Top 120 Heroic Quotes

The great pleasure that comes from reading poets such as Mark Doty and Marianne Moore is the realisation that the essential virtues – compassion, wonder, humility, respect for the mysterious – are far from conventionally heroic.

Give me a character that has an heroic quality, and I’ll go there.

I walk out of my apartment, and St. Vincent’s is standing there like a ghost ship. That was the ground zero of AIDS in New York: a conservative institution that quickly adapted to its unconventional patients and made heroic efforts to try and save them.

I’d like to think Fleabag’s honesty makes her heroic in spite of her actions.

I would love to do something like ‘Beverly Hills Cop’. I’d get to be funny and cool and heroic all in the same breath.

When I hear a guy lost a battle to cancer, that really did bother me, that that’s a term. It implies that he failed and that somebody else that defeated cancer is heroic and courageous.

Among the events of John McCain’s five-and-a-half years of imprisonment and torture in North Vietnam, probably the most heroic, and surely the most celebrated, was his refusal to accept an early release from his captors.

If the Philippines secure their independence after heroic and stubborn conflicts, they can rest assured that neither England, nor Germany, nor France, and still less Holland, will dare to take up what Spain has been unable to hold.

The only lesson to extract from any civil war is that it’s pointless and futile and ugly, and that there is nothing glamorous or heroic about it. There are heroes, but the causes are never heroic.

As a child, I was always drawn to heroic characters. I decided I wanted to act when I realised that Superman and all those gangsters and Indians were just real people in costume.

The news of the open military help to Franco from Hitler and Mussolini, and the heroic resistance of the people of Madrid, Barcelona and the big cities fired a widespread wish to help the Republic and its people.

I find Jessica Jones a much more interesting character to write for than Wonder Woman. Wonder Woman is so noble and heroic, and I don’t find that as interesting as one who’s really damaged and flawed and has post-traumatic stress disorder.

The language of the heroic is something that has evolved over time.

Whether such socialism is foolish naivety or heroic idealism is a matter of opinion, but what is certain is that, however many CDs are sold or tours sold out, the sound waves themselves are free.

The reason can only be this: heroic poetry depends on an heroic age, and an age is heroic because of what it is, not because of what it does.

Is it absurd to imagine that our social behavior, from amoeba to man, is also planned and dictated, from stored information, by the cells? And that the time has come for men to be entrusted with the task, through heroic efforts, of bringing life to other worlds?

In my early music-loving days, I thought Beethoven was a bit bombastic, a bit heroic, a bit, well, big.

This, to me, is the ultimately heroic trait of ordinary people; they say no to the tyrant and they calmly take the consequences of this resistance.

I honestly think part of the appeal of ‘Rumours’ was that it was sort of heroic. We managed to push through in the face of so much personal adversity.

It is an Englishman who turns out to be the real villain of ‘The Moonstone.’ By contrast, the three Indian priests who dedicate their lives to returning the jewel to its proper home in the temple, though they have nothing personal to gain by doing so, are positively heroic.

I think on some level, that’s a fear that exists in everybody, that if we’re tested, we won’t make the courageous choice. We won’t make the decision that would make us heroic. We make the decision that would reveal us to be all too human.

I think we are drawn to anti-heroes because that is what most of us are most of the time and it is good to see that we are heroic.

Books about technology start-ups have a pattern. First, there’s the grand vision of the founders, then the heroic journey of producing new worlds from all-night coding and caffeine abuse, and finally, the grand finale: immense wealth and secular sainthood. Let’s call it the Jobs Narrative.

I like the tradition of ordinary men in extraordinary circumstances and how they react to events which force them to be heroic in a way that is not in their natures.

You don’t need to be a fan of wars or militarism to note that heroic action – whether being prepared to be jailed as a conscientious objector or putting your life on the line by joining the resistance – creates a sense of meaning when society faces a huge challenge.

The heroic action of American law enforcement is the only force standing between us and total anarchy.

Many single mothers do a heroic job looking after their children, as mine did with us; but as she found, it becomes twice as hard to set boundaries with half the number of parents.

The balance of private good and general welfare is at the bottom of civilized morals; but the morals of the Heroic Age are founded on individuality, and on nothing else.

My sisters both are working mothers. I understand that my being an actress as well as being at home isn’t some heroic thing. That doesn’t mean it isn’t confusing or difficult – especially that question of how you find a balance.

Generations of heroic Americans have made America more inclusive, more expansive, and more just.

I guess I’m always drawn to the underbelly of someone, really, as opposed to how heroic they are. I don’t judge those sorts of people.

I guess I have an aversion to writing about big events and heroic actions. The everyday has always seemed most important to me in writing, probably because I believe people reveal themselves in how they deal with small details.

The truth is always more heroic than the hype.

A lot of the characters I’ve played before are heroic or invincible in some ways and not tuned into fear and anxiety and pain.

Christianity is not the faith of the complacent, the comfortable or of the timid. It demands and creates heroic souls like Wesley, Wilberforce, Bonhoeffer, John Paul the Second, and Billy Graham. Each showed, in their own way, the relentless and powerful influence of the message of Jesus Christ.

I did stand-up comedy for 18 years. Ten of those years were spent learning, four years were spent refining, and four years were spent in wild success. I was seeking comic originality, and fame fell on me as a byproduct. The course was more plodding than heroic.

This obsession with leadership… It’s not neutral; it’s American, this idea of the heroic leader who comes in on a white horse to save the day. I think it’s killing American companies.

I’ve always said that I felt women are more heroic.

Our Party conferred the honourable title, ‘The Heroic Working Class of Kim Il Sung and Kim Jong Il,’ on our working class that supported the great leaders’ ideas and leadership with loyalty.

The bands that wrote the big, heroic rock songs – I really wanted to make a record like that.

But there are still only certain film genres where a woman can stand out, be heroic, be the centerpiece.

Dwight Eisenhower presented a face of America that was heroic and resolute; Ronald Reagan represented a return to confidence and glamour after the weary Carter years.

Let’s face it: the present self is present. It’s in control. It’s in power right now. It has these strong, heroic arms that can lift doughnuts into your mouth. And the future self is not even around. It’s off in the future. It’s weak. It doesn’t even have a lawyer present.

I tell ‘Hansel and Gretel’ stories about heroic children who are lost in a world that seems friendly at first, and then isn’t.

I encourage the translators of my books to take as much license as they feel that they need. This is not quite the heroic gesture it might seem, because I’ve learned, from working with translators over the years, that the original novel is, in a way, a translation itself.

One would like to be grand and heroic, if one could; but if not, why try at all? One wants to be very something, very great, very heroic; or if not that, then at least very stylish and very fashionable. It is this everlasting mediocrity that bores me.

Without a dog, you’ll be without at least one creature who thinks you are the smartest, most decent and heroic human being on the planet.

Over the course of my creative life, I’ve trafficked in broken, heroic mothers.

My stepfather, Steve Mallonee, is a retired Miami Beach firefighter, loved and adored by many. After numerous years of heroic work, saving lives through fire and heavy smoke, he has developed a very fatal lunge disease called Pulmonary Fibrosis.

I suppose there must be some way in which I’m compelled to show some side of myself – or of people – that’s paranoid and fraught and beleaguered and downtrodden, just as Tom Cruise wants to show that he’s terrifyingly upbeat and terrifyingly heroic all the time.

I have the greatest respect for single parents who struggle and sacrifice, trying against almost superhuman odds to hold the family together. They should be honored and helped in their heroic efforts. But any mother’s or father’s task is much easier where there are two functioning parents in the home.

Self-pity, a dominant characteristic of sociopaths, is also the characteristic that differentiates heroic storytelling from psychological rumination. When you talk about your experiences to shed light, you may feel wrenching pain, grief, anger, or shame. Your audience may pity you, but not because you want them to.

Nurture your minds with great thoughts. To believe in the heroic makes heroes.

I think that our future has lost that capital F we used to spell it with. The science fiction future of my childhood has had a capital F – it was assumed to be an American Future because America was the future. The Future was assumed to be inherently heroic, and a lot of other things, as well.

He lives out in Orchard Park. I mean, to be able to sit on the bench so patiently, for whatever part, and to be able to get up and do something, with such heroic competencies would be great.

To me, it feels like ‘The Doctor’ has to have a long coat, and that’s something imprinted on me from childhood, because he always did. And there’s something heroic in a flapping coat, but at the same time, I need to get rid of it sometimes and just be a scrawny guy in a suit that doesn’t quite fit.

I suppose all fictional characters, especially in adventure or heroic fiction, at the end of the day are our dreams about ourselves. And sometimes they can be really revealing.

Because of the mainstreaming of academia’s victimhood culture, we are now in a place where we place more value on being a victim than on being heroic, charitable, or even kind.

I do not subscribe to a feminism that demands perfection or super heroic nobility of women. But I do insist that putting women at the service of patriarchy is no victory for us.

When you’re younger, you’re going to be cast as the heroic, earnest leading man.

I was not the young heroic model for ‘Hamlet.’ I tended to play those characters that orbited around them: the rogues and the rat bags and the idiots and the fools and the clowns that sway the plot somehow from a tangent.

I am a big believer in the power of journalism; it’s a heroic pursuit.

I’m not saying this in a condescending kind of way, but it’s quite simple: The making of America was a heroic thing. Australia has a much murkier, much more complex view of its history. It’s just full of all these open wounds we don’t really know what to do with.

When Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain’s government fell in May 1940, the nation turned to Churchill. At last, his unique qualities were brought to bear on a supreme challenge, and with his unshakable optimism, his heroic vision, and above all, his splendid speeches, Churchill roused the spirit of the British people.

I don’t really think of Odo as a heroic lead, but that’s nice if you do.

Since we were kids, we grow up believing that astronauts are heroes – that to go up in a rocket is a heroic thing. These guys are bigger than movie stars. To me, it’s… all a well-dressed-up lie, basically. There’s billions spent on rockets up there, and there’s millions starving down here. It don’t make sense to me.

An epic is not made by piecing together a set of heroic lays, adjusting their discrepancies and making them into a continuous narrative.

We had a heroic attitude to artistic freedom, and we thought normal contracts were a bit vulgar – somehow not punk. But that was the whole point – we weren’t a regular record label.

Certain emotions just take you to the notes – being furious, heroic, sad, erotic, when rain comes.

Outside of my family, I was always inspired by true heroic stories of leadership and survival. For example, the story of the Shackleton expedition, when their ship became lodged in the Antarctic ice pack while exploring.

Like prospecting in the 19th century, reconnaissance of the asteroids would of necessity take place in an arena where trouble is likely and help is distant. Heroic stories of individual triumph and failure, set on landscapes never seen by humankind, are in the cards.

For me, writing a novel is more like digging a well than climbing a mountain – some heroic thing where I set out to conquer. I just sit quietly for a few years, and then it starts to become something.

I think there are good men and women in all decades. We’ve grown cynical. And look at what we do to all our heroes: Churchill, FDR, Kennedy, they all had affairs. But heroic things happen every day.

Because of England’s lack of social mobility, unless they make truly heroic efforts, writers who are privately educated and then go on to Oxbridge or an institution like the BBC will generally embarrass themselves when they attempt to have a go at working- or lower middle-class characters.

Everybody was trying to put me in action movies and heroic roles, and I wanted to find more complex things. They just didn’t suit my taste, so I thought, ‘OK, I have to be brave enough to say no.’ And for a while, that hurt me immeasurably in the Hollywood world.

There are certain functions that a writer has to do. In a time of crisis, it is great to have heroic poems, as it was in the Irish Revolution. It’s great to have great songs, because people need something to sing when they are marching. That’s OK, but it should be on the side. It’s not the ultimate thing.

People throughout time have grieved, have fallen in love, have fallen out of love. We are sometimes petty and sometimes heroic, and we have been that way forever.

One of the secrets of Fox News’ outsized success – it’s the most profitable news organisation in the U.S. and, quite likely, the world – is that it saw the country full of liberal occupiers and Fox News’ viewers as the heroic resistance.

The truth is that ideas matter… If we really want to repair what is wrong in our society, it is going to require not just new policies or even new behaviors, but nothing less heroic than new ideas.

The first thought that I had about really trying to get sober was, ‘Man, I could do a lot of good in the world. I can lead by example and just be this heroic recovery guy.’ And that’s just a bad reason to get sober. You can’t get sober for anybody’s benefit, let alone the world at large. You really got to do it for yourself.

Failures to heroic minds are the stepping stones to success.

I wasn’t heroic because I was never in danger.

The most heroic word in all languages is revolution.

Blacks had survived every form of human debasement with ingenuity, self-reliance, a deep and ironic humor, a capacity for self-reinvention and a heroic fortitude. But we had no experience of wide-open freedom.

There are people who can do all fine and heroic things but one – keep from telling their happiness to the unhappy.

In this watering-place I acted an heroic character, badly studied; and being a novice on such a stage, I forgot my part before a pair of lovely blue eyes.

The greatest obstacle to being heroic is the doubt whether one may not be going to prove one’s self a fool; the truest heroism is to resist the doubt; and the profoundest wisdom, to know when it ought to be resisted, and when it be obeyed.

After 1945, shamefully, we Brits seemed dedicated to punishing the heroic Poles at every turn for their wartime loyalty.

Playing big, heroic characters with heart is always a lot of fun. I enjoy making movies like that, and a lot of people love to live vicariously through those characters.

I felt deep within me that the highest point a man can attain is not Knowledge or Virtue or Goodness or Victory but something even greater, more heroic and more despairing: Sacred Awe!

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

We kind of forget because what television tends to do with these professions like lawyers and doctors and police officers, we create them on such a heroic level that you kind of forget that these are really people.

All my artistic response comes from American things, and I guess I’ve always had a weakness for heroic imagery.

Some people might say my coming out after just winning the MVP award is heroic, and I understand that.

I suppose the textbook definition of an anti-hero is pretty straightforward – a protagonist who embodies not only heroic characteristics but also some characteristics typically deemed non-heroic, even villainous.

Emily Dickinson has haunted my life – her poems, her persona, all the tales about her solitude. Ever since I discovered her in the seventh grade, I’ve had a crush on that spinster in white, who had such a heroic and startling inner landscape of her own.

What is a society without a heroic dimension?

That whole heroic notion of the women warriors known as Amazons is extremely appealing. It was appealing in antiquity, and, throughout the Middle Ages, the Renaissance, they’re always portrayed as heroic, courageous, and the equals of men, and that’s just extremely attractive and has been since antiquity.

To be really great in little things, to be truly noble and heroic in the insipid details of everyday life, is a virtue so rare as to be worthy of canonization.

The higher Greek poetry did not make up fictitious plots; its business was to express the heroic saga, the myths.

Most lawyers aren’t trial lawyers. Most lawyers, even trial lawyers, don’t get their problems solved in a courtroom. We like to go to court. It seems heroic to go to court. We think we’re the new, great advocates, better than anything we’ve seen on TV, and we come home exhilarated by having gone to court.

People saw me as being heroic, but I was no more heroic than I was with other injuries I had, like the lacerated kidney I suffered during the 1990 World Series. It’s just that people haven’t known anyone with a lacerated kidney, but everyone can relate to someone with cancer.

I am proud to have played a small part in ensuring that no veteran’s heroic service will be cast aside due to prejudice.

Despite the persistent image of the architect as a heroic loner erecting monumental edifices through sheer force of will, the building art has always been a highly cooperative enterprise.

It is impossible to strive for the heroic life. The title of hero is bestowed by the survivors upon the fallen, who themselves know nothing of heroism.

King Arthur was one of my heroes because he was such a marvelous, heroic, courageous, and magnificent person that I had to admire him even though I knew perfectly well that I could never be in any way like that.

Villains are as important as the hero. Without the right villain, the hero isn’t heroic enough.

A hero could be anyone who does something heroic, irrespective of the gender.

World War II was the last ‘pure’ war. It was purely heroic. There was someone who tried to conquer the world, who tried to exterminate people.

I think for some reason we’re conditioned in movies that the protagonist must be heroic or redeemable in some way, whereas in theater, that’s not a necessary.

I never saw a true representation – an iconic hero – for myself. It just got boring, reading about all these really powerful and heroic white guys.

History, after all, is a process, not a position, and it is not best written in bronze and marble. It is complex, plastic and ever-changing; all things that heroic statues are not.

When it comes to the pinch, human beings are heroic.

Mothers – especially single mothers – are heroic in their efforts to raise our nation’s children, but men must also take responsibility for their children and recognize the impact they have on their families’ well-being.

In such misfortunes my Mother was of an heroic spirit, in suffering patiently when there was no remedy, and being industrious where she thought she could help.

In the 1930s, photographers such as Walker Evans and Dorothea Lange produced images of sharecroppers and Okies, which drew attention both to the conditions in which these unfortunates found themselves and to their heroic fortitude.

I think that we all do heroic things, but hero is not a noun, it’s a verb.

The quality of films out there depends on how much responsibility we’re willing to take. I try to play women who are positive and heroic.

The Mahabharata might have been a great and heroic battle, but there are no winners. The losers, of course, lose.

I wanted to do something heroic if I was going to be on TV. And the first thing that appeals to me once I have decided I don’t want to be the bad guy is to find things that are not black and white.