“Of course, Alexander the Great was a hero, but why smash the chairs?”
Epigraph; said of a history teacher who smashed a chair in his excitement when discussing the conqueror
The Inspector General (1836)
Speech http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/commons/1849/feb/01/address-in-answer-to-the-speech in the House of Commons (1 February 1849).
1840s
As quoted in "A Tribute to Yip Harburg: The Man Who Put the Rainbow in the Wizard of Oz" at Democracy Now (25 November 2004) http://www.democracynow.org/2004/11/25/a_tribute_to_yip_harburg_the.
Context: Lives of great men all remind us greatness takes no easy way.
All the heroes of tomorrow are the heretics of today.
Socrates and Galileo, John Brown, Thoreau, Christ, and Debs
Heard the night cry down with traitors, and the dawn shout "Up the reds!"
Source: The Wind in the Willows (1908), Ch. 10, "The Further Adventures Of Toad"
Book II, ch. 3.
Knickerbocker's History of New York http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/13042 (1809)
Guardians of Ayn Rand http://lesswrong.com/lw/m1/guardians_of_ayn_rand/ (December 2007)
“So great that John McCain is coming back to vote. Brave - American hero! Thank you John.”
2010s, 2017, July
Source: Tweet by @realDonaldTrump https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/889798407228989441 (25 July 2017)
Present at the Creation: My Years in the State Department (1969), Purpose of the Book
