Commander Shepard, Mass Effect Series

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

“A hero is someone who understands the responsibility that comes with his freedom.”
– Bob Dylan

“A hero is no braver than an ordinary man, but he is braver five minutes longer.”
– Ralph Waldo Emerson

“The hero draws inspiration from the virtue of his ancestors.”
– Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

“Aspire rather to be a hero than merely appear one.”
– Baltasar Gracian

“A hero is someone who rebels or seems to rebel against the facts of existence and seems to conquer them. Obviously that can only work at moments. It can’t be a lasting thing. That’s not saying that people shouldn’t keep trying to rebel against the facts of existence. Someday, who knows, we might conquer death, disease and war.”
– Jim Morrison

“A hero is someone who has given his or her life to something bigger than oneself.”
– Joseph Campbell

“A hero has faced it all: he need not be undefeated, but he must be undaunted.”
– Andrew Bernstein

“A hero is a man who does what he can.”
– Romain Rolland

“Down these mean streets a man must go who is not himself mean, who is neither tarnished nor afraid. He is the hero, he is everything. He must be a complete man and a common man and yet an unusual man. He must be, to use a rather weathered phrase, a man of honor, by instinct, by inevitability, without thought of it, and certainly without saying it. He must be the best man in his world and a good enough man for any world.”
– Rebecca Harding Davis

“The prudent see only the difficulties, the bold only the advantages, of a great enterprise; the hero sees both; diminishes the former and makes the latter preponderate, and so conquers.”
– Johann Kaspar Lavater

“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

“The ordinary man is involved in action, the hero acts. An immense difference.”
– Henry Miller

“Who is a hero? He who conquers his urges.”
– The Talmud

“To be a hero or a heroine, one must give an order to oneself.”
– Simone Weil

“It doesn’t take a hero to order men into battle. It takes a hero to be one of those men who goes into battle.”
– Norman Schwarzkopf

“The real hero is always a hero by mistake; he dreams of being an honest coward like everybody else”
– Umberto Eco

“Nothing is given to man on earth – struggle is built into the nature of life, and conflict is possible – the hero is the man who lets no obstacle prevent him from pursuing the values he has chosen.”
– Andrew Bernstein

“That’s what it takes to be a hero, a little gem of innocence inside you that makes you want to believe that there still exists a right and wrong, that decency will somehow triumph in the end.”
– Lise Hand