Nowadays, superhero movies are part of the mainstream media. Everyone knows of Captain America or Wonder Woman. But in real life, heroes don’t have super strength or receive extraordinary abilities from the Greek gods. Nor do they need any of those to be called heroes.
In real life, heroes aren’t parading in skintight suits or flying around with capes. They look like us. There are heroes all around us; they might be people you know like your mother or brother or your teacher. It might even be you.
Bring out the hero in you as you read through the best heroes quotes and sayings that also include lines about heroism and heroic acts.
Quotes About Heroes
1. “Heroes are not known by the loftiness of their carriage; the greatest braggarts are generally the merest cowards.” — Jean-Jacques Rousseau
2. “Mothers who work full time – they’re the real heroes.” — Kate Winslet
3. “Hard times don’t create heroes. It is during the hard times when the ‘hero’ within us is revealed.” — Bob Riley
4. “A hero is someone who has given his or her life to something bigger than oneself.” — Joseph Campbell
5. “You know, heroes are ordinary people that have achieved extraordinary things in life.” — Dave Winfield
6. “I think heroes are the people that go into houses when they’re on fire and save people in hospitals.” — Luke Evans
7. “A hero is born among a hundred, a wise man is found among a thousand, but an accomplished one might not be found even among a hundred thousand men.” — Plato
8. “Heroes in drama are people who try hard to reach a virtuous ideal. And whether they succeed or fail really doesn’t matter – it’s the trying that counts.” — Aaron Sorkin
9. “Don’t forget, you are the hero of your own story.” — Greg Boyle
10. “Heroes may not be braver than anyone else. They’re just braver five minutes longer.” — Ronald Reagan
11. “All interesting heroes have an Achilles’ heel.” — Jo Nesbo
12. “A hero is a man who does what he can.” — Romain Rolland
13. “A hero is an ordinary individual who finds the strength to persevere and endure in spite of overwhelming obstacles.” — Christopher Reeve
14. “Heroes aren’t born, they’ re cornered. Oh, I was cornered. And I found out that I was no hero.” — James Belushi
15. “Being a hero is about the shortest-lived profession on earth.” — Will Rogers
16. “It takes a hero to be one of those men who goes into battle.” — Norman Schwarzkopf
17. “Nobody is a villain in their own story. We’re all the heroes of our own stories.” — George R. R. Martin
18. “Heroes represent the best of ourselves, respecting that we are human beings. A hero can be anyone from Gandhi to your classroom teacher, anyone who can show courage when faced with a problem. A hero is someone who is willing to help others in his or her best capacity.” — Ricky Martin
19. “Heroes are created by popular demand, sometimes out of the scantiest materials, or none at all.” — Gerald W. Johnson
20. “Aspire rather to be a hero than merely appear one.” — Baltasar Gracian
21. “Day after day, ordinary people become heroes through extraordinary and selfless actions to help their neighbors.” — Sylvia Mathews Burwell
22. “Heroes are never perfect, but they’re brave, they’re authentic, they’re courageous, determined, discreet, and they’ve got grit.” — Wade Davis
23. “Heroes need monsters to establish their heroic credentials. You need something scary to overcome.” — Margaret Atwood
24. “A hero is someone who understands the responsibility that comes with his freedom.” — Bob Dylan
25. “Most people aren’t these grandstanding heroes.” — Martin Freeman
26. “A boy doesn’t have to go to war to be a hero; he can say he doesn’t like pie when he sees there isn’t enough to go around.” — E. W. Howe
27. “Heroes are people who rise to the occasion and slip quietly away.” — Tom Brokaw
28. “What’s a hero if not for its journey.” — J. H. Wyman
29. “It was just the thrill of a lifetime. Brando and Hackman were two of my heroes.” — Richard Donner
30. “Above all, be the heroine of your life, not the victim.” — Nora Ephron
31. “What with making their way and enjoying what they have won, heroes have no time to think. But the sons of heroes – ah, they have all the necessary leisure.” — Aldous Huxley
32. “Perfect heroes are cool, but no one can really empathize or identify with them.” — Masashi Kishimoto
33. “As you get older it is harder to have heroes, but it is sort of necessary.” — Ernest Hemingway
34. “Heroes can be sweet.” — Oriana Fallaci
35. “There’s something so accessible about heroes who have faults.” — Laura Dern
36. “Women are the real superheroes because they’re not just working. They have a life and everything.” — Vanessa Paradis
37. “We can’t all be heroes, because somebody has to sit on the curb and applaud when they go by.” — Will Rogers
38. “A hero is someone we can admire without apology.” — Kitty Kelley
39. “I think even a hero is someone who has sort of the flaw or imperfection of character. I remember Alice Walker saying that once – she’d written a novel about a civil rights hero, and it was someone who had this flaw, this central flaw.” — Hector Tobar
40. “A hero is no braver than an ordinary man, but he is brave five minutes longer.” — Ralph Waldo Emerson
41. “This thing of being a hero, about the main thing to it is to know when to die.” — Will Rogers
42. “A hero is somebody who is selfless, who is generous in spirit, who just tries to give back as much as possible and help people. A hero to me is someone who saves people and who really deeply cares.” — Debi Mazar
43. “Real heroes are all around us and uncelebrated.” — Peter Capaldi
44. “I think all of us have a hero and a villain in us.” — Anson Mount
45. “Books are those faithful mirrors that reflect to our mind the minds of sages and heroes.” — Edward Gibbon
46. “A hero can only be as good as the bad guy.” — Terry Hayes
47. “Literature throws us many great heroes. Real life invariably outdoes them.” — Wilbur Smith
48. “A hero is someone right who doesn’t change.” — George Foreman
49. “The hero is one who kindles a great light in the world, who sets up blazing torches in the dark streets of life for men to see by.” — Felix Adler
50. “Heroes and heroines don’t commit adultery.” — Leigh Michaels
51. “Heroes aren’t supposed to do bad things. That’s what villains are for. So either the good supersedes the bad, or the bad makes it impossible to remember the good. We don’t like it when such duality exists in one person. We don’t want to know our heroes are human.” — LZ Granderson
52. “A hero holds purposes appropriate to man and is, therefore, a thinker.” — Andrew Bernstein
53. “No hero is mortal till he dies.” — W. H. Auden
54. “I think heroes who are not flawed are not believable.” — James McBride
55. “Heroes are people who are all good with no bad in them. That’s the way I always saw Joe DiMaggio. He was beyond question one of the greatest players of the century.” — Mickey Mantle
56. “Heroes are ordinary people who make themselves extraordinary.” — Gerard Way
57. “There is a hero built in all of us.” — Michael Israel
58. “A hero is one who knows how to hang on one minute longer.” — Novalis
59. “The hero is never the star of the story.” — Marilyn Manson
60. “A hero is someone who, in spite of weakness, doubt or not always knowing the answers, goes ahead and overcomes anyway.” — Christopher Reeve
61. “My heroes are and were my parents. I can’t see having anyone else as my heroes.” — Michael Jordan
62. “Heroes have a rough time because they stand up when they ought not to, they speak when they ought not to; they always have to go that extra mile.” — George Foreman
63. “Heroes have always served as a reflection of their times, a template of who we are and what we want to be.” — David Grann
64. “In war the heroes always outnumber the soldiers ten to one.” — H. L. Mencken
65. “After all, the ordinary hero hiding in each of us is often the most powerful catalyst for change.” — Tate Taylor
66. “A hero is somebody who voluntarily walks into the unknown.” — Tom Hanks
67. “What is a hero without love for mankind.” — Doris Lessing
68. “Heroes are those who can somehow resist the power of the situation and act out of noble motives, or behave in ways that do not demean others when they easily can.” — Philip Zimbardo
69. “You cannot be a hero without being a coward.” — George Bernard Shaw
70. “A hero has faced it all: he need not be undefeated, but he must be undaunted.” — Andrew Bernstein
71. “It is surmounting difficulties that makes heroes.” — Louis Pasteur
72. “It was never really my choice to be an action heroine.” — Izabella Scorupco
73. “A hero cannot be a hero unless in a heroic world.” — Nathaniel Hawthorne
74. “Heroes always make the right decision; I find that seldom happens in my life.” — Judd Nelson
75. “Heroes, whatever high ideas we may have of them, are mortal and not divine. We are all as God made us and many of us much worse.” — John Osborne
76. “The real hero is always a hero by mistake he dreams of being an honest coward like everybody else.” — Umberto Eco
77. “If we mean to have heroes, statesmen and philosophers, we should have learned women.” — Abigail Adams
78. “Without heroes, we are all plain people and don’t know how far we can go.” — Bernard Malamud
79. “Great heroes need great sorrows and burdens, or half their greatness goes unnoticed.” — Peter S. Beagle
80. “A perfect hero is about as boring as a perfect marriage.” — Michael Robotham
Quotes About Heroism
1. “When the will defies fear, when duty throws the gauntlet down to fate, when honor scorns to compromise with death – that is heroism.” — Robert Green Ingersoll
2. “Heroism on command, senseless violence, and all the loathsome nonsense that goes by the name of patriotism – how passionately I hate them!” — Albert Einstein
3. “Heroism is not only in the man, but in the occasion.” — Calvin Coolidge
4. “Extreme heroism springs from something that no scientific theory can fully explain; it’s an illogical impulse that flies in the face of biology, psychology, actuarial statistics, and basic common sense.” — Christopher McDougall
5. “Faith is the heroism of the intellect.” — Charles Henry Parkhurst
6. “The opportunities for heroism are limited in this kind of world: the most people can do is sometimes not to be as weak as they’ve been at other times.” — Angus Wilson
7. “There is a certain enthusiasm in liberty, that makes human nature rise above itself, in acts of bravery and heroism.” — Alexander Hamilton
8. “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.” — Nathaniel Hawthorne
9. “Heroism often results as a response to extreme events.” — James Geary
10. “Heroism in a bad cause.” — Karel Reisz
11. “Heroism is accessible. Happiness is more difficult.” — Albert Camus
12. “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.” — Johan Huizinga
13. “True heroism is remarkably sober, very undramatic. It is not the urge to surpass all others at whatever cost, but the urge to serve others at whatever cost.” — Arthur Ashe
14. “The world’s battlefields have been in the heart chiefly; more heroism has been displayed in the household and the closet, than on the most memorable battlefields in history.” — Henry Ward Beecher
15. “It is not tolerable, it is not possible, that from so much death, so much sacrifice and ruin, so much heroism, a greater and better humanity shall not emerge.” — Charles de Gaulle
16. “Heroism is endurance for one moment more.” — George F. Kennan
17. “I’m saying to be a hero is means you step across the line and are willing to make a sacrifice, so heroes always are making a sacrifice. Heroes always take a risk. Heroes always deviant. Heroes always doing something that most people don’t and we want to change – I want to democratize heroism to say any of us can be a hero.” — Philip Zimbardo
18. “You can find heroism everyday, like guys working terrible jobs because they’ve got to support their families. Or as far as humor, the things I see on the job, on the street, are far funnier than anything you’ll ever see on TV.” — Harvey Pekar
19. “As a rule, all heroism is due to a lack of reflection, and thus it is necessary to maintain a mass of imbeciles. If they once understand themselves the ruling men will be lost.” — Ernest Renan
Quotes About Heroic Acts
1. “Some days it is a heroic act just to refuse the paralysis of fear and straighten up and step into another day.” — Edward Albert
2. “Anyone can be heroic from time to time, but a gentleman is something you have to be all the time.” — Luigi Pirandello
3. “True heroics, obviously, is not the absence of fear, but having that fear and doing something anyway.” — Martin Freeman
4. “The simple act of caring is heroic.” — Edward Albert
5. “I think it is rather heroic to go into a war zone where everyone is trying to kill you, and you have no way of shooting back.” — Kerry Greenwood
6. “People have their complexities. They have their heroic moments and their villainous moments, too.” — Ryan Reynolds
7. “You can’t make accommodations in crucial situations and be heroic.” — Alan Furst
8. “The most heroic thing you can do is tell someone that you love them.” — Jacques Audiard
9. “The most heroic word in all languages is revolution.” — Eugene V. Debs
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