"ANDREA: Unhappy the land that has no heroes! . . . GALILEO: No, unhappy the land that needs heroes." - Bertolt Brecht, Life of Galileo

"Show me a hero and I will write you a tragedy." - F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Crack-Up, ed. Edmund Wilson

"Aspire rather to be a hero than merely appear one." - Baltasar Gracian

"Heroes are created by popular demand, sometimes out of the scantiest materials, or none at all." - Gerald W. Johnson, American Heroes and Hero-Worship

"Heroism, the Caucasian mountaineers say, is endurance for one moment more." - George F. Kennan, letter (1921)

"This thing of being a hero, about the main thing to do is to know when to die. Prolonged life has ruined more men than it ever made." - Will Rogers, The Autobiography of Will Rogers

"ANDREA: Unhappy the land that has no heroes!
GALILEO: No, unhappy the land that needs heroes."
- BERTOLT BRECHT, Life of Galileo

"The real hero is always a hero by mistake; he dreams of being an honest coward like everybody else." - UMBERTO ECO, Travels in Hyperreality

"Every hero becomes a bore at last." - RALPH WALDO EMERSON, Representative Men

"A hero cannot be a hero unless in an heroic world." - NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE, Journals

"See the conquering hero comes!
Sound the trumpets, beat the drums!"
- THOMAS MORELL, Judas Maccabaeus