I don't want to be considered a hero. Imagine young people would grow up with the feeling that you have to be a hero to do your human duty. I am afraid nobody would ever help other people, because who is a hero? I was not. I was just an ordinary housewife and secretary.

I'm not a do-gooder. It embarrassed me to be classified as a humanitarian. I simply take part in activities that I believe in.

Eugene Dubois is no hero in my book, if only because I share the spirit of his unorthodoxies, but disagree so strongly with his version, and regard his supporting arguments as so weakly construed and so willfully blind to opposing evidence (the dogmatist within is always worse than the enemy without).

Without heroes, we're all plain people, and don't know how far we can go.

Why are you all like this?” Evans suddenly became furious. “Why does one have to save people to be considered a hero? Why is saving other species considered insignificant? Who gave humans such high honors? No, humans do not need saving. They’re already living much better than they deserve.

Wars do not make heroes of everyone.

I do not believe that I am made of the stuff which constitutes heroes, because, in all of the hundreds of instances that my voluntary acts have placed me face to face with death, I cannot recall a single one where any alternative step to that I took occurred to me until many hours later.

Birdie cringed. If there was one thing worse than being a coward, it was being mistaken for a hero.

I detest common heroes and moderate feelings, the sort that exist in real life

MY REGRETS ARE ABOUT THE PEOPLE I COULDN’T SAVE — Marines, soldiers, my buddies. I still feel their loss. I still ache for my failure to protect them.

I'm not really the heroic type. I was beat up by Quakers.

He was, then, a hero. He suffered that disappointment which we would all have if we discovered that we were ourselves capable of those deeds which we most admire in history and legend. This, then, was a hero. After all, heroes were not much.

"Daddy, were you a hero?" And he answered, "No, but I served with heroes."

I may not be a hero, but I'm not the fourteen-year-old H. P. Lovecraft either. Dealing with eldritch horrors is part of my day job. It’s not even as bad as the paperwork, for the most part.