“Heroes are important not only because they symbolize what we believe to be important, but because they also convey universal truths about personal self-discovery and self-transcendence, one’s role in society, and the relation between the two.”

—  Alan Hirsch

Source: The Faith of Leap (2011), p. 106

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "Heroes are important not only because they symbolize what we believe to be important, but because they also convey univ…" by Alan Hirsch?
Alan Hirsch photo
Alan Hirsch 49
South African missionary 1959

Related quotes

“How important is the realization of personal dignity and self-respect? These are principles whose value is the same as what we believe to be true. Losing self-esteem means losing grip on truth values.”

Titon Rahmawan
Nayef Al-Rodhan photo

“Civilisational triumph is important because if it is not actively sought, conflictual relations between members of geo-cultural domains may become a self-fulfilling prophecy.”

Nayef Al-Rodhan (1959) philosopher, neuroscientist, geostrategist, and author

Source: Sustainable History and the Dignity of Man (2009), p.219

Peter L. Berger photo

“Specific procedures of universe-maintenance become necessary when the symbolic universe has become a problem. As long as this is not the case, the symbolic universe is self-maintaining, that is, self-legitimating by the sheer facticity of its objective existence in the society in question.”

Peter L. Berger book The Social Construction of Reality

1991; 123
The Social Construction of Reality, 1966

“Obviously, I believe that to pursue the American Dream is not only futile but self-destructive because ultimately it destroys everything and everyone involved with it. By definition it must, because it nurtures everything except those things that are important: integrity, ethics, truth, our very heart and soul. Why? The reason is simple: because Life/life is giving, not getting.”

Hubert Selby Jr. Requiem for a Dream

Requiem for a Dream (1978)

Jen Wang photo

“I wrote this book for my teenage self, so it’s all about themes that were important to my young self: questioning your identity and gender, but also your creative aspirations and the person you want to be.”

Jen Wang (1984) American comics artist

On her graphic novel The Prince and the Dressmaker in “Exclusive Interview & Graphic Novel Excerpt: Jen Wang’s The Prince and the Dressmaker” https://www.bookish.com/articles/jen-wang-prince-dressmaker/ in Bookish (2018 Feb 8)

Tenzin Gyatso photo

“The Tibetan state is located between two of the world's great powers, India and China. Good relations between these powers are crucial for world peace. Tibet has an important role to play.”

Tenzin Gyatso (1935) spiritual leader of Tibet

Dalai Lama honours Tintin and Tutu, BBC (Friday, 2 June 2006) http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/5040198.stm

Lee Smolin photo

“If we believe that the task of physics is the discovery of a timeless mathematical equation that captures every aspect of the universe, then we believe that the truth about the universe lies outside the universe.”

Lee Smolin (1955) American cosmologist

Time Reborn: From the Crisis in Physics to the Future of the Universe (2013)

James Baldwin photo

“The roles that we construct are constructed because we feel that they will help us to survive and also, of course, because they fulfill something in our personalities; and one does not, therefore, cease playing a role simply because one has begun to understand it.”

James Baldwin (1924–1987) (1924-1987) writer from the United States

"The Black Boy Looks at the White Boy" in Esquire (May 1961)
Context: The roles that we construct are constructed because we feel that they will help us to survive and also, of course, because they fulfill something in our personalities; and one does not, therefore, cease playing a role simply because one has begun to understand it. All roles are dangerous. The world tends to trap you in the role you play and it is always extremely hard to maintain a watchful, mocking distance between oneself as one appears to be and oneself as one actually is.

Maulana Karenga photo

“We have to distinguish between riots and revolts.… Riots are illegal. A revolt is legitimate because it is what people must do to express self-defense, self-determination, and self-direction.”

Maulana Karenga (1941) Political activist

Black Power Conference (July 1967), quoted in How Newark Became Newark (2009) by Brad Tuttle

“The organism—in isolation nothing but a separate pole of "meaningless" subjective processes—becomes a Self by embarking with others upon the construction of an "objective" and moral universe of meaning. Thereby the organization transcends its biological nature.
It is in keeping with an elementary sense of the concept of religion to call the transcendence of biological nature by the human organism a religious phenomenon. As we have tried to show, this phenomenon rests upon the functional relation of Self and society. We may, therefore, regard the social processes that lead to the formation of Self as fundamentally religious.”

Thomas Luckmann (1927–2016) American-Austrian sociologist

Source: The invisible religion, 1967, p. 48

Related topics