Hero Worship Quotes

Unmixed praise is not due to any one. It leaves behind a sense of unreality. We can only do justice to a great man by a discriminating criticism. Hero-worship, which paints a faultless monster, whom the world never saw, is like those modern pictures which are a blaze of light without any shadow. ~ James Freeman Clarke

It now seems to be quite a thing to pull down the mighty from their seats and roll them in the mire. This practice deserves pronounced condemnation. Hero worship is a tremendous force in uplifting and strengthening. Humanity, let us have our heroes. Let us continue to believe that some have been truly great. ~ Lyndon B. Johnson

New black heroes were made and old ones dropped every day. ~ Mark Kurlansky

Since Genesis 3 we have been addicted to setting our sights on something, someone, smaller than Jesus. ~ Tullian Tchividjian

History is made by masses of people. One man, or ten men, don't start the earthquakes and don't stop them either. Only hero worshipers and ignorant historians think they do. ~ Lillian Hellman

It is incredible what a pronounced hero can get away with and what can be accredited to him.
There were no inconvenient questions asked of Robin because everyone preferred to believe that heroes defeat villains and that there were distinguishable traits that could easily tell the two apart. ~ Arianna Alexsandra Collins

Not hero worship, but intimacy with Christ. ~ Dietrich Bonhoeffer

One doesn't defend one's god; one's god is in himself a defense. ~ Henry James

I don't hero worship for the sake of hero worship. When I find people who are truly remarkable - and I think Joseph Needham is a classic example - I do value their counsel. ~ Simon Winchester

It may be a crush, or hero worship ( ... ), it may not be love, but if you've never felt anything stronger, how do you tell the difference? ~ Laurell K. Hamilton

I see. And who is this author?"
"Neil Fucking Gaiman."
"His second name is Fucking?"
"No, Leif, that's the honorary second name all celebrities are given by their fans. It's not an insult, it's a huge compliment, and he's earned it. You'd like him. He dresses all in black like you. Read a couple of his books, and then when you meet him, you'll squee too."
Leif found the suggestion distasteful. "I would never behave with so little dignity. Nor would I wish to be confronted in such a manner by anyone else. Vampires inspire screams, not squees. Involuntary urination is common, I grant, but it properly flows from a sense of terror, not an ecstatic sense of hero worship. ~ Kevin Hearne

An absolutely devastating ridicule of all that is false, primitive, and vicious in current American life: the abuses of power, hero worship, aimless violence, materialistic obsession, intolerance, and every form of hypocrisy. ~ Terry Southern

My Mt. Rushmore of hero worship would include Ralph Waldo Emerson, Marcus Aurelius, Frank Sinatra and Barry White. ~ Karen Duffy

Thing is, what does a hero look like these days? Muscles and lycra? Life isn't a contest of strength anymore. Jobs, banks, taxes. Boring social reality. ~ Adam Baker

Religion is many things, but one of them, surely, is a way for adults to indulge in uncritical hero worship. ~ Robert Webb

Bonhoeffer said it's not about hero worship, but intimacy with God. ~ Jan Karon

It is pardonable for children to yell that they believe in fairies, but it is somehow sinister when the piping note shifts from the puerile to the senile. ~ Christopher Hitchens

I was a shy, awkward sort of a boy and my father's frequent absences from home, along with my hero worship for him, made me even shyer. ~ Douglas Fairbanks, Jr.

It is possible to be a fan of reality TV, talent shows and bubblegum pop and still have a brain. You will also see that a great many people know perfectly well how silly and camp and trivial their fandom is. They do not check in their minds when they enter a fan site. Judgement is not necessarily fled to brutish beasts, and men have not quite lost their reason. Which is all a way of questioning whether pop-culture hero worship is really so psychically damaging, so erosive of cognitive faculties, so corrupting of the soul of mankind as we are so often told. ~ Stephen Fry

Heroes, it would seem, exist always and a certain worship of them. ~ Thomas Carlyle

Society is founded on hero-worship. ~ Thomas Carlyle

A religiously ambiguous Thomas Jefferson is not useful to the Christian right. ~ Matt McCook

Pathology, probably more than any other branch of science, suffers from heroes and hero-worship. Rudolf Virchow has been its archangel and William Welch its John the Baptist, while Paracelsus and Cohnheim have been relegated to the roles of Lucifer and Beelzebub ... Actually, there are no heroes in Pathology-all of the great thoughts permitting advance have been borrowed from other fields, and the renaissance of pathology stems not from pathology itself but from the philosophers Kant and Goethe. ~ Harry S.N. Greene

Hero worship has died with heroes, and if someone bows down today, it is to pick up something. ~ Natalie Clifford Barney

For River to discover himself in Rimbaud's life and Miller's prose was simultaneously self-aggrandizing and self-pitying. Tellingly, he was more interested in Miller's book than in Rimbaud's actual writing: he responded to Rimbaud not as a poet, but as a symbol. ~ Gavin Edwards

Hero-worship is strongest where there is least regard for human freedom. ~ Herbert Spencer

Truly, there is something to the idea that hero-worship is helpful, provided one worships a winner. ~ Napoleon Hill

To say that there is a case for heroes is not to say that there is a case for hero worship. The surrender of decision, the unquestioning submission to leadership, the prostration of the average man before the Great Man
these are the diseases of heroism, and they are fatal to human dignity. History amply shows that it is possible to have heroes without turning them into gods. And history shows, too, that when a society, in flight from hero worship, decides to do without great men at all, it gets into troubles of its own. ~ Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr.

It is a thing forever changing, this of Hero-worship: different in each age, difficult to do well in any age. Indeed, the heart of the whole business of the age, one may say, is to do it well. ~ Thomas Carlyle

At that moment his soul is fuller of the tomb and him who lies there than of the altar and Him of whom it speaks. Such stages have to be gone through, I believe, by all young and brave souls, who must win their way through hero-worship to the worship of Him who is the King and Lord of heroes. ~ Thomas Hughes

One must be careful not to allow himself fall into the trap of hero worship; we are to take counsel from men, emulate their courage, and godliness, but we are not allowed to worship them. Heroes are men, and men make mistakes. ~ Paul Bamikole

Don't make that mistake again," he said in a voice so quiet it was barely audible. He looked as if all his latent hostilities were waiting for an excuse to turn on her. "If you throw that cup at me, so help me, I'll carry you over and put you down in the punch bowl!"
"You and the CIA, maybe!" Cecily hissed. "Go ahead and try…!"
Tate actually took a step toward her just as Colby managed to get between them. "Now, now," he cautioned.
Cecily wasn't backing down an inch. Neither was Tate. He'd gone from lazy affection and indulgent amusement to bristling antagonism in the space of weeks. Lately he flew into a rage if Cecily's name was mentioned, but Colby hadn't told her that.
"You have no right to make that kind of insinuation about me," she said through her teeth. "I don't get jobs lying on my back, and you know it!"
Tate's black eyes narrowed. He looked formidable, but Cecily wasn't intimidated by him. She never had been. He glanced at her hands, which were clenched on her cup, and then back to her rigid features. It had infuriated him to be the object of televised ridicule at the political dinner, and Audrey's comments had only made things worse. He was carrying a grudge. But as he looked at Cecily, he felt an emptiness in his very soul. This woman had been a thorn in his side for years, ever since an impulsive act of compassion had made her his responsibility. In those days, she'd been demure and sweet and dependent on him, and her shy hero worship ~ Diana Palmer

A susceptible child is capable of great hero worship, and a young mind can easily be obsessed by an idea which persists into adult life. ~ Agatha Christie

We are all alike on the inside. ~ Mark Twain

I've been in darkness nearly all my life, and you brought light into my existance for the first time. And maybe that's why I started to ... have feeling for you. You seemed like a dream. [ ... ] But that's just infatuation. Hero worship. It's not real. I've learned a lot about love in these last months. Abd part of what I've learned is you have to want someone for who they are, not who you want them to be. You have to love a real person, not some dream in your head. Neither of us could have lived that way. ~ Zoe Marriott

If you want to know what a man's character is really like ... ask him to tell you the living person he most admires - for hero worship is the truest index of a man's private nature. ~ Sydney J. Harris

When Pat gave her 'criminal-hero' Tom Ripley a charmed and parentless life, a wealthy, socially poised Alter Ego (Dickie Greenleaf), and a guilt-free modus operandi (after he kills Dickie, Tom murders only when necessary), she was doing just what her fellow comic book artists were doing with their Superheroes: allowing her fictional character to finesse situations she herself could only approach in wish fulfillment. And when she reimagined her own psychological split in Ripley's character - endowing him with both her weakest traits (paralyzing self-consciousness and hero-worship) and her wildest dreams (murder and money) - she was turning the material of the 'comic book' upside down and making it into something very like a 'tragic book.' 'It is always so easy for me to see the world upside down,' Pat wrote in her diary– and everywhere else. ~ Joan Schenkar

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. ~ Irwin Edman

Science has done much for us; but it is a poor science that would hide from us the great deep sacred infinitude of Nescience, on which all science swims as a mere superficial film. ~ Thomas Carlyle

I am well aware that there is such a great craving in man for heroism and the heroic, and that hero worship forms not a small motif in his complex. I am also aware that, unless man believes in his own heroism and the heroism of others, he cannot achieve much or great things. We must, however, take proper care that we do not make a fetish of this cult of hero-worship, for then we will turn ourselves into votaries of false gods and prophets. ~ Aung San

I don't like to go to conventions, and I don't like to relate to people on a level of hero worship, because there's no real communication going on there. ~ Alan Moore

Bhakti in religion may be a road to the salvation of the soul. But in politics, Bhakti or hero-worship is a sure road to degradation and to eventual dictatorship. (Mukherjee ~ Madhav Godbole

Worship of a hero is transcendent admiration of a great man. ~ Thomas Carlyle

Just by luck, I picked good heroes to worship. ~ Charles Kuralt

I'm not much given to straight, irony-free hero-worship. ~ Richard Dawkins

They spoke as though these Princes are so remote from life as we know it that the smallest sign of humanity, the mere fact even that they communicated by means of speech was worth noting and proclaiming. ~ Nancy Mitford

I don't believe in hero worship. ~ Bobby Fischer

That night, it wasn't Dobie Gray," I whispered. "It was this song. It was Ella Mae singing this to me when I thought you weren't all I knew you to be, which is all the words to this song. Twenty-nine years, I held out for this. Then, half an hour later, you proved every one of these words true and every moment since then, you kept doing it. I'll take you thinking I'm your angel but you need to know you're my hero. Twenty-nine, honey, I held out for this. Twenty-nine years, I held out for you. ~ Kristen Ashley

So we find that in almost every religion these are the three primary things which we have in the worship of God forms or symbols , names, God-men. All religions have these, but you find that they want to fight with each other ... These are the external forms of devotion, through which man has to pass; but if he is sincere , if he really wants to reach the truth , he goes higher than these, to a plane where forms are as nothing. ~ Swami Vivekananda

Real love is sacrifice, unconditional, selfless and benevolent. Love is watching you from afar, happy in the knowledge that as long as you were happy, I would never tell you of my feelings. I would hold them inside and worship the feeling of knowing I felt true love. Love is craving your company, counting the thuds in my chest when you walk into a room because it's the only sound I can hear. Love is the electricity that ignites every nerve when you brush against me. Love is the million dragonflies taking flight inside my gut when I hear you giggle. If love was physical to touch, it would be your form. I sound like a pussy right now but it's not weak to love fiercely, it's powerful and a gift, the greatest there is and I'm grateful for loving you. ~ D.H. Sidebottom

Who brings out the champion in you?

Those that help you be the hero of your story, keep them close. ~ Tony Curl

This film 'Hero' talks about the peace of Chinese people. ~ Jet Li

How many generations of ours have worn themselves out by rubbing their foreheads on the steps of the god? But when did the god take pit on you? What big thing has he done for you? Generation after generation, you have been used to clean the village of its garbage and god gave you the dead animals to eat. In spite of all that, god did not show you any pity. It is not this god that you worship, it is your ignorance. ~ B.R. Ambedkar

FEARLESS is a vivid account of one man's journey from all-American boy to all-American hero. Blehm's writing takes you beyond the battlefield and right to the heart of the personal battles, sacrifices, and triumphs of one of America's elite warriors. Anyone looking for an inspiring story of inner strength and courage will be richly rewarded by this book. ~ Eric Greitens

Fear and hope are generally thought to be in conflict with each other, in the presence and worship of God they are found side by side in perfect and beautiful harmony. And this because in God Himself all apparent contradictions are reconciled. Righteousness and peace, judgment and mercy, holiness and love, infinite power and infinite gentleness, a majesty that is exalted above all heaven, and a condescension that bows very low, meet and kiss each other. ~ Andrew Murray

Sometimes there were troubles but no one can be a hero without the heart being torn open. ~ David Paul Kirkpatrick

Apart from worshiping God, everything becomes superficial. But when you understand the driving force behind everything, all of a sudden there's an eternal amount of joy at our disposal, because everything we do is enlightened and enlivened by the endless glory of the eternal God. ~ Matt Chandler

It is in refusing to recognize that we worship something that we move from the worship of that thing to slavery to that thing. ~ Craig D. Lounsbrough

In ancient Rome, when a victorious general paraded through the streets, legend has it that he was sometimes trailed by a servant whose job it was to repeat to him, " Memento Mori": Remember you will die. A reminder of mortality would help the hero keep things in perspective, instill some humility. Job's memento mori had been delivered by his doctors, but it did not instill humility. Instead he roared back after his recovery with even more passion. The illness reminded him that he had nothing to lose, so he should forge ahead full speed. " He came back on a mission," said Cook. " Even though he was now running a large company, he kept making bold moves that I don't think anybody else would have done. ~ Walter Isaacson

Shall I say of you that you worship the image of your God that you have in your mind, but not your God? ~ Margaret Landon

Men are strangely inclined to worship what they do not understand. A grand secret, upon which several imposers on mankind have totally relied for the success of their frauds. ~ Henry Fielding

My dad is like a cactus - introverted and tough. I'm a people person, like my mom, but I got my competitiveness from my dad. He came to this country from Belarus with nothing and built a real business. He's my hero for giving me that need to run a business and for having enormous confidence in me. ~ Gary Vaynerchuk

I can't have sex with you, Troy."
"Yeah. You've mentioned it once or twice."
She groaned again. "It's just that…you're so damn tempting."
He grinned. At her conflict and the absurdity of it. As if they were teenagers who'd sworn a virginity pledge and had the purity rings to prove it. He rolled up on his side, supporting his head with his palm. "I'm sorry. For being so tempting."
She snorted. "No you're not."
Troy laughed. "You're right. I'm not. ~ Amy Andrews

Mr Speaker, Mr Vice President, members of Congress, distinguished guests, and fellow Americans, last month I went to Andrews Air Force Base and welcomed home some of our last troops to serve in Iraq. Together, we offered a final, proud salute to the colors under which more than a million of our fellow citizens fought, and several thousand gave their lives. We gather tonight knowing that this generation of heroes has made the United States safer and more respected around the world. ~ Barack Obama

The birth of a legend is the death of a hero. Every man wishes to die a hero. A hero's death is glorious! ~ Tanya Thompson

One of my heroes, almost necessarily from what I'm saying, of course, is Borges, who is a supreme master of doing thing
being a data bank
and the beauty of this economy is that he could have written War and Peace in three or four pages; who knows, it might have been a better book. ~ Peter Greenaway

As I approach a new project, my process always begins with the question: what is it about? Here's one answer that might apply to a Star Trek movie...

I want it to be about the most horrible, treacherous aliens ever known to man who are about to destroy life as we know it, leading to the most spectacular thrill ride of an adventure with fantastic space battles and huge explosions and great special effects -- a white knuckle ride for the movie audience.

Yeah, but what's it about?

I can write space battles with the best of them, but what makes that space battle interesting to me is: why are they fighting? What are the stakes? What does the hero lose if he loses? And what does he win if he wins? Why should we care?

I'm talking about the second level of story-telling. The level that examines what's going on inside the characters - their moral and ethical dilemmas, their doubts, fears, inner conflicts, how they change as the story progresses. These are the things that make us, as members of an audience, get emotionally involved. ~ Michael Piller

Marguerite Duras was a very good friend of mine and an intellectual hero. She was also a sort of mother figure. Of course she was an influence. ~ Claire Denis

What do you expect?" he said. "For generations they've been built up to worship competition and the market, productivity and economic usefulness, and the envy of their fellow men-and boom! it's all yanked out from under them. They can't participate, can't be useful any more. Their whole culture's been shot to hell. ~ Kurt Vonnegut

With the confidence and peace of mind native to true genius, I lay my life story before the world, so that the reader may learn how to educate himself to be a great tomcat, may recognize the full extent of my excellence, may love, value, honour and admire me- and worship me a little.
Should anyone be audacious enough to think of casting doubt on the sterling worth of this remarkable book, let him reflect that he is dealing with a tomcat possessed of intellect, understanding, and sharp claws. ~ E.T.A. Hoffmann

It's best being a striker. If you miss five then score the winner, you're a hero. The goalkeeper can play a blinder, then let one in ... and he's a villain. ~ Ian Rush

The greatest hero you meet in life is your courageous self. ~ Matshona Dhliwayo

'Ravi' means 'sun.' It's a Sanskrit original word. And 'Shankar' is another name of Shiva, one of the holy trinity god that we worship. ~ Ravi Shankar

When we shift from personal purity to personal happiness, we lose biblical hope because we are not focusing on God's agenda, we are focusing on our own. God's agenda is guaranteed on our agenda is not. ~ James MacDonald

One of my biggest heroes and people I was fortunate enough to be around is David Bowie. I look at his career, and he always had the balls to break things that weren't broken, to step away from something and try something new, at risk of failing. ~ Trent Reznor

The apprehension of God's infinite knowledge should fill the Christian with adoration. The whole of my life stood open to His view from the beginning. He foresaw my every fall, my every sin, my every backsliding; yet, nevertheless, fixed His heart upon me. Oh, how the realization of this should bow me in wonder and worship before Him! ~ Arthur W. Pink

Like the hero of a fairy-tale Mr Norrell had discovered that the power to do what he wished had been his own all along. ~ Susanna Clarke

Wonder - the enthusiastic ardor for the sublimity of being, for its worthiness to be an object of knowledge - promises to become the point of departure for genuine insight only where it has reached the stage in which the subject, overwhelmed by the object, has, as it were, fused into a single point or into nothing ... like the movement of hope and love toward God, which is genuine and selfless only where it has assumed the attitude of pure worship of God for his own sake. ~ Hans Urs Von Balthasar

It's a mystery," Vin said, narrowing her eyes and smiling. "We Mistborn are incredibly mysterious."
Elend paused." Um ... I'm Mistborn too, Vin. That doesn't make any sense."
"We Mistborn need not make sense," Vin said." It's beneath us. Come on-the sun's already down. We need to get moving. ~ Brandon Sanderson

One reason why the cycle of archetypes recurs is that each youth generation tries to correct or compensate for what it perceives as the excesses of the midlife generation in power. For example, Boomers (a Prophet generation, whose strength is individualism, culture and values) raised Millennial children (a Hero generation, whose strength is in collective civic action). Archetypes do not create archetypes like themselves, they create opposing archetypes. Your generation isn't like the generation that shaped you, but it has much in common with the generation that shaped the generation that shaped you. ~ William Strauss

Bree crossed her arms over her protruding belly. "I'm fine. No one has shot at me in the last twenty four hours, and my family is talking to me again. Things are looking up."
He grimaced at the mention of her family. "How fortunate for you."
Bree narrowed her eyes at him, picking up on the derogatory tone. "Well, you should know all about the importance of family. You'd do anything for yours, right? Bernardo says jump, you ask 'how high?' "
Alessandro felt a sick twist of guilt in his chest, "Well, congratulations, Brianna. You've worked very hard for the title of O'Reiley doormat. I hope it's all you've ever wanted. I hope you're happy."
"Blissfully," Bree shot back and turned on her heel, leaving him there filled with anger and regret. ~ E. Jamie

Think of the hero's journey as perceived by Joseph Campbell. The mythical hero, usually an unlikely male, undertakes a physical journey to an unknown land. One the way, he is faced with a series of challenges that he can meet only through his superior physical strength and cunning. If he succeeds in getting through all the barriers, he wins the prize, which he can then take home for the benefit of his people.

Although this model has some application to the experience of women, it is not adequate to describe what a woman must do in order to live beyond the stultifying expectations of the culture in which she's raised. If she has small children, she can't take a trip or move to a new place, and very rarely is she called upon to beat down her opponent with force. Instead, her journey is an inner one where the demons are her demons of the self. Her task as the heroine is to return from her inner journey and share her knowledge, wisdom, and energy with the people around her. ~ Helen LaKelly Hunt

Lewis is like a gateway, making the riches of Deep Church more accessible. ~ Alister E. McGrath

My purpose for living, my role in this great scheme was clear to me from the first: to fall down, to worship, to praise, to wait upon the word of El."

"That sounds really boring."

"Really? Imagine the bliss of fulfilling one's created purpose. ~ Tosca Lee

It is a precise thing, a scripted act as deliberate as Jo No Mai, each move choreographed, a worship of scarcity. ~ Paolo Bacigalupi

I think any supernatural hero today, whether he's a vampire, werewolf, a resuscitated mummy, whatever he is, is going to have to deal with the fact that scientists are going to want to catch him and study him. His big enemy is not going to be Dr. Van Helsing today, it's going to be the doctor who wants to put him in a lab and get his blood for what it can do to cure disease or grant immortality. ~ Anne Rice

You know what would be fun?
Nobody wants to play Guitar Hero.
But you can play the Beatles! You loved the Beatles! ~ Amanda Hocking

The past year's natural disasters have highlighted the invaluable contributions of volunteers in our communities. They have volunteered their time, energy and skills to save lives and to rebuild communities. In this they joined countless people around the world who volunteer every day in response to 'silent crises'. These often unsung heroes understand all too well that poverty, disease and famine are just as deadly and destructive as earthquakes, hurricanes and tsunamis. ~ Kofi Annan

In spite of his painful encounters with the world and its problems, Solomon does not recommend either pessimism or cynicism. Rather, he admonishes us to be realistic about life, accept God's gifts and enjoy them. He advises us to trust God and enjoy what we do have rather than complain about what we don't have. ~ Warren W. Wiersbe

There aren't any 'warriors' on a battlefield." Her scornful voice ran on, trembling, in rough Carthaginian, and she let it: "There's you and your buddy, and you and your mates, and you and your boss. A lance. The smallest unit on the field is eight or ten men. Nobody's a hero on their own. One man alone out there is dead meat. ~ Mary Gentle

Christian spirituality combines a sense of the awe and majesty of God with a sense of His intimate presence. ~ N. T. Wright

Maybe it feels easier that way, just being invisible instead of always worrying what people think of you. ~ Leigh Bardugo