Hero Worship Quotes

• Hero-worship is strongest where there is least regard for human freedom.

  Herbert Spencer

  Hero, Political, Atheism

  Herbert Spencer (1873). “Social Statics; Or, The Conditions Essential to Human Happiness Specified, & the First of Them Developed”, p.461

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• Hero-worship exists, has existed, and will forever exist, universally, among mankind.

  Thomas Carlyle

  Hero, Forever, Worship

  Thomas Carlyle (1848). “Past and Present: Chartism, and Sartor Resartus”

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• Celebrity-worship and hero-worship should not be confused. Yet we confuse them every day, and by doing so we come dangerously close to depriving ourselves of all real models. We lose sight of the men and women who do not simply seem great because they are famous but are famous because they are great. We come closer and closer to degrading all fame into notoriety.

  Daniel J. Boorstin

  Sports, Confused, Real

  Daniel J. Boorstin (1962). “The Image or What Happened to the American Dream”

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• We find not much in ourselves to admire, we are always privately wanting to be like somebody else. If everybody was satisfied with himself, there would be no heroes

  Mark Twain

  Hero, Would Be, Admire

  Mark Twain (2012). “Mark Twain at Your Fingertips: A Book of Quotations”, p.254, Courier Corporation

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• 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

  Hero, Men, Light

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• 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

  Hero, Men, Thinking

  Lillian Hellman (1944). “The Searching Wind: A Play in Two Acts”, New York : The Viking Press

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• Our heroes are men who do things which we recognize, with regret, and sometimes with a secret shame, that we cannot do.

  Mark Twain

  Regret, Hero, Men

  Mark Twain (2012). “Mark Twain at Your Fingertips: A Book of Quotations”, p.254, Courier Corporation

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• 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

  Hero, Character, Men

  Sydney J. Harris (1976). “Best of Sydney J. Harris”

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• True heroism is remarkably sober, very undramatic. It is not the urge to surpass all others at whatever cost, but the urge to serve others at whatever cost.

  Arthur Ashe

  Memorial Day, Courage, Hero

  "Worth Repeating: More Than 5,000 Classic and Contemporary Quotes" by Bob Kelly, p. 169, 2003.

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• If everyone was satisfied with himself, there would be no heroes.

  Mark Twain

  Inspirational, Motivational, Hero

  Mark Twain (2012). “Mark Twain at Your Fingertips: A Book of Quotations”, p.254, Courier Corporation

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• Unconsciously we all have a standard by which we measure other men, and if we examine closely we find that this standard is a very simple one, and is this: we admire them, we envy them, for great qualities we ourselves lack. Hero worship consists in just that. Our heroes are men who do things which we recognize, with regret, and sometimes with a secret shame, that we cannot do. We find not much in ourselves to admire, we are always privately wanting to be like somebody else. If everybody was satisfied with himself, there would be no heroes.

  Mark Twain

  Regret, Hero, Simple

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• I have always been a friend to hero-worship; it is the only rational one, and has always been in use amongst civilized people - the worship of spirits is synonymous with barbarism - it is mere fetish. ... There is something philosophic in the worship of the heroes of the human race.

  George Henry Borrow

  Hero, Race, People

  George Henry Borrow (1852). “Roving Adventures, Or Lavengro: The Scholar - the Gipsy - the Priest”, p.138

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• 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

  Uplifting, Believe, Hero

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• The cause of the spinning wheel is too great and too good to have to rest on mere hero-worship.

  Mahatma Gandhi

  Hero, Spinning, Causes

  Mahatma Gandhi (1958). “Collected Works”

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• The true university of these days is a collection of books.

  Thomas Carlyle

  Book, Library, These Days

  On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic "The Hero as Man of Letters" (1841)

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• We are all alike, on the inside.

  Mark Twain

  Inspiration, Equality, Humanity

  Mark Twain (1940). “Mark Twain in eruption: hitherto unpublished pages about men and events”, Harper & Brothers

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• The kind of hero worship you have, when a parent is lost early and you don't know all their faults and misgivings, is a very strong influence.

  Keri Russell

  Strong, Hero, Worship You

  Source: collider.com

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• Hero-worship is the deepest root of all; the tap-root, from which in a great degree all the rest were nourished and grown . . . Worship of a Hero is transcendent admiration of a Great Man. I say great men are still admirable; I say there is, at bottom, nothing else admirable! No nobler feeling than this of admiration for one higher than himself dwells in the breast of men.

  Thomas Carlyle

  Hero, Men, Roots

  Thomas Carlyle (1840). “On Heroes, Hero-worship and the Heroic in History”, p.14, CUP Archive

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• Not hero worship, but intimacy with Christ.

  Dietrich Bonhoeffer

  Hero, Worship, Christ

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• Worship of a hero is transcendent admiration of a great man.

  Thomas Carlyle

  Hero, Men, Admiration

  Thomas Carlyle (1846). “On Heroes, Hero-worship, & the Heroic in History: Six Lectures ; Reported, with Emendations and Additions”, p.10

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

  Napoleon Hill

  Hero, Ideas, Helpful

  Napoleon Hill (2007). “The Prosperity Bible: The Greatest Writings of All Time on the Secrets to Wealth and Prosperity”, p.81, Penguin

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• The cynicism that regards hero worship as comical is always shadowed by a sense of physical inferiority

  Yukio Mishima

  Hero, Inferiority, Worship

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• Like a lot of people, I had this naive hope that Barack Obama would fix everything quickly. You know, the culture of celebrity in this country leads us away from democratic ways of thinking and into this hero worship. And so of course, one man cannot swoop in and fix everything on his own. It's much more complicated and difficult than that, and progressives in this country since then have had to come to terms with the fact that we need to do more than actually get out of our house and vote. It's an ongoing process to turn the tide.

  Ani DiFranco

  Country, Hero, Men

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• 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.

  Hero, Men, Average

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• Society is founded on hero-worship.

  Thomas Carlyle

  Hero, Worship

  Thomas Carlyle (1869). “Heroes and Hero-worship”, p.15

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