The chief business of the nation, as a nation, is the setting up of heroes, mainly bogus.

No hero to me is the man who, by easy shedding of his blood, purchases fame: my hero is he who, without death, can win praise.

His [Gen. Douglas MacArthur's] own heroes were Lincoln and Washington, and in some ways he resembled them.

Without heroes we're all plain people and don't know how far we can go.

We moderns do not believe in demigods, but our smallest hero we expect to feel and act as a demigod.

We have more to learn today from the spectacle of a great man at a great moment than from any number of monographs on ancient wage levels.

For the company of the great is good company as Shakespeare understood it, as Plutarch understood it. The past remains the source from which example and precept can still be drawn.

The savage bows down to idols of wood and stone; the civilized man to idols of flesh and blood.

Every hero is a Samson. The strong man succumbs to the intrigues of the weak and the many; and if in the end he loses all patience he crushes both them and himself.

Better not be a hero than work oneself up into heroism by shouting lies.

A hero is a man who does what he can.

Show me a hero and I will write you a tragedy.

The hero is suffered to be himself.

Every hero becomes a bore at last.

The contemporary hero, the mythical pattern in the imitation of whom we would live, remains as yet undefined. We have no hero; what is more to the point, we suspect hero worship.

The last act in the biography of the hero is that of the death or departure.

A hero is someone who has given his or her life to something bigger than oneself.

The hero was distinguished by his achievement; the celebrity by his image or trademark. The hero created himself; the celebrity is created by the media. The hero was a big man; the celebrity is a big name.

Heroes are very human, most of them; very easily touched by praise.

It doesn't take a hero to order men into battle. It takes a hero to be one of those men who go into battle.