Do I want to be a hero to my son? No. I would like to be a very real human being. That's hard enough.
We don't become heroes overnight. " - One step at a time, eventually discovering we have the strength to stare it down.
The big divide in this country is not between Democrats and Republicans, or women and men, but between talkers and doers. Think about the things that have improved our lives the most over the past century - medical advances, the transportation revolution, huge increases in consumer goods, dramatic improvements in housing, the computer. The people who created these things - the doers - are not popular heroes. Our heroes are the talkers who complain about the doers.
I learned many lessons from my first race with my heroes. I learned it was easier to breathe when I cried, so I cried often and without shame. I learned that a teammate's faith in you can propel you up any mountain. I learned that winning requires an entirely different mind-set than not losing. I learned that the best teams in the world share not only their strengths but also their weaknesses. I learned that you don't inspire your teammates by showing them how amazing you are. You inspire them by showing them how amazing they are.
I grew up with heroes, people who made me aspire to raise my game, to dream bigger and I like to keep it that simple.
Like a lot of people, I had this naive hope that Barack Obama would fix everything quickly. You know, the culture of celebrity in this country leads us away from democratic ways of thinking and into this hero worship. And so of course, one man cannot swoop in and fix everything on his own. It's much more complicated and difficult than that, and progressives in this country since then have had to come to terms with the fact that we need to do more than actually get out of our house and vote. It's an ongoing process to turn the tide.
That's how it works in Westerns: the hero is minding his own business and trying to make a living, but he does something, the villain finds out about it and they have to have a showdown. So it's kind of a Western set to hip hop music.
If Hero means sincere man, why may not every one of us be a Hero?
We find heroes, not on battlefields, but in hospitals that tend the injured. Sometimes I think it’s easier to fight than it is to heal.
My two great heroes are W. B. Yeats and Federico Garcia Lorca.
Humanity is a community, I don't care if your black, your white, your Christian, your Jewish, your Muslim. We are all one community and heroes really make us see what's possible at any given time.
Human history is work history. The heroes of the people are work heroes.
In the culture of America, in a free culture, you get what you celebrate. And in this culture, we have two obsessions, become a group that becomes a group that celebrates sports heroes and entertainment heroes. There's no room left for kids to see even a little bit of the opportunities to really, really get excited about becoming an inventor, an engineer, or a scientist, a problem solver.
In the legends that males have invented to explain life, the first human creature is a man named Adam. Eve arrives later, to give him pleasure and cause trouble. In the paintings that adorn churches, God is an old man with a beard, never an old woman with white hair. And all the heroes are males: from Prometheus who discovered fire to Icarus who tried to fly, on down to Jesus whom they call the Son of God and of the Holy Spirit, almost as though the woman giving birth to him were an incubator or a wetnurse.
I am not always good and noble. I am the hero of this story, but I have my off moments.
The modern spirit is a hesitant one. Spontaneity has given way to cautious legalisms, and the age of heroes has been superseded by a cult of specialization. We have no more giants; only obedient ants.
You don't have to be a hero to accomplish great things---to compete. You can just be an ordinary chap, sufficiently motivated to reach challenging goals.
You are lucky in life if you have the right heroes. I advise all of you, to the extent you can, to pick out a few heroes
We would make our heroes shallow. . . . We would make them brittle. It is they who must remind us of the true meaning of strength.
You want to be a hero. That is why you do such silly things.