National Hero Quotes

Generally speaking, I think it is unbecoming to act as a national hero, wave hands and so on. ~ Vitaly Scherbo

the Battle of San Juan. Two years later, the regiment held its first reunion, with a grand three-day celebration at Oklahoma City. The young metropolis would show the world that it could do things. There would be visitors from every state. "T. R.," national hero, would attend. A grand display of fireworks, the largest ever seen west of the Mississippi, was ordered. Quanah was besought to bring a troop of Indians for the parade. They would be fed and cared for, paid a small sum, and could see the show. The agent agreed, and there was no difficulty in assembling a troop. The young men gathered their gayest finery and borrowed the carefully saved costumes of their fathers, war bonnets, belts, and beads and feather ornaments. ~ U.C. Berkeley

There's a book that I read, really a great book - it's called 'Lone Survivor' and I think they're trying to make it into a movie. I would love to play Marcus Luttrell, who was the author and the 'lone survivor.' He's a national hero; he's very courageous and heroic in insurmountable danger, so it's something I'd love to explore. ~ Jared Padalecki

Gagarin's death was shameful not just because of the loss of a national hero in muddled circumstances, but because of the dangerous flaws revealed in the Soviet military technology of his time. Obviously their radar systems were not capable of simultaneous mapping of aircraft heights and positions, nor of positively identifying one target from another. The implications of this were highly alarming. ~ Jamie Doran

I'm happier not pretending I know anything about El Cid in Spain. He's a Spanish national hero. I'd rather invent a character inspired by him but clearly not identical to him. And then I feel liberated creatively. ~ Guy Gavriel Kay

America has enjoyed the doubtful blessing of a single-track mind. We are able to accommodate, at a time, only one national hero; and we demand that that hero shall be uniform and invincible. As a literate people we are preoccupied, neither with the race nor the individual, but with the type. Yesterday, we romanticized the "tough guy;" today, we are romanticizing the underprivileged, tough or tender; tomorrow, we shall begin to romanticize the pure primitive. ~ Ellen Glasgow

I do not feel betrayed ... He has a fine record. He is a national hero. (On Oliver L North's work) ~ Ronald Reagan

It is better to have a cat and mouse game where the cat has the upper hand than a cat and mouse game where the mice are ruling. Because the latter means that the market participants are given free range. That was actually the big misconception of our national hero Ronald Reagan, who always talked about the magic of the market. ~ George Soros

All the Chinese have to do is fly around the Moon and back, and they'll appear to have won the return to the Moon with humans. They could put one person on the surface of the Moon for one day and he'd be a national hero. ~ Buzz Aldrin

Our history is stagnating. We can not agree upon national heroes. ~ Ljupka Cvetanova

Walesa was a national hero, a true icon. The vast majority of Poles didn't believe a word the authorities said. They took everything the official media said about Walesa to be a manipulation by the Communist authorities. ~ Slawomir Cenckiewicz

José Martí, born on January 28, 1853, is known as the George Washington of Cuba, or is perhaps better identified with Simon Bolivar, the liberator of South America. Although he admired and visited the United States, José Martí realized that not only would he have to free his country from Spain, he would also have to prevent the United States from interfering in Cuba's internal affairs. By his admirers, he was considered a great Latin American intellectual, and his newspaper Patria became the voice of "Cuban Independence." After years of suppression, the Cuban struggle for independence began in 1868. At the age of 17, José Martí was jailed in Cuba and then exiled to Spain because of his revolutionary activities. It was during this time in his life that he published a pamphlet describing the atrocities he had experienced while being imprisoned in Cuba. He strongly believed in racial equality and denounced the horrors of people having to live under a dictatorship.
In 1878, Martí was allowed to return to Cuba under a general amnesty, but was once again banished from Cuba after being accused of conspiracy against the Spanish authorities. From 1881 to 1895, he lived and worked in New York City. Moving to Florida, he organized forces for a three-pronged attack supporting the smoldering Cuban War of Independence. It was during one of the first battles that he was killed at the Battle of Dos Ríos in Cuba, and thus became a national hero and martyr when he was only 42 years old. ~ Hank Bracker

Greece is internationally famous for three reasons. First it has more islands than people. Second, it used to be a part of Turkey. Third, its national hero, Alexander the Great, was a Yugoslavian. ~ Fatima Bhutto

He had become, through a combination of heritage and character, a keeper of the national conscience. ~ Barbara W. Tuchman

When the spirit is not master of the world, then it is its dupe. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

Because of my own family's service (in the U.S. Army, Navy, and Massachusetts and New York National Guard), I am a strong supporter of the military and do believe that there are just wars. ~ Camille Paglia

The principles of storytelling do not change. Going home. Coming of age. Sin and redemption. The hero. The journey, The power of love. They are hardwired into us, just like our taste buds process sweet, sour, bitter, and salt. Can a new voice come up with something startling and creative and unprecedented? Absolutely. Can they invent a fifth taste? No. No, they can't. Can they make it so we don't like sweet anymore? No, no they can't. ~ Chris Dee

Everyone is waiting for money. National currency is scarce because its creators keep it scarce. So people are experimenting with new ideas for issuing and organising money. ~ John Rogers

Lil Wayne, who is actually responsible for my career has always been a huge influence to me and one of my heroes. ~ Drake

I have a lot of spiritual books that I read that I really, really love - everything from the Bible to Joseph Campbell, who I love. He wrote The Hero of a Thousand Faces. It's about exploring what is heroic in you. It helps me a lot. ~ Viola Davis

He did, in fact, look like a romance hero, all muscles and edges and chiseled bone structure. He also looked miserable. ~ Marissa Meyer

Success rests with having the courage and endurance and, above all, the will to become the person you are, however peculiar that may be. Then you will be able to say, I found my hero and he is me. ~ George A. Sheehan

This was like National Lampoon's Vacation, but with death, property destruction, and an Irish accent. ~ Abigail Roux

The argument could be made that the word 'hero' is overused. I do not think, however, that this is the case when referring to teachers. ~ Steve Maraboli

Every hero is the villain of his own story. ~ Holly Black

If a man marries his housekeeper or his cook, the national dividend is diminished. ~ Arthur Cecil Pigou

Let us pray for ourselves, that we may not lose the word "concern" out of our Christian vocabulary. Let us pray for our nation. Let us pray for those who have never known Jesus Christ and redeeming love, for moral forces everywhere, for our national leaders. Let prayer be our passion. Let prayer be our practice. ~ Robert E.Lee

Cedric smiled and sat back again. 'You only think that because you think heroes always win. Trust me on this one, James. A hero isn't defined by winning. Loads of heroes die in the effort. Most of them never get any recognition. No, a hero is just somebody who does the right thing when it would be far, far easier to do nothing. ~ G. Norman Lippert

I grew up in the North of England at a time when Stirling Moss was a hero. Everyone wanted to be a racing driver. ~ Ridley Scott

Sacrifice doesn't really exist on a national level anymore and that's a pretty new thing - most people aren't engaged nationally in some form of service and that changes the way you think about people in your country; you kind of think of them at a distance. And so there's that shift away from some sort of sacrifice - thinking of yourself as the most important thing in the world versus thinking of yourself as some sort of a whole. ~ Joe Meno

To the Jacobins of this epoch [the French Revolution], as well as to those of our times, this popular entity constitutes a superior personality possessing attributes peculiar to the gods of never having to answer for their actions and never making a mistake. Their wishes must be humbly acceded to. The people may kill, burn, ravage, commit the most frightening cruelties, glorify their hero today and throw him into the gutter tomorrow, it is all the same; the politicians will not cease to vaunt the people's virtues and to bow to their every decision. ~ Gustave Le Bon

You fault me for having standards?' Sebastian countered icily.
'Not at all. I fault you for having two sets of them.'
~ Sebastian, Lord St. Vincent & Cam Rohan. ~ Lisa Kleypas

In ancient mythology," Langdon offered, "a hero in denial is the ultimate manifestation of hubris and pride. No man is more prideful than he who believes himself immune to the dangers of the world. ~ Dan Brown

I'm a political analyst. I'm a political wonk. I read everything I can get my hands on as a contributor to the 'Weekly Standard.' Of course I read that. I read the 'National Review' on the right. I read 'Mother Jones' on the left. If I want a good laugh, I'll watch MSNBC or read 'The Nation.' ~ Michael Ramirez

The War broke out, and our city and country became a part of Hitler's Imperium. For five and a half years we lived in a dimension completely different from that which any literature or experience could have led us to know. What we beheld surpassed the most daring and the most macabre imagination. Descriptions of horrors known to us of old now made us smile at their naivete. German rule in Eu­rope was ruthless, but nowhere so ruthless as in the East, for the East was populated by races which, according to the doctrines of National Socialism, were either to be utterly eradicated or else used for heavy physical labor. The events we were forced to partici­pate in resulted from the effort to put these doctrines into practice.
Still we lived; and since we were writers, we tried to write. True, from time to time one of us dropped out, shipped off to a concentration camp or shot. There was no help for this. We were like people marooned on a dissolving floe of ice; we dared not think of the moment when it would melt away. ~ Czesław Miłosz

Elvis was a major hero of mine. I was probably stupid enough to believe that having the same birthday as him actually meant something. ~ David Bowie

During the rule of the Shah, arrogance, aggression, territorial expansion at the expense of the Arabs and attempts to harm Iraq's national sovereignty and the rights of the Arab nation were a constant pattern. Iraq and the Arab nation were regarded as a sphere of influence for the expansionist plans of Iranian interests. That policy has been followed throughout history by the State of Persia against its neighbours to the west, and as we have shown. ~ Saddam Hussein

Surely, by all convention, the Iliad will end here, with the triumphant return of its vindicated hero. But the Iliad is not a conventional epic, and at the very moment of its hero's greatest military triumph, Homer diverts his focus from Achilles to the epic's two most important casualties, Patroklos and Hektor: it is to the consequences of their deaths, especially to the victor, that all action of the Iliad has been inexorably leading. ~ Caroline Alexander

We all like to believe that we'd be brave. We'd be the hero in the movie, the one who sacrifices himself to save others, the one who does the right thing when the world around him is wrong. In the movie the right choice is clear. And we leave the theater feeling good about ourselves because we can say, Me, I'd do the right thing. No one says, Me, I'd be the coward. Me, I'd rat out my neighbor to save myself. But that's what people do, mostly ~ Jillian Lauren

Fidel Castro, whatever people may think of him, is a hero in Latin America, primarily because he stood up to the United States. ~ Noam Chomsky

A national political campaign is better than the best circus ever heard of, with a mass baptism and a couple of hangings thrown in. ~ H.L. Mencken

Athletes are American princes and the locker room is their castle. Some of them behave in princely fashion, become legitimate heroes to us all. And some are jerks. ~ Anna Quindlen

Charles Laughton, who's a great hero of mine, only ever made one film and it happens to be one of the great films ever, which is 'The Night of the Hunter.' It's full of his kind of imagination and creation and how you do things and just in the way he used the studio, I just thought it was a fantastical way of using the studio. ~ Brian Cox

Maybe it was time to cut the strings of everyone's expectations and free-fall for once in her life ~ Miranda Liasson

Wherever in any society there are too many laws, it is a sure sign that that society will soon die. If you study the characteristics of India, you will find that no nation possesses so many laws as the Hindus, and national death is the result. ~ Swami Vivekananda

It is impossible to determine precisely how many Victorians were dependent on the drug, but since millions used it on a daily basis, the number must have been considerable. The pallor of many women in the middle and upper classes, their frequent lack of appetite, their tendency to faint and to spend considerable time alone in dark rooms, the ornate patterns of overupholstered and overfurnished rooms, the persistently closed, thick draperies - these are evidence of a national dependency that the restraints of Victorian society discouraged anyone from discussing. ~ David Morrell

Our discontent begins by finding false villains whom we can accuse of deceiving us. Next we find false heroes whom we expect to liberate us. The hardest, most discomfiting discovery is that each of us must emancipate himself. ~ Daniel J. Boorstin

I always take hundreds and hundreds of pictures. I used to work for 'National Geographic,' and they gave us a lot of film. ~ Yann Arthus-Bertrand

The battlefields of World War I established the importance of petroleum as an element of national power when the internal combustion machine overtook the horse and the coal-powered locomotive. ~ Daniel Yergin

It is a longstanding principle that sitting national security advisers do not testify before the Congress. ~ Condoleezza Rice

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

Bragging that you finished in two strokes. Just like a man."--Sloane Barrett, Killer Curves ~ Naima Simone

Hatred is not essential for nationalism. Race hatred will kill the real national spirit. ~ Mahatma Gandhi

One half of the world's people live on less than two dollars a day. This should concern our national security policy as well as our conscience. ~ Lee H. Hamilton

Nothing tarnishes a hero as much as failure. ~ George R R Martin

We drove through Utah, the Crossroads of the West, bordered by all the mountain states, except for Montana. Laying rooted in the backcountry we saw some of the most awe-inspiring groove gulleys we'd ever seen, but it was the intensity of Zion National Park that held our attention; The red rock backdrop dazzled us as brutal rapids nose-dived off the cliffs into pools surrounded by abundant green piñon-juniper forests and fiery peach and coral sandstone canyons carved by flowing rivers and streams.

It would honestly not have surprised me to see Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid plunging from an unforgiving precipice into the river below. ~ Karl Wiggins

They say, hell, let the earth become a vast hell destroying killing and setting fire to the buildings of men, to theatres, national assemblies, to museums, libraries, prisons, psychiatric hospitals, old and new, from which they free the slaves. ~ Monique Wittig

I think 'Hero' is not a real martial arts movie; it is not about violence, or formula. ~ Jet Li

You get to thinking of the Earth as an organism, a living thing. You get to worry about it, care for it, wish it well. National boundaries are as invisible as meridians of longitude, or the Tropics of Cancer and Capricorn. The boundaries are arbitrary. The planet is real. Spaceflight, therefore, is subversive. If they are fortunate enough to find themselves in Earth orbit, most people, after a little meditation, have similar thoughts. The nations that had instituted spaceflight had done so largely for nationalistic reasons; it was a small irony that almost everyone who entered space received a startling glimpse of a transnational perspective, of the Earth as one world. It ~ Carl Sagan