Quotes about hero (1127 quotes, page 8)

“There is, I am convinced, a sea of goodwill out in the country of people and places yearning to help. We need to tap into it. We need to make that connection. We need to come up with new ways and new ideas to make life better for those affected by this war, so that kids can go to school, incomes can be sustained, and homes can be both purchased and lived in for a long time. The truth is, we live in deeds, not days; in actions and thoughts and feelings, not heartbeats. If the untimely battlefield deaths of generations of American heroes have taught us nothing else, it should be this unalterable fact: what you do with your time here on earth is far more important than the time you had to do it. Those who live most are those who love most, who act the noblest and do their best.”

Michael Mullen (1946) U.S. Navy admiral and 17th Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff

From Op-Ed "Memorial Day" (26 May 2008)

Love , Life , Death , War

“He has wasted the day, he tells himself, he has wasted the day as he has wasted so many days of his life … while that huge work with which he has cheated himself, that enormous novel which would lift him at a bound from the impasse in which he stifles, whose dozens of characters would develop a vision of life in bountiful complexity, lies foundering, rotting on a beach of purposeless effort. Notes here, pages there, it sprawls through a formless wreck of incidental ideas and half-episodes; utterly without shape. He is not even a hero for it.”

Norman Mailer (1923–2007) American novelist, journalist, essayist, playwright, film maker, actor and political candidate

Source: The Man Who Studied Yoga (1956), Ch. 5

Life , Idea , Effort , Cheating

“It was not only that I could not become spiteful, I did not know how to become anything; neither spiteful nor kind, neither a rascal nor an honest man, neither a hero nor an insect. Now, I am living out my life in my corner, taunting myself with the spiteful and useless consolation that an intelligent man cannot become anything seriously, and it is only the fool who becomes anything.”

Fyodor Dostoyevsky book Notes from Underground

Part 1, Chapter 1 (page 8)
Notes from Underground (1864)

Life , Fools , Intelligence

“The Homeric hero becomes a split-man as he assumes an individual ego.”

Marshall McLuhan (1911–1980) Canadian educator, philosopher, and scholar-- a professor of English literature, a literary critic, and a …

Source: 1960s, The Gutenberg Galaxy (1962), p. 58

“Competition has been curtailed by larger corporations; it has been sabotaged by groups of smaller entrepreneurs acting collectively. Both groups have made clear the locus of liberalism's rhetoric of small business and family farm.The character and ideology of the small entrepreneur and the facts of the market are selling the idea of competition short. These liberal heroes, the small businessmen and the farmer, do not want to develop their characters by free and open competition; they do not believe in competition, and they have been doing their best to get away from it.When the small businessmen are asked whether they think free competition is…a good thing, they answer…, 'Yes, of course—what do you mean?' … Finally: 'How about here in this town in furniture?'—or groceries, or whatever the man's line is. Their answers are of two sorts: 'Yes, if it's fair competition,' which turns out to mean: 'if it doesn't make me compete.' … The small businessman, as well as the farmer, wants to become big, not directly by eating up others like himself in competition, but by the indirect ways means practiced by his own particular heroes—those already big. In the dream life of the small entrepreneur, the sure fix is replacing the open market.But if small men wish to close their ranks, why do they continue to talk…about free competition? The answer is that the political function of free competition is what really matters now…[f]or, if there is free competition and a constant coming and going of enterprises, the one who remains established is 'the better man' and 'deserves to be where he is.' But if instead of such competition, there is a rigid line between successful entrepreneurs and the employee community, the man on top may be 'coasting on what his father did,' and not really be worthy of his hard-won position. Nobody talks more of free enterprise and competition and of the best man winning than the man who inherited his father's store or farm. …… In Congress small-business committees clamored for legislation to save the weak backbone of the national economy. Their legislative efforts have been directed against their more efficient competitors. First they tried to kill off the low-priced chain stores by taxation; then they tried to eliminate the alleged buying advantages of mass distributor; finally they tried to freeze the profits of all distributors in order to protect their own profits from those who could and were selling goods cheaper to the consumer.The independent retailer…has been pushing to maintain a given margin under the guise of 'fair competition' and 'fair-trade' laws. He now regularly demands that the number of outlets controlled by chain stores be drastically limited and that production be divorced from distribution. This would, of course, kill the low prices charged consumers by the A&P;, which makes very small retail profits, selling almost at cost, and whose real profits come from the manufacturing and packaging.…Under the threat of 'ruinous competition,' laws are on the books of many states and cities legalizing the ruin of competition.”

C. Wright Mills book White Collar: The American Middle Classes

Section One: The Competitive Way of Life.
White Collar: The American Middle Classes (1951)

Life , Men , Books , Family

“p>Time's right-hand man, the sea
Laughs as in joy
From his millions of wrinkles:
Laughs that his destiny,
Great with the greatness
Of triumphing order,
Shows as a dwarf
By the strength of his heart
And the might of his hands.Master of masters,
O maker of heroes,
Thunder the brave,
Irresistible message: —
'Life is worth Living
Through every grain of it,
From the foundations
To the last edge
Of the cornerstone, death.”

William Ernest Henley (1849–1903) English poet, critic and editor

</p>
Source: Poems (1898), Rhymes And Rhythms, XIV

Life , Death , Time , Heart

“There is a proper role for referendums in constitutional change, but only if done properly. If it is not done properly, it can be a dangerous tool. The Chairman of the Public Administration Committee, who is no longer in the Chamber, said that Clement Attlee—who is, I think, one of the Deputy Prime Minister's heroes—famously described the referendum as the device of demagogues and dictators. We may not always go as far as he did, but what is certain is that pre-legislative referendums of the type the Deputy Prime Minister is proposing are the worst type of all. ¶ Referendums should be held when the electorate are in the best possible position to make a judgment. They should be held when people can view all the arguments for and against and when those arguments have been rigorously tested. In short, referendums should be held when people know exactly what they are getting. So legislation should be debated by Members of Parliament on the Floor of the House, and then put to the electorate for the voters to judge. ¶ We should not ask people to vote on a blank sheet of paper and tell them to trust us to fill in the details afterwards. For referendums to be fair and compatible with our parliamentary process, we need the electors to be as well informed as possible and to know exactly what they are voting for. Referendums need to be treated as an addition to the parliamentary process, not as a substitute for it.”

David Davis (1948) British Conservative Party politician and former businessman

House of Commons Debates (Hansard), 26 November 2002, column 201 https://www.theyworkforyou.com/debates/?id=2002-11-26.201.7
On democracy and referendums

People , Thinking , Change , Housing

“Utu, I greet you! Let me be ill no longer! Hero, 's son, I greet you! Let me be ill no longer! Utu, you have let me come up into the mountains in the company of my brothers. In the mountain cave, the most dreadful spot on earth, let me be ill no longer! Here where there is no mother, there is no father, there is no acquaintance, no one whom I value, my mother is not here to say "Alas, my child!" My brother is not here to say "Alas, my brother!" … Don't make me flow away like water in a violent death! Don't make me eat saltpetre as if it were barley! Don't make me fall like a throw-stick somewhere in the desert unknown to me! Afflicted with a name which excites my brothers' scorn, let me be ill no longer! Afflicted with the derision of my comrades, let me be ill no longer! Let me not come to an end in the mountains like a weakling!”

Lugalbanda

In Lugalbanda in the Mountain Cave, Ur III Period (21st century BCE). http://etcsl.orinst.ox.ac.uk/cgi-bin/etcsl.cgi?text=t.1.8.2.1#

Death , Mountain , Affliction , Water

“Things were easier for the old novelists who saw people all of a piece. Speaking generally, their heroes were good through and through, their villains wholly bad.”

W. Somerset Maugham (1874–1965) British playwright, novelist, short story writer

"1922", p. 196
A Writer's Notebook (1946)

People

“For the Norse people, the Man now named Odin, and Chief Norse God, we fancy, was such a man. A Teacher, and Captain of soul and of body; a Hero, of worth immeasurable; admiration for whom, transcending the known bounds, became adoration. Has he not the power of articulate Thinking; and many other powers, as yet miraculous? So, with boundless gratitude, would the rude Norse heart feel. Has he not solved for them the sphinx-enigma of this Universe; given assurance to them of their own destiny there? By him they know now what they have to do here, what to look for hereafter. Existence has become articulate, melodious by him; he first has made Life alive!—We may call this Odin, the origin of Norse Mythology: Odin, or whatever name the First Norse Thinker bore while he was a man among men. His view of the Universe once promulgated, a like view starts into being in all minds; grows, keeps ever growing, while it continues credible there. In all minds it lay written, but invisibly, as in sympathetic ink; at his word it starts into visibility in all. Nay, in every epoch of the world, the great event, parent of all others, is it not the arrival of a Thinker in the world—!”

Thomas Carlyle (1795–1881) Scottish philosopher, satirical writer, essayist, historian and teacher

1840s, Heroes and Hero-Worship (1840), The Hero as Divinity

Life , Men , God , People

“If the hero join combat with night and conquer it, may shreds of it remain upon him!”

Jean Genet book The Thief's Journal

The Thief's Journal (1949)

Night

“If the movements of reflection in classical philosophy could be depicted in the structure of Homer's Odysseus, in which a wandering hero returns home via a thousand false paths across the whole world, in order there to be recognized by his woman, that is, by his "soul," then the reflections of modern thinking in no way still find their way back "home." They either move on the spot in essenceless flurries, drained of experience, or they drift on, like the eternal Jew or the Flying Dutchman, without hope of arriving, through the perpetually alien. … For the modern subject, a "vagabond in existence," there is no longer any return home.”

Peter Sloterdijk (1947) German philosopher

Source: Kritik der zynischen Vernunft [Critique of Cynical Reason] (1983), p. 538

World , Hope , Way , Home

“He swore repeatedly, ever the more violently the unsteadier his legs became, but to steel his senses he kept his mind fixed persistently on the world-famous battles of the rhymes. He recited the most powerful passages one after another over and over again, dwelling especially on the devilish heroes, Grimur Ægir and Andri. It was Grimur he was fighting now, he thought... but now an end would be put to the deadly feud, for now the stage was set for the final struggle.”

Halldór Laxness (1902–1998) Icelandic author

Sjálfstætt fólk (Independent People) (1935), Book One, Part I: Icelandic Pioneers

World , Sense , Fight

“The logic which declares Tengiri to be a satan and denounces Chengiz Khan as an archcriminal but which, in the same breath, proclaims Allah as divine and hails the Ghaznavis, Ghuris, Timurs and Baburs as heroes, is, to the say the least, worse than casuistry.”

Sita Ram Goel book The Calcutta Quran Petition

The Calcutta Quran Petition (1986)

“The rather more dubious side of Nietzsche's 'evolutionism' is his glorification of the warrior -- particularly when, as an exemplification of the warrior-hero, he chooses an archetypal 'spoilt brat' like Cesare Borgia. Nietzsche's own physical weakness and consequent inability to escape the atmosphere of the study leads him to take a rather unrealistic view of the man of action.”

Colin Wilson (1931–2013) author

Source: Rudolf Steiner: The Man and His Vision (1985), p. 87

Study

“The Sun editorial on Roosevelt this morning begins: "Franklin D. Roosevelt was a great man."… The argument, in brief, is that all his skullduggeries and imbecilities were wiped out when "he took an inert and profoundly isolationist people and brought them to support a necessary war on a scale never before imagined." In other words, his greatest fraud was his greatest glory, and his sufficient excuse for all his other frauds. It seems to me to be very likely that Roosevelt will take a high place in American popular history -- maybe even alongside Washington and Lincoln… He had every quality that morons esteem in their heros. It will be to the interest of all his heirs and assigns to whoop him up, and they will probably succeed in swamping his critics.”

H.L. Mencken (1880–1956) American journalist and writer

April 13, 1945
1940s–present, The Diary of H.L. Mencken (1989)

War , People , Imagination , History

“Ask any British journalist who were their editor-heroes over the last 30 or 40 years and two names keep recurring. One is Harry Evans. The other is Hugh Cudlipp. Why were they so admired? Because they seemed to represent the best of journalistic virtues – courage, campaigning, toughness, compassion, humour, irreverence; a serious engagement with serious things; a sense of fairness; an eye for injustice; a passion for explaining; knowing how to achieve impact; a connection with readers. Even if you missed their editorships – as I did with Hugh Cudlipp – both men wrote inspiring books about journalism: about how to do it, but, more importantly, about why it mattered.”

Alan Rusbridger (1953) British newspaper editor

Source: 2010s, Does journalism exist? (2010), p. 1.

Men , Books , Courage , Sense

“Let us call our man, the hero of this story, Kingbitter. We imagine a man, and a name to go with him. Or conversely, let us imagine the name, and the man to go with it.”

Imre Kertész (1929–2016) Hungarian writer

Liquidation (2003)

Imagination

“When the two Regts. were panic-stricken they [his command] stood by me like heroes … Would I abandon men who showed themselves willing to give their own lives to save mine?”

Charles P. Mattocks (1840–1910) American soldier, lawyer and politician

Speaking of the 17th Main Volunteer Infantry Regiment in a letter to his mother, in [Kanisorn Wongsrichanalai, Northern Character: College-Educated New Englanders, Honor, Nationalism, and Leadership in the Civil War Era, https://books.google.com/books?id=cFMnDAAAQBAJ&pg=PA160, 2016, Oxford University Press, 978-0-8232-7181-8, 160–]

Men

“I was cast opposite multiple heroes and as luck would have it, the chemistry worked with most.”

Hema Malini (1948) Indian actress, dancer and politician

In page=1977
MOTHER MAIDEN MISTRESS

“John Osborne spoke out in a vein of ebullient, free-wheeling rancour that betokened the arrival of something new in the theatre – a sophisticated, articulate lower-class. Most of the critics were offended by Jimmy Porter, but not on account of his anger; a working-class hero is expected to be angry. What nettled them was something quite different: his self-confidence. This was no envious inferior whose insecurity they could pity.”

John Osborne (1929–1994) English playwright

Kenneth Tynan, Tynan Right and Left (1967) p. 13
Criticism

Confidence , Self-confidence , Anger

“Even the British Arthur becomes an Englishman, a Germanic hero, brave, daring and open-handed. We are in a world of feasts and vaunting speeches, flytings and lusty battles, fierce deeds and bloody humour, with the Fiend, the Adversary of Man, always round the next corner.”

Layamon (1200) English poet

Gwyn Jones, in Wace and Layamon (trans. Eugene Mason) Arthurian Chronicles (London: Dent, [1912] 1976) p. xi.
Criticism

World

“When somebody takes a stand for principles, no matter what side they are on, they have my admiration. And when they take a stand for principles of freedom and refusing o give up your constitutional rights, then I think the guy is kind of a modern American hero.”

Bill Whittle (1959) author, director, screenwriter, editor

"Hot Mic - Jamey Johnson Stands His Ground" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=idR9QPbdXJo (26 July 2017)
2010s

Guy , Thinking , Freedom

“Richard Burton was Welsh; Tom Jones is Welsh, and we Welshmen like to think of ourselves as heroes - on screen and off!”

Timothy Dalton (1944) British actor of stage, film and television

On the land of his birth. [Several Interviews with Timothy Dalton on his 007 portrayal, including Introducing Timothy Dalton by Glenn Fuller in Prevue Magazine., http://www.geocities.com/Hollywood/Film/7518/Bond_Eng/Bond_Eng.htm, http://web.archive.org/20000304095759/www.geocities.com/Hollywood/Film/7518/Bond_Eng/Bond_Eng.htm, 2000-03-04].
Attributed

Thinking

“Of passions under complete control, this hero [Pandu], O Madri, had all along been watched by me with care. How did he then forgetting the Rishi's curse, approach thee with enkindled desire? O Madri, this foremost of men should have been protected by thee. Why didst thou tempt him into solitude? Always melancholy at the thought of the Rishi's curse, how came he to be merry with thee in solitude? O princess of Valhika, more fortunate than myself, thou art really to be envied, for thou hast seen the face of our lord suffused with gladness and joy.”

Kunti character from Indian epic Mahabharata

Kunti in grief on seeing her husband dead during an intercourse with Madri
The Mahabharata/Book 1: Adi Parva/Section CXXV

Men , Art , Solitude , Passion

“The bottom line is the American people are capable of determining their own heroes — ideals for heroes — and they don't need to be told elaborate lies.”

Jessica Lynch (1983) Recipient of the Purple Heart medal

Congressional testimony (2007)

People

“Tony Fernández, who has worn hero's laurels throughout the postseason, including earlier in this seventh game of the World Series—now, cruel as it may seem, perhaps being fitted for goat horns.”

Bob Costas (1952) American sportscaster

Calling a miscue by Cleveland Indians second baseman Tony Fernández in the 11th inning of Game 7 of the 1997 World Series, ultimately won by the Florida Marlins.

World , Game

“Gone with the Wind, Four Weddings and a Funeral, Notting Hill, they all should have had the hero cut down by a Dalek, and they would've been vastly improved really.”

Russell T. Davies (1963) Screenwriter, former executive producer of Doctor Who

Doctor Who Confidential Series 4, Episode 12, "Friends and Foe" http://www.bbc.co.uk/doctorwho/s4/confidential/S4_12 (Doctor Who documentary series, 2005)

Wedding

“Could it be … that the hero is one who is willing to set out, take the first step, shoulder something? Perhaps the hero is one who puts his foot upon a path not knowing what he may expect from life but in some way feeling in his bones that life expects something of him.”

P. L. Travers (1899–1996) Australian-British novelist, actress and journalist

"The World of the Hero" (1976)

Life , Way , Feeling

“Within a surprisingly short space of time, however, the fortunes of the neo-roman theory began to decline and fall. … One reason for this collapse was that the social assumptions underlying the theory began to appear outdated and even absurd. With the extension of the manners of the court to the bourgeoisie in the early eighteenth century, the virtues of the independent country gentleman began to look irrelevant and even inimical to a polite commercial age. The hero of the neo-roman writers came to be viewed not as plain-hearted but as rude and boorish; not as upright but as obstinate and quarrelsome; not as a man of fortitude but of mere insensibility.”

Quentin Skinner (1940) British historian

Source: Liberty Before Liberalism (1998), pp. 96-97

Age , Appearance , Time , Heart

“It is better, a thousand-fold, for a proud man to fall and be humbled, than to hold up his head in his pride and fancied innocence. I learned that he that will be a hero, will barely be a man; that he that will be nothing but a doer of his work, is sure of his manhood.”

George MacDonald book Phantastes

Phantastes (1858)

Learning

“Greek and Roman mythology had never been a favourite subject of mine at school, but as I grew older I began to appreciate the legends and realize that they contained a vivid world of adventure with wonderful heroes, villains and, most importantly, lots of fantastic creatures.”

Ray Harryhausen (1920–2013) American animator

Source: An Animated Life (2003), p. 151

World , School

“The sages and heroes of history are receding from us, and history contracts the record of their deeds into a narrow and narrower page. But time has no power over the name and deeds and words of Jesus Christ.”

William Ellery Channing (1780–1842) United States Unitarian clergyman

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), p. 61

History , Time , Christ

“Goodnight then: sleep to gather strength for the morning. For the morning will come. Brightly will it shine on the brave and true, kindly upon all who suffer for the cause, glorious upon the tombs of heroes. Thus will shine the dawn. Vive la France! Long live also the forward march of the common people in all the lands towards their just and true inheritance, and towards the broader and fuller age.”

Winston S. Churchill book The Second World War

Radio broadcast, London, Dieu Protège La France [God protect France], October 21, 1940 ( partial text http://www.churchill-society-london.org.uk/LaFrance.html).
The Second World War (1939–1945)

People , Age , Sleep , Suffering

“Day was breaking on the world. Light, hope, and freedom pierced with vitalizing ray the clouds and the miasma that hung so thick over the prostrate Middle Age, once noble and mighty, now a foul image of decay and death. Kindled with new life, the nations gave birth to a progeny of heroes, and the stormy glories of the sixteenth century rose on awakened Europe. But Spain was the citadel of darkness,—a monastic cell, an inquisitorial dungeon, where no ray could pierce. She was the bulwark of the Church, against whose adamantine wall the waves of innovation beat in vain.”

Francis Parkman (1823–1893) American historian

Pt. I, Ch. 7
Pioneers of France in the New World (1865)

Life , Death , Age , World

“Do you know what I think of history? … For a while I thought history was something that bitter old men wrote. But Jack loved history so… No one'll ever know everything about Jack. But … history made Jack what he was … this lonely, little sick boy … scarlet fever … this little boy sick so much of the time, reading in bed, reading history … reading the Knights of the Round Table … and he just liked that last song.
Then I thought, for Jack history was full of heroes. And if it made him this way, if it made him see the heroes, maybe other little boys will see. Men are such a combination of good and bad … He was such a simple man. But he was so complex, too. Jack had this hero idea of history, the idealistic view, but then he had that other side, the pragmatic side… his friends were all his old friends; he loved his Irish Mafia.”

Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis (1929–1994) public figure, First Lady to 35th U.S. President John F. Kennedy

The "Camelot" interview (29 November 1963)

Love , Men , Way , History

“Yet there is one achievement we should note. The ghastly Saddam, the most revolting dictator in the Arab world, who does indeed use heinous torture and has indeed used gas, is now leading a country that is fighting the world's only superpower and that has done so for almost two weeks without surrendering. Yes, General Tommy Franks has accomplished one "truly remarkable achievement". He has turned the monster of Baghdad into the hero of the Arab world and allowed Iraqis to teach every opponent of America how to fight their enemy.”

Robert Fisk (1946) English writer and journalist

The monster of Baghdad is now the hero of Arabia http://www.robert-fisk.com/articles202.htm, April 1, 2003
2003

World , Fight , Country

“Treasure! That word, which had always been so exciting, meant something different now. Fafnir had taken the treasure and turned from man into monster because of his greed for it. Mimir, who had been Sigurd’s master and good friend—when the treasure had lain before him, he, too, became a monster, in another way. Then Sigurd had made his choice, to leave the evil, and so he had gone away a hero.”

Andre Norton (1912–2005) American writer of science fiction and fantasy

Source: Dragon Magic (1972), Chapter 3, “Sirrush-Lau” (p. 64)

Way , Evil

“[Elizabeth Moon's] antagonists are always evil moustache-twirlers. She could write a book about a golf open and the main rival to the hero would turn out to have clubs made from compressed kittens.”

James Nicoll (1961) Canadian fiction reviewer

[efprv2$bpa$1@reader1.panix.com, 2006]
2000s

Books , Evil

“The practice of perseverance is the discipline of the noblest virtues. To run well, we must run to the end. It is not the fighting but the' conquering that gives a hero his title to renown.”

Elias Lyman Magoon (1810–1886) American minister

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 450.

Fight , Perseverance

“Bob: Adolph Hitler was never excommunicated as a Catholic for his crimes against the Jews. Instead, the Vatican considered him to be a hero.”

Jack T. Chick (1924–2016) Christian comics writer

Chick tracts, " Holocaust http://www.chick.com/reading/tracts/0054/0054_01.asp" (1984)

“[C]onsider, humbly, that had we been there, few of us would have been among the heroes who, at great risk to themselves, sheltered Jews and other victims or joined the forces opposing Hitler and the Nazis. Very few of us indeed.”

Robert P. George (1955) American legal scholar

2018, On Holocaust Remembrance Day (2018)

“The soft seduction of consumer global capitalism reduce the nations of the West to a rootless mass of Americanised consumers, without identity, without pride and without a future. Children identify with the grotesque and vulgar instead of noble heroes and beautiful princesses in castles. Teenagers ape the antics of degenerate pop-stars whose example leads hundreds of thousands into the living death of drug addiction, not to mention the tragedy of the image conscious girls (mainly) who feel compelled to starve themselves to get "the look" and of course the spiralling number of abortions. Adults perform meaningless jobs, in conditions of mind-destroying boredom, to earn enough money to buy the latest needlessly created want to be pushed on television as the thing without which their neighbours will regard them as worthless failures. Old folk die unnoticed and lie rotting for weeks, even months, in barred and bolted flats in inhuman tower blocks, unofficial prisons which become tombs for those who no longer have any economic value. Do not be fooled by the glossy packaging of the consumer society. Where state socialism was a creed of terror and stagnation, capitalism is one of apathy and death.”

Nick Griffin (1959) British politician

Nick Griffin, The Deadly Twins.

Death , Money , Children , Lie

“People see him as a hero. Not just in Zimbabwe or here in Zambia but across the whole of southern Africa. It's no good demonising Robert Mugabe.”

Kenneth Kaunda (1924) First President of Zambia

Mugabe's hold on Africans, BBC News, 25 August 2007 http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programmes/from_our_own_correspondent/6960506.stm,

People

“That explains why it is the seer and not the scholar who has all along dominated the scene in Sanãtana Dharma. That explains why it is the saint and not the pandit who has always sat at the centre of Hindu society. That explains why it is the mystic and not the man of letters who has ruled the roost in Hindu culture. The most honoured names in Hindu history, above even those of the heroes, are the names of seers, sages, saints, and mystics - Vyasa, Valmiki, Yajnavalkya, the Buddha, Bhagvan Mahavira, Shankara, Ramanuja, Gorakhnath, Kabir, Nanak, Tulsidas, Mira, Ramakrishna, Raman - to mention only the most notable in a galaxy of great names.”

Sita Ram Goel (1921–2003) Indian activist

Defence of Hindu Society (1983)

History

“The hero withdrew and betook himself for a space to his companions, waiting.”
Cessit et ad socios paulum se rettulit heros opperiens.

Gaius Valerius Flaccus book Argonautica

Source: Argonautica, Book VII, Lines 614–615

Waiting

“I dream of cloisters of marble
where in divine silence
the heroes, standing, rest;
at night, in light of the soul,
I speak with them: at night!
They are in a row: I walk
among the rows: the stone hands
I kiss them;
the stone eyes open;
the stone lips move;
the stone beards tremble;
they seize the sword of stone; they cry:
place the sword in the sheath!
Mute, I kiss their hand.”

José Martí (1853–1895) Poet, writer, Cuban nationalist leader

Sueño con claustros de mármol
donde en silencio divino
los héroes, de pie, reposan;
¡de noche, a la luz del alma,
hablo con ellos: de noche!
Están en fila: paseo
entre las filas: las manos
de piedra les beso: abren
los ojos de piedra: mueven
los labios de piedra: tiemblan
las barbas de piedra: empuñan
la espada de piedra: lloran:
¡viba la espade en la vaina!
Mudo, les beso la mano.
Simple Verses (1891), I dream of cloisters of marble

Dreams , Soul , Kiss , Light

“"Heroj Tito, druže Tito, naš Tito!" [Hero Tito, Comrade Tito, our Tito! ]. This impressed itself on me because we had heard this slogan from the Italian fascists when they shouted, "Duce a noi!" [The Duce is ours! ]. I was astonished how they could permit it.”

Enver Hoxha (1908–1985) the Communist leader of Albania from 1944 until his death in 1985, as the First Secretary of the Party of L…

Enver Hoxha (1986) The Artful Albanian, (Chatto & Windus, London), ISBN 0701129700
Writings, The Artful Albanian

“Wars may make heroes of men, but not all the time.”

Jane Yolen book Briar Rose

Source: Briar Rose (1992), Chapter 25 (p. 146)

Men , War , Time

“Mother Teresa is a true daughter of the Church in having her mind and heart closed to the religions of the countries of her labour, even adoption. Sometime back, some European Vedantists learning that she was at the Vatican went there to pay their respects. She rebuked them for "betraying Christ". Let me clarify the point a little further by bringing in Sister Nivedita. She is a lady Hindus are proud of. She helped India by helping it to rediscover itself. No higher service could be rendered to a nation in the grip of self-forgetfulness. She stood for national justice for India and she helped us by giving us national pride. This explains why Sister Nivedita is Hindu India's hero. This also explains why Western nations shower praise and money on Mother Teresa while Sister Nivedita remained unsung in the West and there were no contributions from that quarter even for her purely humanitarian work, like education and child care and relief work which she did with no less dedication, sympathy and loving care.”

Ram Swarup (1920–1998) Indian historian

Quoted from Catholic Ashrams by S.R. Goel, Appendix V.

Love , Money , Education , Religion

“"But if armies turn / an heroes disappear / if it's us now / who start making war / don't smile, the shoots above / are for you!"
(from Gli Spari Sopra, 1993)”

Vasco Rossi (1980) Italian singer-songwriter

Song lyrics

War , Smile

“I can never join with my voice in the toast which I see in the papers attributed to one of our gallant naval heroes. I cannot ask of heaven success, even for my country, in a cause where she should be in the wrong. Fiat justitia, pereat coelum. My toast would be, may our country always be successful, but whether successful or otherwise, always right.”

John Quincy Adams (1767–1848) American politician, 6th president of the United States (in office from 1825 to 1829)

Letter to his father, John Adams (1 August 1816), referring to the popular phrase "My Country, Right or Wrong!" based upon Stephen Decatur's famous statement "Our Country! In her intercourse with foreign nations may she always be in the right, but our country, right or wrong." The Latin phrase is one that can be translated as : "Let justice be done though heaven should fall" or "though heaven perish".

Success , Country

“I've always believed that any instrumentalist is basically just an accompanist to the singer and the words. That's born out of being a fan of records before I was a fan of guitar players -- I'm interested in melody, lyrics, and the overall song. I don't like to waste notes, not even one. Who was it that said, "The reason why all those guitar players play so many notes is because they can't find the right one"? I like to put the right note in the right place, and my influences have always been those kinds of players. Keith Richards comes to mind, and I really like Nils Lofgren's soloing, because he's so melodic. I love John Lennon's rhythm playing, and George Harrison was an incredible guitarist.
There's a lot of guitar culture that I don't like at all. I find the traditional idea of the guitar hero to be really irrelevant to the 1990s. I don't think that young people are that impressed with some guy brandishing Spandex trousers and a hideously shaped guitar, playing that kind of masturbatory, egotistical noise. Being a soloist who wants to just display virtuosity is a dated philosophy, and I don't think there's any room for it in pop music. It's the last stand of late-'60s/early-'70s rockism, and it should have gone a long time ago.”

Johnny Marr (1963) musician

from an interview by Joe Gore, Guitar Player(January 1990).

Love , People , Music , Guy

“Never run against a war hero.”

Adlai Stevenson (1900–1965) mid-20th-century Governor of Illinois and Ambassador to the UN

Response when asked if he had any advice to give to a young politician, quoted in "History Remembers…Adlai Stevenson" by Maureen Zebian in The Epoch Times (4 November 2004) http://en.epochtimes.com/news/4-11-4/24153.html

War

“The DPRK derives its legitimacy from the myth that the anti-Japanese hero Kim Il Sung was all right-thinking citizens' choice as the man to found and lead the new Korea after liberation in 1945… Until the mid-1960s the USSR was credited with defeating Japan, but since then propaganda has claimed that Kim and his guerillas freed the race on their own. That this is known to be untrue by those who lived through the time is of minor importance. The painful historical reality of mass collaboration (and the military insignificance of all armed Korean resistance to colonial rule) is precisely what made the Kim myth so attractive.”

Brian Reynolds Myers (1963) American professor of international studies

2010s, North Korea's State Loyalty Advantage (December 2011)

Pain , Thinking , Reality , Time

“He's just really unlikely as a hero — which makes him so brilliant, I think, because he's like this mad professor.”

Karen Gillan (1987) Scottish actress and former model

On the Doctor in Doctor Who Rewind (2011) by BBC America

Thinking , Madness

“But ne'er the subject of your work proclaim
In its own colors and its genuine name;
Let it by distant tokens be conveyed,
And wrapped in other words, and covered in their shade.
At last the subject from the friendly shroud
Bursts out, and shines the brighter from the cloud;
Then the dissolving darkness breaks away,
And every object glares in open day.
Thus great Ulysses' toils were I to choose
For the main theme that should employ my Muse,
By his long labors of immortal fame
Should shine my hero, but conceal his name;
As one who, lost at sea, had nations seen,
And marked their towns, their manners, and their men,
Since Troy was leveled to the dust by Greece—
Till a few lines epitomized the piece.”
Jam vero cum rem propones, nomine nunquam Prodere conveniet manifesto: semper opertis Indiciis, longe et verborum ambage petita Significant, umbraque obducunt: inde tamen, ceu Sublustri e nebula, rerum tralucet imago Clarius, et certis datur omnia cernere signis. Hinc si dura mihi passus dicendus Ulysses, Non ilium vero memorabo nomine, sed qui Et mores hominum multorum vidit et urbes Naufragus, eversae post saeva incendia Trojae, Addam alia, angustis complectens omnia dictis.

Marco Girolamo Vida (1485–1566) Italian bishop

Book II, line 40
De Arte Poetica (1527)

Men , Color , Distant , Sea

“I don't consider myself a politician or a hero. I'm a messenger. If Cambodia is to survive, she needs many voices.”

Dith Pran (1942–2008) Cambodian photojournalist

Hero of the Cambodian 'Killing Fields', Dith Pran, dies of cancer at 65, 2008-03-31, 2008-03-31, Daily Mail http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/worldnews.html?in_article_id=550228&in_page_id=1811,

“Vienna. It means nothing to me but to Orson Welles, it was the setting for one of his finest performances - and a place to get huge plates of cheap rich food. I followed the footsteps of my hero, which are still visible in the concrete, to the world famous Ferris wheel.”

Derren Brown (1971) British illusionist

TV Series and Specials (Includes DVDs), Trick of the Mind (2004–2006)

World , Food

“Such is the content of the mental life of the Hemingway hero and the good guy in general. Every day he gets beaten into a servile pulp by his own mechanical reflexes, which are constantly busy registering and reacting to the violent stimuli which his big, noisy, kinesthetic environment has provided for his unreflective reception.”

Marshall McLuhan (1911–1980) Canadian educator, philosopher, and scholar-- a professor of English literature, a literary critic, and a …

Eye Appeal, p. 79-80
1950s, The Mechanical Bride (1951)

Life , Guy , Business

“For, by the logic of Concord, Lexington, and Bunker Hill, and by the principles enforced by this nation in its boasted Declaration of Independence, Capt. Brown was a hero, struggling against fearful odds, not for his own advantage, but to redeem others from a horrible bondage, to be justified in all that he aimed to achieve, however lacking in sound discretion. And by the same logic and the same principles, every slave-holder has forfeited his right to live, if his destruction be necessary to enable his victims to break the yoke of bondage; and they, and all who are disposed to aid them by force and arms, are fully warranted in carrying rebellion to any extent, and securing freedom at whatever cost.”

William Lloyd Garrison (1805–1879) American journalist

No. 170 (28 October 1859)
The Liberator (1831 - 1866)

Fear , Freedom

“At 20, reflecting on Cus D'Amato: "Cus was my father but he was more than a father. You can have a father and what does it mean?—it doesn't really mean anything. Cus was my backbone…. He did everything for my best interest…. We'd spend all our time together, talk about things that, later on, would come back to me. Like about character, and courage. Like the hero and the coward: that the hero and the coward both feel the same thing, but the hero uses his fear, projects it onto his opponent, while the coward runs. It's the same thing, fear, but it's what you do with it that matters.”

Mike Tyson (1966) American boxer

http://www.usfca.edu/~southerr/boxing/tyson.html
On his family

Fear , Feeling , Courage , Time

“I think Stone Mountain is amusing, but then again I find most representations of Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson outside of Virginia, and, in Jackson's case, West Virginia, to be amusing. Aside from a short period in 1861-62, when Lee was placed in charge of the coastal defense of South Carolina and Georgia, neither general stepped foot in Georgia during the war. Lee cut off furloughs to Georgia's soldiers later in the war because he was convinced that once home they’d never come back. He resisted the dispatch of James Longstreet's two divisions westward to defend northern Georgia, and he had no answer when Sherman operated in the state. It would be better to see Joseph E. Johnston and John Bell Hood on the mountain, although it probably would have been difficult to get those two men to ride together. Maybe Braxton Bragg would have been a better pick, but no one calls him the hero of Chickamauga. Yet Bragg, Johnston, and Hood all attempted to defend Georgia, and they are ignored on Stone Mountain. So is Joe Wheeler, whose cavalry feasted off Georgians in 1864. So is John B. Gordon, wartime hero and postwar Klansman. Given Stone Mountain's history, Klansman Gordon would have been a good choice. It's also amusing to see Jefferson Davis represented. Yes, Davis came to Georgia, once to try to settle disputes within the high command of the Army of Tennessee, not a rousing success, and once to rally white Georgians to the cause once more after the fall of Atlanta. But any serious student of the war knows that Davis spent much of his presidency arguing with Georgia governor Joseph Brown about Georgia's contribution to the Confederate war effort, and that the vice president of the Confederacy, Georgia's own Alexander Hamilton Stephens, was not a big supporter of his superior. Yet we don't see Brown or Stephens on Stone Mountain, either.”

Jefferson Davis (1808–1889) President of the Confederate States of America

Brooks D. Simpson, "The Future of Stone Mountain" https://cwcrossroads.wordpress.com/2015/07/22/the-future-of-stone-mountain/ (22 July 2015), Crossroads, WordPress

Men , War , Home , History

“Heroing is one of the shortest-lived professions there is.”

Will Rogers (1879–1935) American humorist and entertainer

Nationally syndicated column number 114, Monuments Are All Right But Even Heroes Must Eat (1925).
Weekly columns

“The rank of men, as established by the concurrent judgement of ages stands thus: heroes, legislators, orators, and poets. The most useful and, in my opinion, the most honourable is the legislator, which so far from being incompatible with the profession of law, is congenial to it. Generally, mankind admire most the hero; of all, the most useless, except when the safety of the nation demands his saving arm.”

Henry Lee III (1756–1818) American politician, governor and representative

Letter to his son, Charles Carter Lee, as quoted in R.E.Lee: A Biography (1934) by Douglas Southall Freeman, Vol. I, p.32.

Men , Age , Law

“Official history has been tampered with in the most extraordinary way, so that we continue to see the world in the child-like simplicity of good and evil, heroes and villains. The world is rarely like that. Therefore the need to create opposing "sides" and encourage conflict becomes essential.”

David Icke (1952) English writer and public speaker

"...and the truth shall set you free", pg.127

World , Way , History , Evil

“We call him a hero who maintains himself, single-handed, against superior numbers. We call him a master-horseman who sits a fiery and vicious steed, guiding him at will. And in like manner, we call him a moral hero who conquers the enemies within his own breast — and we admire and revere the soul which can ride its own passions and force them into obedience to the dictates of reason.”

Felix Adler (1851–1933) German American professor of political and social ethics, rationalist, and lecturer

Section 4 : Moral Ideals
Founding Address (1876), Life and Destiny (1913)

Soul , Passion

“This book is not about heroes. English poetry is not yet fit to speak of them.
Nor is it about deeds, or lands, nor anything about glory, honour, might, majesty, dominion, or power, except War.
Above all I am not concerned with Poetry.
'My subject is War, and the pity of War.
The Poetry is in the pity.
Yet these elegies are to this generation in no sense consolatory. They may be to the next. All a poet can do today is warn. That is why the true Poets must be truthful.”

Wilfred Owen (1893–1918) English poet and soldier (1893-1918)

Draft for a preface http://www.oucs.ox.ac.uk/ltg/projects/jtap/tutorials/intro/owen/preface.html to a collection of war poems he hoped to publish in 1919 (c. May 1918) and used in Poems of Wifred Owen (Memoir and notes).ed Edmund Blunden (1933).Chatto & Windus 1964.ASIN: B000GLY9CI

War , Truth , Books , Sense

“There is but one alternative for Turkey. Either African barbarism, under Arabian direction, will burst around its head like an avalanche, or else it must re-establish strong leadership, thus putting twenty million heroes between itself and Africa and gaining a breathing spell for the accomplishment of its social regeneration.”

Recep Tayyip Erdoğan (1954) 12th President of Turkey from 2014

As said during the EU-Turkey Summit

Strong

“(About Cesare Borgia) What cruelties were not the result of his? Who could count all his crimes? Such was the man that Machiavel prefers to all the great geniuses of his time, and to the heroes of antiquity, and of which he finds the life and action make a good example for those that fortune favors.”

Frederick II of Prussia book Anti-Machiavel

Source: Anti-Machiavel, Chapter VII

Life , Time

“Idea for movie: alcohol-based LXG-style crossover in which buddy heroes Jack Daniels and Jim Beam sail around the world with Captain Morgan. Jack's girlfriend is called Midori and she likes having sex on the beach. Their smartmouth talking pet is the Famous Grouse.”

Ben Croshaw (1983) English video game journalist

2 June 2011
Twitter

Alcohol , World , Sex , Idea

“… For ancient heroes the exhaustive method is possible: all that can be known of them is contained in a few short passages of Greek and Latin, and it is quite possible to say whatever can be said about every one of these; the result would not be unreasonably bulky, though it might be dull. But in the case of men who have lived in the thick of the crowded modern world, no such course is admissible; overmuch may be said, and we must choose what we will say. Biographers, however, are rarely bold enough to adopt the selective method consistently. They have, we suspect, the fear of the critics before their eyes.”

Walter Bagehot (1826–1877) British journalist, businessman, and essayist

[ART. VII—John Milton, National Review, July 1859, 9, 150–186, https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=mdp.39015027193559;view=1up;seq=161] (quote from p. 151)
John Milton (1859)

Men , World , Fear

“Even in my childhood my sympathy for the heroes in the fairy tales was always keenest at the moment when they waved their hands in farewell and turned their faces at last towards the magical adventures that stalked about impatiently awaiting their advent in the strange countries where their havens lay.”

Elizabeth Bisland Whetmore (1861–1929) American writer and journalist

Seven Stages: A Flying Trip Around the World http://digital.library.upenn.edu/women/bisland/stages/stages.html

Childhood , Country

“So great that John McCain is coming back to vote. Brave - American hero! Thank you John.”

Donald J. Trump (1946) 45th President of the United States of America

2010s, 2017, July
Source: Tweet by @realDonaldTrump https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/889798407228989441 (25 July 2017)

“Both Abrams and Westmoreland would have been judged as authentic military "heroes" at a different time in history. Both men were outstanding leaders in their own right and in their own way. They offered sharply contrasting examples of military leadership, something akin to the distinct differences between Robert E. Lee and Ulysses S. Grant of our Civil War period. They entered the United States Military Academy at the same time in 1932- Westmoreland from a distinguished South Carolina family, and Abrams from a simpler family background in Massachusetts- and graduated together with the Class of 1936. Whereas Westmoreland became the First Captain (the senior cadet in the corps) during their senior year, Abrams was a somewhat nondescript cadet whose major claim to fame was as a loud, boisterous guard on the second-string varsity football squad. Both rose to high rank through outstanding performance in combat command jobs in World War II and the Korean War, as well as through equally commendable work in various staff positions. But as leaders they were vastly different. Abrams was the bold, flamboyant charger who wanted to cut to the heart of the matter quickly and decisively, while Westmoreland was the more shrewdly calculating, prudent commander who chose the more conservative course. Faultlessly attired, Westmoreland constantly worried about his public image and assiduously courted the press. Abrams, on the other hand, usually looked rumpled, as though he might have slept in his uniform, and was indifferent about his appearance, acting as though he could care less about the press. The sharply differing results were startling; Abrams rarely receiving a bad press report, Westmoreland struggling to get a favorable one.”

Bruce Palmer Jr. (1913–2000) United States Army Chief of Staff

Source: The 25-Year War: America's Military Role in Vietnam (1984), p. 134

Men , War , World , Family

“By reason of Arthur's position as its climax as well as of the long line of other traditional heroes, events and associations, and of its breadth of treatment, simplicity, intensity, enthusiasm, accord with the supernatural, vitality of imagination, elevation and sometimes nobility and religious feeling, the poem is the nearest thing we have to a traditional racial epic.”

Layamon (1200) English poet

J. S. P. Tatlock The Legendary History of Britain (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1950) p. 485.
Criticism

Feeling , Imagination

“The moral hero, guided as he or she is by the ethical experience, who carves out an adventurous path is akin to the discoverer who brings order into the scattered elements of a science or the artist who composes a piece of music or designs buildings.”

Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan (1888–1975) Indian philosopher and statesman who was the first Vice President and the second President of India

Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy

Music , Science

“You may glory in a team triumphant, but you fall in love with a team in defeat. Losing after great striving is the story of man, who was born to sorrow, whose sweetest songs tell of saddest thought, and who, if he is a hero, does nothing in life as becomingly as leaving it.”

Roger Kahn (1927–2020) American baseball writer

Source: The Boys Of Summer, Lines On The Transpontine Madness, p. xii

Love , Life

“Thus fought the heroes, tranquil their admirable hearts, violent their swords, resigned to kill and to die.”

Jorge Luis Borges (1899–1986) Argentine short-story writer, essayist, poet and translator, and a key figure in Spanish language literature

The Garden of Forking Paths (1942), The Garden of Forking Paths

Heart

“A spear carrier is somebody who stands in the hall when Caesar passes, comes to attention and thumps his spear. A spear carrier is the anonymous character cut down by the hero as he advances to save the menaced heroine. A spear carrier is a character put in a story to be used like a piece of disposable tissue. In a story, spear carriers never suddenly assert themselves by throwing their spears aside and saying, “I resign. I don’t want to be used.“ They are there to be used, either for atmosphere or as minor obstacles in the path of the hero. The trouble is that each of us is his own hero, existing in a world of spear carriers. We take no joy in being used and discarded. I was finding then, that wet, chilly, unhappy night, that I took no joy in seeing other people used and discarded.””

Alexei Panshin book Rite of Passage

Source: Rite of Passage (1968), Chapter 18 (p. 222).

People , World , Joy , Night

“I stand in this parking lot, realizing that I've never been this far from home, and here is this girl I love and cannot follow. I hope this is the hero's errand, because not following her is the hardest thing I've ever done.”

John Green book Paper Towns

Quentin "Q" Jacobsen, p. 304
Paper Towns (2008)

Love , Hope , Home , Girl

“I am proud to say I am a BJP person. I believe in BJP. Narendra Modi is the voice of the nation … He is my action hero. He is a visionary person.”

Pahlaj Nihalani

On his political leaning, " I am proud to say I am a BJP person. I believe in BJP. Narendra Modi is the voice of the nation ... He is my action hero. He is a visionary person http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/entertainment/hindi/bollywood/news/Im-proud-to-be-a-BJP-man-and-Narendra-Modi-is-my-action-hero-new-censor-board-chief-Pahlaj-Nihalani-says/articleshow/45956537.cms" The Times of India (20 January 2015)

Personality

“No man is a hero to his wife's psychiatrist.”

Eric Berne (1910–1970) Canadian psychiatrist

Quoted in a review of Berne's book Sex in Human Loving (1963), "Talks on Sex by the Gamesman" http://books.google.com/books?id=jVMEAAAAMBAJ&lpg=RA1-PA16&dq=LIFE%20Dec%2018%2C%201970&pg=RA1-PA7#v=onepage&q=berne&f=false by David Reuben, M.D., Life, Vol. 69, No. 25, 18 December 1970.

“Economists are generally negligent of their heroes.”

John Kenneth Galbraith (1908–2006) American economist and diplomat

Source: The Age of Uncertainty (1977), Chapter 1, p. 27

“As things stand now the feudal lords are content to look on while the shogunate carries on in a highhanded manner. Neither the lords nor the shogun can be depended upon, and so our only hope lies in grass-roots heroes.”

Yoshida Shoin (1830–1859) Japanese politician

Vol. V.
Yoshida Shoin Zenshu

Hope , Grass , Dependency

“We don’t need any more heroes; we just need someone to take out the recycling.”

Banksy pseudonymous England-based graffiti artist, political activist, and painter

Wall and Piece (2005)

“In a way, these people have a point. My family name is only Escudero. I don’t have the same pedigree of Quezon, Roxas, or Osmeña families, of those who have become presidents, heroes or wealthy philanthropists. The Senate is the highest elected position that someone from my family has ever reached, and even this, I never imagined I might achieve.”

Francis Escudero (1969) Filipino politician

2015, Speech: Declaration as Vice Presidential Candidate

People , Family , Way , Imagination

“In the black sky no star is seen,
somewhere in ambush lurks the Angel of Death,
but the spices tongues of the masqueraders
are loose and shameless
A shout:
"Make way for the hero!"
Ah yes. Displacing the tall one,
he will step forth now without fail
and sing to us about holy vengeance…”

Anna Akhmatova (1889–1966) Russian modernist poet

Poem without a Hero (1963)

Death , Angels , Way , Star

“Almost all medieval Muslim historians credit their heroes with desecration of Hindu idols and/or destruction of Hindu temples. The picture that emerges has the following components, depending upon whether the iconoclast was in a hurry on account of Hindu resistance or did his work at leisure after a decisive victory:
1. The idols were mutilated or smashed or burnt or melted down if they were made of precious metals.
2. Sculptures in relief on walls and pillars were disfigured or scraped away or torn down.
3. Idols of stone and inferior metals or their pieces were taken away, sometimes by cartloads, to be thrown down before the main mosque in (a) the metropolis of the ruling Muslim sultan and (b) the holy cities of Islam, particularly Mecca, Medina and Baghdad.
4. There were instances of idols being turned into lavatory seats or handed over to butchers to be used as weights while selling meat.
5. Brahmin priests and other holy men in and around the temple were molested or murdered.
6. Sacred vessels and scriptures used in worship were defiled and scattered or burnt.
7. Temples were damaged or despoiled or demolished or burnt down or converted into mosques with some structural alterations or entire mosques were raised on the same sites mostly with temple materials.
8. Cows were slaughtered on the temple sites so that Hindus could not use them again.”

Sita Ram Goel (1921–2003) Indian activist

Hindu Temples – What Happened to Them, Volume I (1990)

Men , Decision , Victory , Dependency

“You seek life, and a godly fire
Gushes and gleams for you out of the earth,
As, with shuddering long, you
Hurl yourself down to the flames of the Etna. So by a queen's wanton whim
Pearls were dissolved in wine- heed her not!
What folly, poet, to cast your riches
Into that bright and bubbling cup! Yet still are you holy to me, as the might of the earth
That bore you away, audaciously perishing!
And I would follow the hero into the depths
Did love not hold me.”

Friedrich Hölderlin (1770–1843) German poet

"Empedokles"

Love , Life , Wine

“A hero is a goddam stupid thing to have in the first place and a general block to anything you might wanta accomplish on your own.”

Lester Bangs (1948–1982) American music critic and journalist

"Let Us Now Praise Famous Death Dwarves" (March 1975), p. 173
Psychotic Reactions and Carburetor Dung (1988)

Stupidity

“Sheryl's heroes are in black and white photos, and so are mine.”

John Mayer (1977) guitarist and singer/songwriter

Mayer on why he agreed to tour with Sheryl Crow, despite the fact that he considers her more established and successful
Mervis, Scott (2006). "Music Preview: John Mayer takes strides with new record" http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/06236/715835-42.stm Post-Gazette.com (accessed August 23, 2006)

Photo

“Men who have sacrifice their well-being, and even their lives, for the cause of truth or the public good, are, from an empirical point of view - which scorn ("fait fi", Fr.) virtue and altruism - regarded as insane or fools; but, from a moral standpoint, they are heros who do honour ("qui honorent", Fr.) humanity.”

African Spir (1837–1890) Russian philosopher

Source: Words of a Sage : Selected thoughts of African Spir (1937), p. 38.

Men , Truth , Fools

“Grandstanding leaders never deliver, their fury mounts and mounts, and nevertheless they turn out every two years to return their right-wing heroes to office for a second, a third, a twentieth try. The trick never ages; the illusion never wears off. Vote to stop abortion; receive a rollback in capital gains taxes. Vote to make our country strong again; receive deindustrialization. Vote to screw those politically correct college professors; receive electricity deregulation. Vote to get government off our backs; receive conglomeration and monopoly everywhere from media to meatpacking. Vote to stand tall against terrorists; receive Social Security privatization. Vote to strike a blow against elitism; receive a social order in which wealth is more concentrated then ever before in our lifetimes, in which workers have been stripped of power and CEOs are rewarded in a manner beyond imagining.”

Thomas Frank book What's the Matter with Kansas?

Ibid. (p. 7).
What's the Matter with Kansas? (2004)

Age , Imagination , Strong , Country

“On a more personal note, I see many similarities between India's Dalit problems and the African-American problems that have rocked the US since its beginnings. For this reason, I personally take Dr. Ambedkar as one of my heroes.”

David Mumford (1937) American mathematician

David Mumford. " 'All men are created equal'? http://www.dam.brown.edu/people/mumford/blog/2015/AllMen.html," at dam.brown.edu/people/mumford/blog, June 16, 2015.

Problem , Personality