. So of course you would run into a mutant in Manhattan. You would run into another hero in Manhattan. For me, I figured why not? Why not have that fun? — Ann Nocenti

Will, was not as taken with the photo of the new baby as the grown ups around him. "It look like Mr. Potato Head." "I'm sure your baby sister will appreciate that," Alessandro said with a wry grin. "A girl? It's a girl?" Will asked with a grimace. "That's right," Bree announced as Vanessa and Brian congratulated them. "I can play wif Gianni but what we gonna do wif a girl?" he asked, handing the picture back to them. "Nope, send it back
and get another boy dis time. — E. Jamie

If ever you have had a romantic, uncalculating friendship, - a boundless worship and belief in some hero of your soul, - if ever you have so loved, that all cold prudence, all selfish worldly considerations have gone down like drift-wood before a river flooded with new rain from heaven, so that you even forgot yourself, and were ready to cast your whole being into the chasm of existence, as an offering before the feet of another, and all for nothing, - if you awoke bitterly betrayed and deceived, still give thanks to God that you have had one glimpse of heaven. The door now shut will open again. Rejoice that the noblest capability of your eternal inheritance has been made known to you; treasure it, as the highest honor of your being, that ever you could so feel, -that so divine a guest ever possessed your soul. — Harriet Beecher Stowe

Don't be a hero, live to fight another day. — Jesse Eisenberg

One day I realized something obvious: In all these movies, there was a similar plot. The hero is always weak at the beginning and strong at the end, or a jerk at the beginning and kind at the end, or cowardly at the beginning and brave at the end. In other words, heroes are almost always screwups. But it hardly mattered. All the hero has to do to make the story great is struggle with doubt, face their demons, and muster enough strength to destroy the Death Star. That said, I noticed another thing. The strongest character in a story isn't the hero, it's the guide. Yoda. Haymitch. It's the guide who gets the hero back on track. The guide gives the hero a plan and enough confidence to enter the fight. The guide has walked the path of the hero and has the advice and wisdom to get the hero through their troubles so they can beat the resistance. The more I studied story, the more I realized I needed a guide. — Donald Miller

Don't give over all of your critical faculties to people in power, no matter how admirable those people may appear to be. Beneath the hero's facade you will find a human being who makes human mistakes. Enormous problems arise when human mistakes are made on the grand scale available to a superhero. And sometimes you run into another problem. It is demonstrable that power structures tend to attract people who want power for the sake of power and that a significant proportion of such people are imbalanced - in a word, insane. — Frank Herbert

Jake eyed the fire, remembering what Gene Bell had told him about attracting the Thunderbird. He thought about going over to say something, but quickly changed his mind. It would be just another reason for the older boys to tease him about flying creatures and make-believe. In fact, they would be right to tease, because Jake believed that the Thunderbird might be his only chance of a proper pioneering adventure on the boring Oregon Trail. Thinking about the Thunderbird made Jake Polson feel a little bit like his hero Julius Greengrass, and that had to be a good thing. — Dan Abnett

Well they were going to have to do a whole lot better than this if they wanted us Creeds to feel bad. If they thought they could hurt me or dad just by messing with my head at a tryout and cutting me from the team they had another thing coming. If there is one thing we Creeds knew how to succeed at, it was failure. — Perry Moore

Have you ever lost someone close to you? Someone who is at the core of your universe, the hero of all your stories...when that happens, it isn't just the loss of one life, it's the loss of two lives - one who found another world, perhaps...and one who is left behind. — Faraaz Kazi

Now, who else speaks for Perdido Beach?"
Bouncing Bette said, "Sam Temple here went into a burning building to rescue a little girl. He can speak for me, anyway."
There was a murmur of agreement.
"Yeah, Sam is a hero for real," a voice said.
"He could have died," another voice seconded.
"Yeah, Sam's the guy."
Caine's smile came and disappeared so quickly, Sam wasn't sure it had happened. For that millisecond it was a look of triumph. Caine walked straight up to Sam, open and forthright, hand extended.
"There are probably better people than me," Sam said, backing away. — Michael Grant

I find I am more interested in the villain-type roles because they can be so much more complex than just the villain. I don't think anybody sees them as evil per se. They show how close we are to one another. It's an untapped area of art. And I think, physically, I'm not going to play the hero. — Shuler Hensley

It is one thing to follow God's way of service if you are regarded as a hero, but quite another thing if the road marked out for you by God requires becoming a 'doormat' under other people's feet. — Oswald Chambers

To one degree or another we all fight against preconceptions nearly every day. The wisest people I know don't compare their fight to that of others. Everything is relative through the lens of personal struggle.
Heroes come in all shapes and sizes ... mine are often those who are fighting their fight in public. Unashamed. Proud. An example.
Heroes aren't perfect. They have faults and flaws. They stumble from time to time. They are heroes, though, because they correct themselves ... and set an example, intended or not, for the world observing them ... even, and especially, to those who would love nothing more than to see them fail.
Stay Strong! — Dennis Sharpe

Rebecca glared at her. "Congratulations. You just cost me a million dollar account." Brianna crossed her arms over her chest. "Oh don't worry. I'm sure with your talents you could earn another mil in no time. I'll tell them to clear a street corner for you." Rebecca lunged for her and Alessandro stepped between the two women. "Brianna, come on," he said guiding his wife away from the table. "What? I'm not a child. I can handle her." "I'm sure you can." He informed the waiter they would be taking their bottle of sparkling cider home. "But you're letting your emotions get away with you. Your brother is a grown man and can handle himself." Brianna blew a raspberry at him. "Oh yes, quite mature. Let's go home." He guided her towards the entrance. — E. Jamie

Alongside the statement about one man's poison being another man's high, one might as well add that one man's saint can be another man's sore and one man's hero can turn out to be that man's biggest hangup. — Ken Kesey

Killing a man by accident had made her a villain. Killing another on purpose had made her a hero. But all she could do was frown at the body as they dragged it out, and feel there was something very odd in all this. — Joe Abercrombie

My idol was always Romario. He was playing in Holland at the time and I loved him. His skills, technique, I loved him he was my hero. I liked his whole game. One moment it would be like he was sleeping and then another moment he would change the game. — Rafael Van Der Vaart

We do not want to be told what we know. We do not want to call things by their names, although we're willing to call one another bad ones. We call meanness nobility and hatred honor. The way to make yourself a hero is to make me out a scoundrel. You won't admit that either, but it's true. — Thomas Wolfe

Before the boy who lived, there was another story. One of a monster inside of a man. One of a hero inside of a child. One of a traitor inside of a friend. And one of an angel inside of a demon. — Mordred

No phallic hero, no matter what he does to himself or to another to prove his courage, ever matches the solitary, existential courage of the woman who gives birth. — Andrea Dworkin

wonder why I keep writing these chapter introductions. I spend a lot of time in these stories not actually writing these stories. There must be something to it. Something I don't want to admit. These are another delay. To keep myself from writing the inevitable. As long as I'm waxing fanciful about bunnies and bazookas, I don't have to make progress toward the ending. I don't want to get there. Despite claiming I'm writing these autobiographies to set the story straight, I don't actually want to do it. Deep down, I'd rather think of myself as a hero. Of course, I'm probably too much of a coward to include this section in the book. — Brandon Sanderson

The creative artist has something in common with the hero. Though functioning on another plane, he too believes that he has solutions to offer. He gives his life to accomplish imaginary triumphs. At the conclusion of every grand experiment, whether by statesman, warrior, poet or philosopher, the problems of life present the same enigmatic complexion. The happiest people, it is said, are those which have no history. Those which have a history, those which have made history, seem only to have emphasized through their accomplishments the eternality of struggle. These disappear too, eventually, just as those who made no effort, who were content merely to live and to enjoy. — Henry Miller

Adam has always had ... heroic tendencies."
I touched Adam's arm. "He's my hero."
There was another pause ...
"That is the most romantic thing I've ever heard you say," Bran said. "Be careful, Adam, or you'll turn her into a real girl."
Adam looked at me. "I like her just the way she is, Bran." And he meant it, greasy overalls, broken fingernails, and all. — Patricia Briggs

Some people that are heroes to some can be looked at by another group of people as villains. As far as a middle point, just speaking for myself, that's exactly what to avoid. — Jon Bernthal

Cedric: "I can think of another reason not to be the hero. Every hero has to sacrifice
the one he loves. I don't have that in me."
Saphira: "Who says you can't be a hero when you have a heroine by your side. I
believe the saying is that behind every great man there's a great woman."
Cedric: "You'll never stand behind me, Saphira. You will always be right by my side. — B. Mauritz

If you look into your own mind, which are you, Don Quixote or Sancho Panza?" he had asked in the great essay on dirty postcards. "Almost certainly you are both. There is one part of you that wishes to be a hero or a saint, but another part of you is a little fat man who sees very clearly the advantages of staying alive with a whole skin. He is your unofficial self, the voice of the belly protesting against the soul. — George Orwell

Heroes have gone out; quacks have come in; the reign of quacks has not ended with the nineteenth century. The sceptre is held with a firmer grasp; the empire has a wider boundary. We are all the slaves of quackery in one shape or another. Indeed, one portion of our being is always playing the successful quack to the other. — Thomas Carlyle

If you were truly 'here for me,' you would have a Kahlua in one hand and Henry Cavill's number in the other. Since I'm not having drunken phone sex with Superman, there must be another reason you're darkening my living room. — Naima Simone

My ultimate is Peter Sellers - his ability to go broad and somehow humanize that and be hilarious at the same time. He was just relatable, real at the same time as insane. I find Ricky Gervais absolutely hilarious. Steve Martin is another hero of mine - he's a genius. — Hank Azaria

Indeed, under his splenetic exterior Maclintick harboured all kind of violent, imperfectly integrated sentiments. Moreland, for example, impressed him, perhaps rightly, as a young man of matchless talent, ill equipped to face a materialistic world. At the same time, Maclintick's own hag-ridden temperament also punished him for indulging in what he regarded as sentimentality. His tremendous disapproval of sexual inversion, encountered intermittently in circles he chose to frequent, was compensation for his own sense of guilt at this hero-worshipping of Moreland; his severity with Gossage, another effort to right the balance. — Anthony Powell

Good morning, Sunshine," Alessandro whispered, dragging the satiny soft object across the tip of her nose. Curiosity made her open her eyes. A rose. A blue rose. "I figured a single rose was safer than a dozen considering the massacre of the last blue roses I gave you," he smiled sheepishly. "Happy birthday, darling." Bree blinked and tried to remember what day it was. The fifteenth apparently. She groaned and pulled the blankets back over her head. She was officially thirty today. "Come on now, up we go," Alessandro pulled the blankets off her face and grabbed her arm, bringing her up. "For my birthday, I want sleep," she groaned. Gianni had suffered through a painful night as another tooth was starting to come in and thus his parents had suffered as well. "Nope, we've got a long day ahead of us. Let's go." "Why?" Bree yawned. "Because thirty years ago you were born and my life as I knew it would never be the same," Alessandro explained, nuzzling her neck. — E. Jamie

But through years of myth-making and fear-sowing, Christianity meta-morphosed antichrists into a single Antichrist, an apocalyptic villain and Christian bogeyman used to scare people as much as Santa Claus is used to regulate children's behavior. After years of studying the concept, I began to realize the Antichrist is a character--a metaphor--who exists in nearly all religions under different names, and maybe there is some truth in it, a need for such a person. But from another perspective, this person could be seen as not a villain but a final hero to save people from their own ignorance. The apocalypse doesn't have to be fire and a brimstone. It could happen on a personal level. — Marilyn Manson

Accidents happen. I will, um ... I will pay to have your house rebuilt."
"And my barn?" a woman called out.
Liam sighed. "Yes, and your barn, too."
"And my golden carousel?" shouted another man. "Will you pay for that?"
Liam raised an eyebrow. "The giant smashed your golden carousel?"
"No," said the man. "I'd just like to have a golden carousel. — Christopher Healy

One day we are a hero, another day we are a zero. Without me, Cardiff would have gone bust. Because of my investment, we got promoted. — Vincent Tan

In one book, your father is a hero. In another book, he is a monster. The men who don't have books written about them have it easier. — Jaroslav Kalfar

Everybody knocks my female figures. They say they're overblown, that women don't look like that. And I agree. certainly all women don't look like my paintings. But you cant deny some women do look like that. I don't want to paint just another woman. A painting, it's something important; you want to look at it, maybe forever. Who wants to look at just an ordinary hero forever? You want the ultimate, you pull out the stops and do everything in extremes. The extreme in beauty, if it fits; the extreme in ugliness if it fits; the extreme in terror if this is what's required. You know, I think this is one reason that so many people enjoy my stuff, because all of these extremes are jammed into it. — Frank Frazetta

Fame is an empty noise. Let us put our ears to the centuries that have gone: we no longer hear anything; those who, at another time, shall walk among our urns, shall hear no more. The good - that is what we must pursue, whatever the price, preferring the title of a dead hero to that of a living coward. — Louis Antoine De Saint-Just

Freud has said in Totem and Taboo that acts that are illegal for the individual can be justified in another way: the one who initiates the act takes upon himself both the risk and the guilt. The result is truly magic: each member of the group can repeat the act without guilt. They are not responsible, only the leader is. Redl calls this, aptly, "priority magic." But it does something even more than relieve guilt: it actually transforms the fact of murder. This crucial point initiates us directly into the phenomenology of group transformation of the everyday world. If one murders without guilt, and in imitation of the hero who runs the risk, why then it is no longer murder: it is "holy aggression. For the first one it was not." In other words, participation in the group redistills everyday reality and gives it the aura of the sacred-just as, in childhood, play created a heightened reality. — Ernest Becker

Once the spear was uncovered, it wouldn't matter if the hero's truest love or family was in the room with him; the spear would kill them anyway. Killing was what it was good at, and so killing was what it did...The spear, Dad told me, was him...He told me to make sure Ronan was the name of the hero, and not the name of just another spear. — Maggie Stiefvater

People use their leaders almost as an excuse. When they give in to the leader's commands they can always reserve the feeling that these commands are are alien to them, that they are the leader's responsibility, that the terrible acts they are committing are in his name and not theirs. This, then, is another thing that makes people feel so guiltless, as Canetti points out: they can imagine themselves as temporary victims of the leader. The more they give in to his spell, and the more terrible the crimes they commit, the more they can feel that the wrongs are not natural to them. It is all so neat, this usage of the leader; it reminds us of James Franzer's discovery that in the remote past tribes often used their kings as scapegoats who, when they no longer served the people's needs, were put to death. These are the many ways in which men can play the hero, all the while that they are avoiding responsibility for their own acts in a cowardly way. — Ernest Becker

Nature abhors a hero. For one thing, he violates the law of conservation of energy. For another, how can it be the survival of the fittest when the fittest keeps putting himself in situations where he is most likely to be creamed? — Solomon Short

As regards structure, comedy has come a long way since Shakespeare, who in his festive conclusions could pair off any old shit and any old fudge-brained slag (see Claudio and Hero in Much Ado) and get away with it. But the final kiss no longer symbolizes anything and well-oiled nuptials have ceased to be a plausible image of desire. That kiss is now the beginning of the comic action, not the end that promises another beginning from which the audience is prepared to exclude itself. All right? We have got into the habit of going further and further beyond the happy-ever-more promise: relationships in decay, aftermaths, but with everyone being told a thing or two about themselves, busy learning from their mistakes. So, in the following phase, with the obstructive elements out of the way (DeForest, Gloria) and the consummation in sight, the comic action would have been due to end, happily. But who is going to believe that any more? — Martin Amis

If you really want to judge of the character of a man, look not at his great performances. Every fool may become a hero at one time or another. Watch a man do his most common actions; those are indeed the things which will tell you the real character of a great man. Great occasions rouse even the lowest of human beings to some kind of greatness, but he alone is the really great man whose character is great always, the same wherever he be. — Swami Vivekananda

A dead martyr is just another corpse. — Leo Gordon

I have a lot of guitar heroes I guess, some of them are female and some of them are male. Robert Fripp is one of them, and Marc Ribot, that's another guitar hero. — Annie E. Clark

I don't look at myself as a hero I look at myself as just another person who's on the path. I have got a light in front of me shining and I have got other people in front of me with their light shinning for me, I have got people behind me with their light shinning for me. — John Assaraf

Everybody in this academy, Shadowhunters and mundanes, people with the Sight and without it, every one of them is looking to be a hero. We are all hoping for it, and trying for it, and soon we will be bleeding for it. You're just like the rest of us, Si. Except there's one thing about you that's different: We all want to be heroes, but you know you can be one. You know in another life, in an alternate universe, however you want to think of it, you were a hero. You can be one again. Maybe not the same hero, but you have it in you to make the right choices, to make the big sacrifices. That's a lot of pressure. But it's a lot more hope than any of the rest of us have. Think about it that way, Simon Lewis, and I think you're pretty lucky. — Cassandra Clare

In Celtic Ireland the name Leo was Lugh, another solar hero and mystic. In Wales he was Llew, to the Romans Lugus, to the Sumerians Lughal. Its not the same dude on walkabout, it's the Astrological sign of Leo. In the Christian iconography we have one of the Evangelists represented by a Lion. In the Nativity scenes we see 4 animals around the cradle of the Son/Sun king. One of these is also a Lion. Christians probably believe that there was one in the area and just happened to wander into the inn to take a peek at sleeping Jesus. Good thing it wasn't very hungry. — Michael Tsarion

I know some of these guys who are in that 'stalkerazzi' world, and you really have to separate them from the paparazzi in our industry. That's another breed. They have their heroes who got the big, scandalous shot, which just promotes more of that. — Brad Pitt

Well than try giving it some thought, why don't you? Apply that finely tutored mind of yours to all those bullshit hero-with-a-high-destiny legends you people are so fucking fond of telling one another. You really think, in a mudball slaughterhouse of a world like this, where war and privation harden whole populations to inhuman brutality and ignorance, where the ruling classes dedicate their sons to learning the science of killing men the way they consign their daughters to breeding till they crack
you really think the gods of a world like that have got no better thing to do with their time than take some random piece of lowborn trash and spend long years carving him into shape for a cat's-paw? — Richard K. Morgan

But I do not do these things because we are family. I do them because they are common decencies. That is an idiom that the hero taught me. I do them because I am not a big fucking asshole. That is another idiom that the hero taught me. — Jonathan Safran Foer

Love, friendship, respect, admiration are the emotional response of one man to the virtues of another, the spiritual payment given in exchange for the personal, selfish pleasure which one man derives from the virtues of another man's character. Only a brute or an altruist would claim that the appreciation of another person's virtues is an act of selflessness, that as far as one's own selfish interest and pleasure are concerned, it makes no difference whether one deals with a genius or a fool, whether one meets a hero or a thug, whether one marries an ideal woman or a slut. — Ayn Rand

Denying Ahab greatness is an aesthetic blunder: He is akin to Achilles, Odysseus, and King David in one register, and to Don Quixote, Hamlet, and the High Romantic Prometheus of Goethe and Shelley in another. Call the first mode a transcendent heroism and the second the persistence of vision. Both ways are antithetical to nature and protest against our mortality. The epic hero will never submit or yield. — Harold Bloom

I recognized the handwriting, and my heart gave a skip; when I opened it I got a turn, for it began, 'To my beloved Hector,' and I thought, by God she's cheating on me, and has sent me the wrong letter by mistake. But in the second line was a reference to Achilles, and another to Ajax, so I understood she was just addressing me in terms which she accounted fitting for a martial paladin; she knew no better. It was a common custom at that time, in the more romantic females, to see their soldier husbands and sweethearts as Greek heroes, instead of the whore-mongering, drunken clowns most of them were. However, the Greek heroes were probably no better, so it was not far off the mark. — George MacDonald Fraser

You're a hero one day, you're a villain another day. They say that's football. When a manager does well, they're applauded, when they don't do well, they get the sack. Football is a tough world. Those who watch enjoy it - for everybody else, there are a lot of challenges. — Vincent Tan

To eat one's fill, eat until the exhaustion of the appetite, was the principal pleasure that the peasants dangled before their imagination, and one that they rarely realized in their lives.
They [the peasants] also imagined other dreams coming true, including the standard run of castles and princesses. But their wishes usually remained fixed on common objects in the everyday world. One hero gets "a cow and some chickens"; another, an armoire full of linens. A third settles for light work, regular meals, and a pipe full of tobacco. And when gold rains into the fireplace of a fourth, he uses it to buy "food, clothes, a horse, land." In most of the tales, wish fulfillment turns into a program for survival, not a fantasy of escape. — Robert Darnton

I mean it, it's another gap in your education. Until you can learn to understand her, you'll get nowhere as a detective. She's everybody's conscience, Bob - the universal maiden aunt, cousin or sister. Humanity's backbone. Throughout history, she's gone to the stake for you again and again; not with any sense of heroism, but as a matter of principle and because it would never occur to her to do anything else. — Heron Carvic

Brother, these last two months I've found in myself a new man. A new man has risen up in me. He was hidden in me, but would never have come to the surface, if it hadn't been for this blow from heaven. I am afraid! And what do I care if I spend twenty years in the mines, breaking ore with a hammer? I am not a bit afraid of that- it's something else I am afraid of now: that that new man may leave me. Even there, in the mines, underground, I may find a human heart in another convict and murderer by my side, and I may make friends with him, for even there one may live and love and suffer. One may thaw and revive a frozen heart in that convict, one may wait upon him for years, and at last bring up from the dark depths a lofty soul, a feeling, suffering creature; one may bring forth an angel, create a hero! There are so many of them, hundreds of them, and we are all to blame for them. — Fyodor Dostoyevsky

The elections are run by the same guys who sell toothpaste. They show you an image of a sports hero, or a sexy model, or a car going up a sheer cliff or something, which has nothing to do with the commodity, but it's intended to delude you into picking this one rather than another one. — Noam Chomsky

The bacteriologist, often risking his life to find cures for lethal afflictions, was another kind of imperial hero, as brave in his way as the soldier-explorer. — Niall Ferguson

Today, men, I ask you your lives."
"I ask of you your lives and your courage. I ask of your faith, your honor
your strength, and your compassion. For today I lead you to die. I will not ask you to welcome this event. I will not insult you by calling it well, or just, or even glorious. But I will say this ...
... "Each moment you fight is a gift to those in this cavern. Each second we fight is a second longer that thousands of people can draw breath. Each stroke of the sword, each koloss felled, each breath earned is another victory! It is a person protected for a moment longer, a life extended, an enemy frusturated!"
There was a brief pause.
"In the end they shall kill us. But first they shall fear us! — Brandon Sanderson

One Man's Hero, Another Man's Villain..
Sometimes in the same Man.. — Abha Maryada Banerjee

Whistleblowers is another aspect that needs to be addressed. We have to restore the protections of whistleblowers and also the encouragement and rewards. It shouldn't just be that they don't get crucified; it should be that they are again folk heroes, or celebrated for bringing critical matters to public attention, as opposed to traitors. — Ted Gup

Garahel always used to say that heroism was just another word for horror, and maybe a worse one. A hero always feels that he has to do what's right. Sometimes that leads to tormenting himself with doubt long after the deed is done. — Liane Merciel

I have another name for what they're terming whistleblowers, and that's righteous heroes. From Bradley Manning to Snowden. They're people of conscience who are unwilling to turn a blind eye to the crimes of our government. And thank goodness for them. — Tom Morello

Then, abruptly, it was his turn to feel ashamed, not only for having extended, however momentarily, the consideration of his sympathy to a Nazi, but for having produced work that appealed to such a man. Joe was not the early creator of comic books to perceive the mirror-image fascism inherent in his anti-fascist superman - Will Eisner, another Jew cartoonist, quite deliberately dressed his Allied-hero Blackhawks in uniforms modeled on the elegant death's-head garb of the Waffen SS. But Joe was perhaps the first to feel the shame of glorifying, in the name of democracy and freedom, the vengeful brutality of a very strong man.
[...] Now it occurred to Joe to wonder if all they have been doing all along, was indulging their own worst impulses and assuring the creation of another generation of men who revered only strength and domination. — Michael Chabon

No doubt Carlyle has a propensity to exaggerate the heroic in history, that is, he creates you an ideal hero rather than another thing ... Yet what were history if he did not exaggerate it? How comes it that history never has to wait for facts, but for a man to write it? The ages may go on forgetting the facts never so long, he can remember two for every one forgotten. The musty records of history, like the catacombs, contain the perishable remains, but only in the breast of genius are embalmed the souls of heroes. — Henry David Thoreau

Consciousness does not know its own character
unless in determining itself reflectively from the standpoint of another's point of view. It exists its character in pure distinction non-thematically and non-thetically in the proof which it effects of its own contingency and in the nihilation by which it recognizes and surpasses its facticity. This is why pure introspective self-description does not give us character. Proust's hero 'does not have' a directly apprehensible character; he is presented first as being conscious of himself as an ensemble of general reactions common to all men ... in which each man can recognise himself. This is because these reactions belong to the general 'nature' of the psychic. — Jean-Paul Sartre

Even there, in the mines, underground, I may find a human heart in another convict and murderer by my side, and I may make friends with him, for even there one may live and love and suffer. One may thaw and revive a frozen heart in that convict, one may wait upon him for years, and at last bring up from the dark depths a lofty soul, a feeling, suffering creature; one may bring forth an angel, create a hero! There are so many of them, hundreds of them, and we are all to blame for them. [ ... ] If they drive God from the earth, we shall shelter Him underground. — Fyodor Dostoyevsky

She was the royal princess. She had to start acting like one. She had to stop talking about being trapped, about being handed over from one man to another. She had to start acting.
She had to start being the hero. — Liz Braswell

Just another lonely broken hero picking up the pieces of my mind. Running out of faith and hope and reason, I'm running out of time. — Ozzy Osbourne

Gagarin's death was shameful not just because of the loss of a national hero in muddled circumstances, but because of the dangerous flaws revealed in the Soviet military technology of his time. Obviously their radar systems were not capable of simultaneous mapping of aircraft heights and positions, nor of positively identifying one target from another. The implications of this were highly alarming. — Jamie Doran

A hero in one age will be a hero in another. — Charlotte Lennox