Hero Quotes, Sayings
In this article, we explore some of the best hero quotes for inspiration and gratitude.
You’ll find sayings that reflect what it means to be a hero: showing great courage and exhibiting brave character.
So prepare to be inspired, empowered, and challenged — for within these quotes lies the potential to forge your own legend.
Best hero quotes
1. Heroes are ordinary people who make themselves extraordinary.
Gerard Way
2. A hero is someone who has given his or her life to something bigger than oneself.
Joseph Campbell
3. Hard times don’t create heroes. Heroes are people who rise to the occasion and slip quietly away.
Tom Brokaw
4. A hero is an ordinary individual who finds the strength to persevere and endure in spite of overwhelming obstacles.
Christoper Reeve
5. A true hero is not someone who thinks about doing what is right, but one that simply does what is right without thinking.
Kevin Heath
6. I think a hero is any person really intent on making this a better place for all people.
Maya Angelou
7. 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.
Felix Adler
Inspirational hero quotes
8. If you have the courage and you have the heart, that hero just might be you.
Waylon Jennings
9. You want to be a hero? Learn to create certainty in the face of fear.
Tony Robbins
10. Hard times don’t create heroes. It is during the hard times when the ‘hero’ within us is revealed.
Bob Riley
11. My heroes are the ones who survived doing it wrong, who made mistakes, but recovered from them.
Bono
12. The legacy of heroes is the memory of a great name and the inheritance of a great example.
Benjamin Disraeli
13. Be a hero. Always say, ‘I have no fear.’ Tell this to everyone – ‘Have no fear.’
Swami Vivekananda
14. The greatest obstacle to being heroic is the doubt whether one may not be going to prove one’s self a fool; the truest heroism is to resist the doubt; and the profoundest wisdom to know when it ought to be resisted, and when to be obeyed.
Nathaniel Hawthorne
Motivational hero sayings
15. A hero is someone who, in spite of weakness, doubt or not always knowing the answers, goes ahead and overcomes anyway.
Christopher Reeve
16. The real hero is the man who fights even though he is scared.
George S. Patton Jr.
17. The absurd hero’s refusal to hope becomes his singular ability to live in the present with passion.
Albert Camus
18. Sometimes the best heroes are the ones in your head — but that doesn’t make them any less real.
Ashley Poston
19. Without heroes, we are all plain people and don’t know how far we can go.
Bernard Malamud
About leadership
20. A hero is born among a hundred, a wise man is found among a thousand, but an accomplished one might not be found even among a hundred thousand men.
Plato
21. Nurture your minds with great thoughts. To believe in the heroic makes heroes.
Benjamin Disraeli
22. Heroes are not giant statues framed against a red sky. They are people who say: This is my community, and it’s my responsibility to make it better.
Tom McCall
23. I think of a hero as someone who understands the degree of responsibility that comes with his freedom.
Bob Dylan
24. What makes Superman a hero is not that he has power, but that he has the wisdom and the maturity to use the power wisely.
Christopher Reeve
About sacrifice
25. Real heroes are those who risk their lives to save lives.
Mouloud Benzadi
26. The fear of God makes a hero; the fear of man makes a coward.
Alvin C. York
27. Heroes are made in the hour of defeat. Success is, therefore, well described as a series of glorious defeats.
Mahatma Gandhi
28. I am of certain convinced that the greatest heroes are those who do their duty in the daily grind of domestic affairs whilst the world whirls as a maddening dreidel.
Florence Nightingale
How to use these hero quotes and sayings
Use these words of wisdom for your own inspiration or share them with others:
- Create your own inspirational wall art to help you face everyday struggles.
- Send a ‘You are my hero’ quote to a teacher who changed your life.
- Let your mother or father know how important they are as a role model in your life.
- Thank a special doctor or nurse who exemplifies heroism to you.
- Congratulate a student on their achievement.
- Share a thank you with a co-worker or boss who inspires you.
Short hero quotes for Instagram
29. Every man is a hero of his own story.
Brandon Sanderson
30. I went from zero to my own hero.
Katy Perry
31. Self trust is the essence of heroism.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
32. A hero cannot be a hero unless in a heroic world.
Nathaniel Hawthorne
33. Gold is tried by fire, brave men by adversity.
Seneca the Younger
34. Calculation never made a hero.
John Henry Newman
35. Everyone is necessarily the hero of his own life story.
John Barth
Hero captions
36. Not every flying hero has a cape.
Michael Jordan
37. O Hero, what a Hero hadst thou been.
William Shakespeare
38. I think that we all do heroic things, but hero is not a noun, it’s a verb.
Robert Downey, Jr.
39. How important it is for us to recognize and celebrate our heroes and she-roes!
Maya Angelou
40. Heroism is not only in the man, but in the occasion.
Calvin Coolidge
Famous hero quotes
41. True heroism consists in being superior to the ills of life, in whatever shape they may challenge us to combat.
Napoleon Bonaparte
42. Nobody is a villain in their own story. We’re all the heroes of our own stories.
George R.R. Martin
43. 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
44. My heroes are and were my parents. I can’t see having anyone else as my heroes.
Michael Jordan
45. One cannot always be a hero, but one can always be a man.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
46. Those who say that we’re in a time when there are no heroes, they just don’t know where to look.
Ronald Reagan
47. There is what I would call the hero journey, the night sea journey, the hero quest, where the individual is going to bring forth in his life something that was never beheld before.
Joseph Campbell
From movies
48. A hero can be anyone — even a man doing something as simple and reassuring as putting a coat around a young boy’s shoulders to let him know that the world hadn’t ended.
Batman
49. Playing super hero isn’t a game. It’s fate. We choose to do good.
Spiderman
From famous authors
50. In the face of pain there are no heroes.
George Orwell
51. The hero is commonly the simplest and obscurest of men.
Henry David Thoreau
52. Whether I shall turn out to be the hero of my own life, or whether that station will be held by anybody else, these pages must show.
Charles Dickens
53. As you get older it is harder to have heroes, but it is sort of necessary.
Ernest Hemingway
54. A hero is no brave than an ordinary man, but he brave five minutes longer.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
55. Do not let the hero in your soul perish, in lonely frustration for the life you deserved, but have never been able to reach. Check your road and the nature of your battle. The world you desired can be won, it exists, it is real, it’s yours.
Ayn Rand
56. Life is a comedy for those who think and a tragedy for those who feel. Show me a hero and I will write you a tragedy.
F. Scott Fitzgerald
57. The ordinary man is involved in action, the hero acts. An immense difference.
Henry Miller
Funny hero quotes
58. Be your own hero, it’s cheaper than a movie ticket.
Douglas Horton
59. My belt holds my pants up, but the belt loops hold my belt up. I don’t really know what’s happening down there. Who is the real hero?
Mitch Hedberg
60. We can’t all be heroes, because somebody has to sit on the curb and applaud when they go by.
Will Rogers
61. Heroes are not known by the loftiness of their carriage; the greatest braggarts are generally the merest cowards.
Jean-Jacques Rousseau
62. The real hero is always a hero by mistake; he dreams of being an honest coward like everybody else.
Umberto Eco
63. Great heroes need great sorrows and burdens, or half their greatness goes unnoticed.
Peter S. Beagle
Hero love quotes
64. What is a hero without love for mankind.
Doris Lessing
65. Love is a hero’s journey, and the hero’s journey is a noble but difficult path.
Marianne Williamson
66. We relish news of our heroes, forgetting that we are extraordinary to somebody too.
Helen Hayes
We hope you’ve been inspired by these hero quote and sayings. For more positive quotes and sayings, check out the following lists:
By Greg Johnson | Published 1/23/2024
