A hero is someone who understands the responsibility that comes with his freedom.

- Bob Dylan

I don't believe in war as a solution to any kind of conflict, nor do I believe in heroism on the battlefield because I have never seen any.

- Thor Heyerdahl

We don't set out to save the world; we set out to wonder how other people are doing and to reflect on how our actions affect other people's hearts.

- Pema Chodron

To be a hero or a heroine, one must give an order to oneself.

- Simone Weil

A hero is no braver than an ordinary man, but he is brave five minutes longer.

- Ralph Waldo Emerson

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

A hero is an ordinary individual who finds the strength to persevere and endure in spite of overwhelming obstacles.

- Christopher Reeve

When leaders take back power, when they act as heroes and saviors, they end up exhausted, overwhelmed, and deeply stressed.

- Margaret J. Wheatley

The greatest personalities that ever existed have been those who united human beings and put them on the road toward cooperation and effectiveness and peace. Those whom the world has held highest have helped to unite and not sever interconnectedness. They have not been the destroyers of differences but the harmonizer of differences.

- John Lovejoy Elliott

The hero is one who kindles a great light in the world, who sets up blazing torches in the dark streets of life for men to see by. The saint is the man who walks through the dark paths of the world, himself a light.

- Felix Adler

The search after the great men is the dream of youth, and the most serious occupation of manhood.

- Ralph Waldo Emerson

Unhappy the land that needs heroes.

- Bertolt Brecht

A hero cannot be a hero unless in a heroic world.

- Nathaniel Hawthorne

To go against the dominant thinking of your friends, of most of the people you see every day, is perhaps the most difficult act of heroism you can perform.

- Theodore H. White