Sporting Hero Quotes

The needs of a society determine its ethics, and in the Black American ghettos the hero is that man who is offered only the crumbs from his country's table but by ingenuity and courage is able to take for himself a Lucullan feast. Hence the janitor who lives in one room but sports a robin's-egg-blue Cadillac is not laughed at but admired, and the domestic who buys forty-dollar shoes is not criticized but is appreciated. We know that they have put to use their full mental and physical powers. Each single gain feeds into the gains of the body collective.

The Director of the US Marshals Service, who does not like Pack: “Seems to me Simon Pack’s a grandstander. I remind you I’m a West Pointer myself. I remember his ill-fated year as Superintendent, acting as if he were MacArthur incarnate. The All-America player in a couple sports, the man in the College Football Hall of Fame; the Governor of a small state; the leader of a constitutional convention. And yeah, he was also a hobo, maybe the biggest grandstand move he ever undertook.

In the sweep of its appeal, its ability to touch every corner of humanity, football is the only game that needed to be invented.

26 Thought-Provoking Questions: 1. if you could own any single object that you don't have now, what would it be? 2. if you could have one superpower, what would it be? 3. if you could meet anyone in history, who would you choose and what would you ask them? 4. if you could add one person to your family, who would it be? 5. if you could be best friends with anyone in the world, who would you pick? 6. if you could change anything about your face, what would it be 7. if you could change anything about your parents, what would it be? 8. if you could fast-forward your life, how old would you want to be and why? 9. what is the one object you own that matters more to you than anything else? 10. what is the one thing in the world that you are most afraid of? 11. if you could go to school in a foreign country, which one would you pick? 12. if you had the power to drop any course from your curriculum, what would it be? 13. if you caught your best friend stealing from you, what would you do? 14. if you had a chance to spend a million dollars on anything but yourself, how would you spend it? 15. if you could look like anyone you wanted, who would that be? 16. if you were a member of the opposite sex, who would you want to look like? 17. if you could change your first name, what name would you chose? 18. what's the best thing about being a teen? 19. what's the worst? 20. if someone you like asked you out on a date, but your best friend had a crush on this person, what would you do? 21. what is the worst day of the week? 22. if you had to change places with one of your friends, who would you chose? 23. if you could be any sports hero, who would you like to be? 24. what's the one thing you've done in your life that you wish you could do over differently? 25. what would you do if you found a dollar in the street? what if you found $100? $10,000? 26. if you had a chance to star in any movie, who would you want as a costar?

Over time, a subtle cancer spread: where you have more experts, you create more bystanders. Professionals did all the fighting and fixing we used to handle ourselves; they even took over our fun, playing our sports while we sat back and watched.

One of the greatest tragedies of growing up is the discovery that your parents- and your teachers, and your sports heroes, and your favorite actors, singers, YouTube sensations- are fallible. Adults don't know all, and what they do know, they often won't tell you- because they've got their own agendas, or because they want to shield you from the hard truths "for your own good." Adults lie, they betray, they screw up in every way possible...

But what's left on earth that I haven't tried?" Prince Lír demanded. "I have swum four rivers, each in full flood and none less than a mile wide. I have climbed seven mountains never before climbed, slept three nights in the Marsh of the Hanged Men, and walked alive out of that forest where the flowers burn your eyes and the nightingales sing poison. I have ended my betrothal to the princess I had agreed to marry — and if you don't think that was a heroic deed, you don't know her mother. I have vanquished exactly fifteen black knights waiting by fifteen fords in their black pavilions, challenging all who come to cross. And I've long since lost count of the witches in the thorny woods, the giants, the demons disguised as damsels; the glass hills, fatal riddles, and terrible tasks; the magic apples, rings, lamps, potions, swords, cloaks, boots, neckties, and nightcaps. Not to mention the winged horses, the basilisks and sea serpents, and all the rest of the livestock." He raised his head, and the dark blue eyes were confused and sad. "And all for nothing," he said. "I cannot touch her, whatever I do. For her sake, I have become a hero — I, sleepy Lír, my father's sport and shame — but I might as well have remained the dull fool I was. My great deeds mean nothing to her.

Growing old is an unwinnable campaign. During this war we witness ugly scenes. Truths mutate to whims. Faith becomes cynical transactions between liars. Sacrifices turn out to be needless excesses. Heroes become old farts, and young farts become heroes. Ethics become logos on sports clothing.

This kiss was different from the first one under the olive tree. That one had been unplanned, she was pretty sure. This kiss had intention and hunger branded all over it. It was like one of those kisses you read about in fairy tales—but Alana had never imagined that such a kiss could cause bone-trembling shivers as well as bliss. She’d never considered the downside of the awakening kiss, of how the princess felt when the hero tore through the thorns or scaled the tower and speared heat and sex and life-changing energy into the princess’s world.

I don't think there's any heroism anymore. The heroism has to be created out of the medium itself. Going back to the idea of television, all the current heros are sports heros because the medium creates the heros. There's nothing essentially heroic about being a good pitcher.

He feels a little better while watching the guy on TV or thinking of him. Still, he feels insignificant. He has a few heroes whom he sees on other TV shows: sports figures, a tough cop or a late-night talk show host. He lives vicariously through all of them. Unbeknownst

The needs of a society determine its ethics, and in the Black American ghettos the hero is that man who is offered only the crumbs from his country's table but by ingenuity and courage is able to take for himself a Lucullan feast. Hence the janitor who lives in one room but sports a robin's-egg-blue Cadillac is not laughed at but admired, and the domestic who buys forty-dollar shoes is not criticized but is appreciated. We know that they have put to use their full mental and physical powers. Each single gain feeds into the gains of the body collective.

I was in Christopher Columbus, and sported its blue badge with great pride. It took me many years to understand or truly believe that Columbus was actually Italian. Even to this day I can’t fully accept it. Why would a school in the heart of England choose a foreign hero? Perhaps they were unaware of his nationality themselves. It was common knowledge that the British discovered everything – trains, democracy, television, printing, jets, hover-crafts, the telephone, penicillin, the flush lavatory and Australia, so it was reasonable to assume Christopher Columbus must have been a Briton.

They agreed it was wrong to throw the stick, but insisted that Chase couldn’t have predicted it would result in serious injury. Ha! The real reason was that Chase was the town sports hero—and the son of the last town sports hero. Chase’s dad had a lot of admirers on that board. And my family didn’t.

One must have heroes, which is to say, one must create them. And they become real through our envy, our devotion. It is we who give them their majesty, their power, which we ourselves could never possess. And in turn, they give some back. They do not last forever. They fade. They vanish. They are surpassed, forgotten — one hears of them no more.

The 95 percent on the failure curve tend to accept the heroes society plants in front of them: film stars (America’s version of royalty), rock stars, sports stars.

Heroes and cowards feel the same fear; heroes just act differently.

It is time to accept that most of our heroes were not, are not, heroes. They were just good actors selected by the cult, due to bloodlines, or secret society membership.

As a general man I tried watching movies, playing sports, going to picnics and other entertainments but I still got bored, then I tried heroism and now I am hero, and I never get bored.

Will we ever see his like again? It is doubtful. But at least for a brief moment in time we were lucky to have him as one of our own: an English lionheart who was the terror of the continent, who earned the love and respect of everyone who had the privilege to see him in action and above all was a thoroughly decent hero of whom we can be proud. Rest in peace 'Big Dunc'. Your feats will echo in eternity.

Some of the more sought-after signers are, in no particular order, presidents, military heroes, sports icons, actors, singers, artists, religious and social leaders, scientists, astronauts, authors, and Kardashians.

It was the end of the era of the amateur, a time when everyone had to be a bit of everything. You helped your neighbors build their homes, fight their fires, raise and butcher and preserve their own food. You knew how to repair a weapon, pull a tooth, hammer a horseshoe, and deliver a child. But industrialization fostered specialization—and it was fantastic. Trained pros were better than self-taught amateurs, and their expertise allowed them to demand and develop better tools for their crafts—tools that only they knew how to operate. Over time, a subtle cancer spread: where you have more experts, you create more bystanders. Professionals did all the fighting and fixing we used to handle ourselves; they even took over our fun, playing our sports while we sat back and watched.

Competition perverts true fitness, Hébert believed. It tempts you to cheat; to overdevelop some talents while ignoring others; to keep tips for yourself that could be useful to everyone. It’s a short cut; all you have to do is beat the other guy and you’re done, but the Natural Method is a never-ending challenge for self-improvement. Besides, competitive sports focus on rivalry and class divisions. The Natural Method was all about collaboration; every teacher was a student, every student was a teacher, bringing fresh ideas and new challenges. Raise the bar, but help the next guy over it

...it doesn’t follow that all bearded men are bullies or heroes. There’s the fortuneteller’s beard, the Lenin cut, or again the European aristocrat’s. And then there’s the Castro beard and what is apparently the latest style—the beards sported by youngsters posing as artists, but just what that is called I don’t know.

Women have complained, justly, about the behavior of “macho” men. But despite their he-man pretensions and their captivation by masculine heroes of sports, war, and the Old West, most men are now entirely accustomed to obeying and currying the favor of their bosses. Because of this, of course, they hate their jobs — they mutter, “Thank God it’s Friday” and “Pretty good for Monday”— but they do as they are told. They are more compliant than most housewives have been. Their characters combine feudal submissiveness with modern helplessness. They have accepted almost without protest, and often with relief, their dispossession of any usable property and, with that, their loss of economic independence and their consequent subordination to bosses. They have submitted to the destruction of the household economy and thus of the household, to the loss of home employment and self-employment, to the disintegration of their families and communities, to the desecration and pillage of their country, and they have continued abjectly to believe, obey, and vote for the people who have most eagerly abetted this ruin and who have most profited from it. These men, moreover, are helpless to do anything for themselves or anyone else without money, and so for money they do whatever they are told.

Men's deaths are epic, women's deaths are tragic: is that it? He has misunderstood the very nature of conflict. Epic is countless tragedies, woven together. Heroes don't become heroes without carnage, and carnage has both causes and consequences. And those don't begin and end on a battlefield. If he truly wants to understand the nature of the epic story I am letting him compose, he needs to accept that the casualties of war aren't just the ones who die. And that a death off the battlefield can be more noble (more heroic, if he prefers it that way) than one in the midst of fighting. But it hurts, he said when Creusa died. He would rather her story had been snuffed out like a spark failing to catch damp kindling. It does hurt, I whispered. It should hurt. She isn't a footnote, she's a person. And she - all the Trojan women - should be memorialized as much as any other person. Their Greek counterparts too. War is not a sport, to be decided in a quick bout on a strip of contested land. It is a web which stretches out to the furthest parts of the world, drawing everyone into itself.

But of course, in one sense, Dean never died - his existence is superior to such accidents. One must have heroes, which is to say, one must create them. And they become real through our envy, our devotion. It is we who give them their majesty, their power, which ourselves could never possess. And in turn, they give some back. But they are mortal, these heroes, just as we are. They do not last forever. They fade. They vanish. They are surpassed, forgotten - one hears of them no more.

Crowdists love “competition” of a fixed nature, where a single vector determines the winner. They do not like real life competition, including evolution, as it assesses the individual as a whole and does not simply rank individuals by ability. For this reason crowds love both sports events and free market capitalism, as each allow people to gain power according to a linear system. The more time you put into the system with the sole goal of making profit, excluding all else, the more likely it is that you can get wealth – and it can happen to anyone! That is the promise that makes crowds flock to these ideas. It is like the dream of being a rock star, or a baseball hero, or a billionaire: what makes it attractive is the idea that anyone can do it, if they simply devote themselves to a linear path of ascension – one that is controlled by the whims of the crowd. The crowd decides who is a baseball hero, or what to buy and thus who to make rich. Control without control.

Don't worry, nothing's going to happen here. Skirmishes, pantomimes, and hypocrisy en masse for a while, that's for certain, but nothing serious. If we're unlucky, some idiot might go too far, but whoever holds the reins won't let anything get out of hand. It wouldn't be worth it. They'll be a fair amount of hullabaloo, but most of it will come to nothing. Records will be broken in the Olympic sport of coat turning and we'll see heroes merging from under the sofa. .. Its going to be like a long constipation.

Carnegie dreamed up the Hero Fund himself. For all his ruthlessness as a businessman, he had a soft spot for civility. He disdained football as a sport for savages, so he donated a lake to Princeton University to give athletes another outlet. He was a pacifist and railed against the traditional definition of heroes as warriors. “The false heroes of barbarous man are those who can only boast of the destruction of their fellows,” he wrote. “The true heroes of civilization are those alone who save or greatly serve them.

Their management and regulation of our lives spans the total spectrum of American experience, from their obtuse Imperial Measurement System, to their irregularity-strangled English language. From their lobbyist-ruled government bureaucracy, to their consumer-oriented religious holidays like Christmas. From their brainless professional sports jocks cast as heroes, to their anorexic supermodels warping the concept of beauty. These are the people who made sugary colas more important that water; fast food more important than health; television sitcoms more important than reading literature. They made smoking a joint in your home a crime; going out in public without your hair tinted an embarrassment; and accidentally carrying a half-filled bottle of baby formula on an airplane a terrorist act. Do you realize 85 percent of Americans still say 'God bless you' after someone sneezes? And that 'In God We Trust' is on every single dollar in circulation? Or that 'One nation under God' is recited everyday in the Pledge of Allegiance by millions of impressionable kids?

what else would you do with your life? Finish your book? Or, like most people, be content being babysat, left to watch and generally obsess about sports and entertainment stars? It’s all fluff. People waste their lives on fluff.” Nelson opened a view into his INU. “But you’re one of the bright ones, aren’t you? You follow politics and the news. Well, I have some news for you. It’s theatre. Sports heroes, film celebrities, rock stars, politicians, controversies of all sorts on the news, they’re all just different channels of the same show. Distract and keep happy.” “What

For I can truly say, that from the first hour I drew my breath in it, to this, that i can now scarce draw it at all, for an asthma I got in scating against the wind in Flanders; I have been the continual sport of what the world calls Fortune; and though i will not wrong her by saying, She has ever made me feel the weight of any great or signal evil; yet with all the good temper in the world, I affirm it of her, That in every stage of my life, and at every turn and corner where she could get fairly at me, the ungracious Duchess has pelted me with a set of as pitiful misadventures and cross accidents as ever small Hero sustained.

Homophobia and the closet are allies. Like an unhealthy co-dependent relationship they need each other to survive. One plays the victim living in fear and shame while the other plays the persecutor policing what is ‘normal’. The only way to dismantle homophobia is for every gay man and lesbian in the world to come out and live authentic lives. Once they realise how normal we are and see themselves in us….the controversy is over. It is interesting to think what would happen though....on a particularly pre-determined day that every single gay man and lesbian came out. Imagine the impact when, on that day, people all around the world suddenly discovered their bosses, mums, dads, daughters, sons, aunts, uncles, cousins, teachers, doctors, neighbours, colleagues, politicians, their favourite actors, celebrities and sports heroes, the people they loved and respected......were indeed gay. All stereotypes would immediately be broken.....just by the same single act of millions of people…..and at last there would no longer be need for secrecy. The closet would become the lounge room. How much healthier would we be emotionally and psychologically when we could all be ourselves doing life without the internal and societal negatives that have been attached to our sexual orientation.

I was, like everyone else who wrote books or read them, against the criminal and for the innocent victim. There was one exception in the popular hero Raffles, a sporting cricketer and successful cracksman, with his rabbit-like associate Bunny. I think I always felt slightly shocked by Raffles, and in looking back now I feel much more shocked than I did then, though it was certainly in the tradition of the past–he was the Robin Hood type. But Raffles was a light-hearted exception. No one could have dreamt then that there would come a time when crime books would be read for their love of violence, the taking of sadistic pleasure in brutality for its own sake.

Your career is likely to bear more resemblance to that of a writer than that of an athlete or painter. You should look ahead to your forties as the time when you will be at your peak of creativity, technical proficiency, and energy, and also have enough phronesis to realize your potential. The more your field depends on good judgment that comes only from experience, the longer you can expect to sustain a high level of performance into your fifties and sixties. To put it another way: Even if you wait as late as thirty to start accumulating the fifty thousand chunks of expertise, you will still have completed that apprenticeship when you approach the peak of your other powers in your forties. So push out your time horizon and don’t get frustrated if what you hoped would be a meteoric rise proves to be more measured. You’re not failing; you’re getting better at your craft and can reasonably aspire to master it one day. In the meantime, consult Wikipedia to check on the lives of those who became conspicuously successful at a young age. Ted Sorenson? After JFK was assassinated, he had a financially successful career as an attorney and remained a participant in politics, but, like sports heroes, rock stars, and pure mathematicians, he had to turn forty knowing that his most exciting professional years were behind him. How sad. And how happy you should be that you aren’t going to be a famous presidential aide at thirty-two.

Google searches, however, reveal that there was one line that did trigger the type of response then-president Obama might have wanted. He said, “Muslim Americans are our friends and our neighbors, our co-workers, our sports heroes and, yes, they are our men and women in uniform, who are willing to die in defense of our country.” After this line, for the first time in more than a year, the top Googled noun after “Muslim” was not “terrorists,” “extremists,” or “refugees.” It was “athletes,” followed by “soldiers.” And, in fact, “athletes” kept the top spot for a full day afterward. When we lecture angry people, the search data implies that their fury can grow. But subtly provoking people’s curiosity, giving new information, and offering new images of the group that is stoking their rage may turn their thoughts in different, more positive directions.

Children, teenagers, and young adults frequently attempt to duplicate their cult hero’s mannerisms. Sometimes when we observe youngsters attempting to emulate the gestures and behaviors of a celebrity whom they admire, we state that they are putting on airs or engaging in pretensions. Adults tend to fob off such pretentious behavior as a frivolous act engaged in by children. In actuality, pretentious behavior is an important learning rubric for behavior and character formation. Imitation is more than a form of flattery. When young people mimic admired celebrities they are displaying telling behavior regarding what subjects spikes their interest and this in turn might provide clues to their future vocational and recreational activities. By engaging in mimicry, we are able to audition our future self. Just as many athletes begin in their youth attempting to impersonate the style of their sports idols, young people universally attempt to copy the mannerisms and behaviorisms of people whom they respect. Mimicry is one way that people feel safe exploring what persona they wish to adopt. How many rock stars and other successful people endorsed the mantra, ‘Fake it ‘till you make it.

There is a persistent theory, held by those who prate most steadily about "the American way of life" that the average American is a rugged individualist to whom the whole conception of "leadership" is something foreign and distasteful—and this theory would certainly seem to be in accord with our national tradition of lawlessness and disrespect for authority. But it is not entirely consistent with the facts. We Americans are inveterate hero worshipers, to a far greater extent than are the British and the French. We like to personalize our loyalties, our causes. In our political or business or labor organizations, we are comforted by the knowledge that at the top is a Big Boss whom we are free to revere or to hate and upon whom we can depend for quick decisions when the going gets tough. The same is true of our Boy Scout troops and our criminal gangs. It is most conspicuously true of our passion for competitive sport. We are trained from childhood to look to the coach for authority in emergencies. The masterminding coach who can send in substitutes with instructions whenever he feels like it—or even send in an entirely new team—is a purely American phenomenon. In British football the team must play through the game with the same eleven men with which it started and with no orders from the sidelines; if a man is injured and forced to leave the field the team goes on playing with only ten men. In British sport, there are no Knute Rocknes or Connie Macks, whereas in American sport the mastermind is considered as an essential in the relentless pursuit of superiority.

RULES TO TEACH YOUR SON 1. Never shake a man’s hand sitting down. 2. Don’t enter a pool by the stairs. 3. The man at the BBQ Grill is the closest thing to a king. 4. In a negotiation, never make the first offer. 5. Request the late check-out. 6. When entrusted with a secret, keep it. 7. Hold your heroes to a higher standard. 8. Return a borrowed car with a full tank of gas. 9. Play with passion or don’t play at all… 10. When shaking hands, grip firmly and look them in the eye. 11. Don’t let a wishbone grow where a backbone should be. 12. If you need music on the beach, you’re missing the point. 13. Carry two handkerchiefs. The one in your back pocket is for you. The one in your breast pocket is for her. 14. You marry the girl, you marry her family. 15. Be like a duck. Remain calm on the surface and paddle like crazy underneath. 16. Experience the serenity of traveling alone. 17. Never be afraid to ask out the best looking girl in the room. 18. Never turn down a breath mint. 19. A sport coat is worth 1000 words. 20. Try writing your own eulogy. Never stop revising. 21. Thank a veteran. Then make it up to him. 22. Eat lunch with the new kid. 23. After writing an angry email, read it carefully. Then delete it. 24. Ask your mom to play. She won’t let you win. 25. Manners maketh the man. 26. Give credit. Take the blame. 27. Stand up to Bullies. Protect those bullied. 28. Write down your dreams. 29. Take time to snuggle your pets, they love you so much and are always happy to see you. 30. Be confident and humble at the same time. 31. If ever in doubt, remember whose son you are and REFUSE to just be ordinary! 32. In all things, give glory to God.

Shakespeare: The hell is all empty. Devils are all here. He: SINCE 1992, Creating a chaos in people's mind. I am the devil. I am the evil behind. I drive sports car on high streets. I don't play cricket on low streets. I am a real big baller. I have my father's million dollars. I speak English and i speak to only few. I don't make strangers friends. I only have best friends. I have sleeping partners, dude, personally and professionally. I hunt girls. They say I am a Starboy. Still wonder why people love me? Anyone out there who knows me? Me (On behalf of all who refuse to crawl on your lavish hall): Hi, Rich Guy of earth. I know who You are. I know what you do. I don't just speak English but now I speak for all. I play cricket on streets. I play soccer on fields. I don't feel low when you smoke high. Because I know you're already low. You're the villain of heaven. Well, i am the hero of hell. You make best friends. I make strange friends. Starboy? You are just a Mumma's boy. Sleeping Partners, why would you take sleeping pills? You are no more than 'Mr In Vain'. But I am the one who's in everyone's vein. You are SINCE 1992, I have SINS 1992. F*** you.

On 4 June 1924, an advertisement was sent to Madrid-based newspaper, La Libertad, that read: ‘The new sports group, El Rayo, wants to say hello to all other sport groups and are accepting challenges any time and any place that is convenient for them, starting next Sunday. Please respond to this newspaper or in writing to our registered office, Carmen 28.

If soccer really is a ‘a slum sport played in slum stadiums increasingly watched by slum people’ as declared by the Sunday Times in 1985 after the Bradford fire disaster that took 56 lives, then Rayo Vallecano wear their slum affiliation like a badge of honour.

More than other sports, baseball, Halberstam observed, depends on statistics because they give meaning to the game’s mythology. A player’s “performance is not fulfilling enough,” he wrote. “It must be shown in quantified heroics, records to be set and broken, new myths and heroes to replace the old.”9

The story of John Ritter illustrates what it means to be a hero and how we treat our heroes. When we idealize real people they lose their humanity. They are turned into idols that we worship and may later want to destroy. Heroes are transformed from conscious-feeling fellow homo sapiens into characters in our stories. The greatest hero-characters will become legends or even mythic characters. We might think we know them, but when they are idolized they become more like treasured memories, existing in our minds as archetypal characters, rather than living-breathing human beings with thoughts and feelings of their own.

FATHER OF THE BOY SCOUTS Arthur Conan Doyle was knighted, and not for the merits of Sherlock Holmes. The writer was invited to join the ranks of the nobility as thanks for the propaganda he wrote for the imperial cause. One of his heroes was Robert Baden-Powell, the founder of the Boy Scouts. They met while fighting savages in Africa: “There was always something of the sportsman in his keen appreciation of war,” Sir Arthur said. Gifted in the art of following the tracks of others and erasing his own, Baden-Powell was a great success at the sport of hunting lions, boars, deer, Zulus, Ashantis, and Ndebeles. Against the Ndebeles, he fought a rough battle in southern Africa. Two hundred and nine blacks and one Englishman died. The colonel took as a souvenir the horn the enemy blew to sound the alarm. And that spiral-shaped horn from a kudu antelope was incorporated into Boy Scout ritual as the symbol of boys who love nature.

The leader as Hero The leader or expert who enjoys authority and prestige among the mass is the man who best speaks for that mass. The ordinary man must see himself reflected in his leader. The leader must be a sublimation of the "ordinary man " He must not seem to be of a different quality. The ordinary man must not feel that the leader transcends him. This quality of the average men in the Hero (actor, dictator, sports champion) has been clearly demonstrated in the history of the past thirty years. It is what E. Morin emphasizes in his study of the deification of film stars. When a man follows the leader, he actually follows the mass, the majority group that the leader so perfectly represents. The leader loses all power when he is separated from his group; no propaganda can emanate from a solitary leader.

Competitive sports can bring out the best in people. Instead of playing small, they overcome their self-doubts and fears. They let their light shine. They find courage, which is the opposite of discourage, and tap into their reservoir of potential. Reflect a moment. Can you remember a time when you were a hero, when you showed heart, courage, and fearlessness that maybe you didn’t think you had?

His smile was just a suggestion around his full lips, an implication and a secret all at once. It was intimate and small, not his usual full-bodied grin that he shared with everyone else. It was just for me. “Some people have hobbies, art, music, playing sport. Mine is learning you.

Greatness is something bestowed on those who are the first, the best, or who last the longest. Heroes are born, not out of mere accomplishments, but out of a life lived. How tragic these days when our images of heroes are stained and shattered by headlines of drug abuse, arrests, and criminal charges. Where are the young men and women who are worthy role models for our kids? Where are those who make footsteps in which America's youth can follow? When will we realize that heroes aren't made in the signing of a multi-million dollar contract, or just piling up sports records. On the contrary, heroes are not built from without, but rather bred from within. Bestowing the title of "hero" is, to be sure, an individual issue. And perhaps we should reserve it for a more select few. Maybe it should be more difficult to earn the status than it is to merely accept it. We have lowered the standards for our heroes.

It used to be that only a professional player could wear the official team uniform. Now anyone with $75 can own an authentic game jersey. Somehow that cheapens the honor and privilege that go with that jersey. In reality, only the players themselves have earned the right to wear it. But we have done the same thing with our heroes. We throw the term around and slap it on just about anyone who has attained even a modicum of celebrity status, whether it is in the world of sports, music, or entertainment. But greatness is not merely for those fortunate enough to gain public notoriety. It is not for those who seek grandeur or personal glory. Rather it should be for those who, through quiet strength, demonstrate character on and off the field or the stage.

You follow politics and the news. Well, I have some news for you. It’s theatre. Sports heroes, film celebrities, rock stars, politicians, controversies of all sorts on the news, they’re all just different channels of the same show. Distract and keep happy.

If you’re reading this book you are now equipped with the tools you need to find your own Okugake. Fuelled by an intrinsic form of motivation for self-discovery through self-discipline and armed with Stoic Sports Science, you too now understand The Art of Resilience, and like the pioneers and heroes mentioned in this book (from Captain Webb to Emil Zatopek), can embark on your own athletic adventure.

If you’re good at a sport, they attach the medals to your shirts and then they shine in some museum,” he told his son. But good deeds were of a different type, he believed. “These are medals that are pinned to the soul and will be recognized in the Heavenly Kingdom, not on this earth.

We also came to recognise that coaching was less about us as heroes or villains, and more about how we managed the pressures, constraints and possibilities of context

Today, we have many ways of defining success in life. Some define it as being a sports hero, others as being wealthy, others as being popular and well liked, and still others as being happy. How does God define success? He defines it as being spiritually mature!

Take a moment and read that again…do you believe it? If work is a team sport, then you are dependent upon others for your success. You cannot perform at a high level alone. However, in many organizations a “hero mentality” abounds in which individuals wait to step in and save the day. In those organizations, I tend to see a short-term focus in which firefighting becomes the norm and long-range fire prevention is overlooked. In extreme situations, it's not just firefighting that occurs, but arson, where individuals actually create a crisis in order to be the hero. Those who save the day are then rewarded with other “problem areas to fix” or other recognition that serves to perpetuate the individual mindset. A culture of silos and barriers to collective success abounds! …short-term focus where firefighting becomes the norm and fire prevention tactics are overlooked. In extreme situations it's not just firefighting…it's arson. While this solo mindset may deliver results in the short term, burnout occurs when the self-imposed demands become too great. Team members may become complacent, sitting back and saying to themselves, “Why bother? She will just do it herself anyway.

Their management and regulation of our lives spans the total spectrum of American experience, from their obtuse Imperial Measurement System, to their irregularity-strangled English language. From their lobbyist-ruled government bureaucracy, to their consumer-oriented religious holidays like Christmas. From their brainless professional sports jocks cast as heroes, to their anorexic supermodels warping the concept of beauty. These are the people who made sugary colas more important than water; fast food more important than health; television sitcoms more important than reading literature. They made smoking a joint in your home a crime; going out in public without your hair tinted an embarrassment; and accidentally carrying a half-filled bottle of baby formula on an airplane a terrorist act. Do you realize 85 percent of Americans still say ‘God bless you’ after someone sneezes? And that ‘In God We Trust’ is on every U.S. dollar in circulation? Or that ‘One nation under God’ is recited every day in the Pledge of Allegiance by millions of impressionable kids?

I have contended in Capitalism and Christianity, American Style that many anxious white males in the working and middle classes seek models of masculinity with whom to identify in a world of uncertainty. Corporate elites, sports heroes, financial wizards, and military leaders project images of independence, mastery, and virility that can make them attractive models of identification, whereas state welfare programs, market regulations, retirement schemes, and health care, while essential to life, may remind too many of the very fragilities, vulnerabilities, susceptibilities, and dependencies they strive to deny or forget.

We shoot our heroes and enjoy peripeteia as a spectacle akin to sport and perhaps harshly disavowing the past protects us from the disappointment of our outsized hopes—who knows, really, but shifts in taste don’t fully account for the phenomenon. At any rate, nearly everything urgent and alive becomes doo-wop down the road, at least in this country’s pop culture, and along the way a somewhat self-hating irony lays waste not only to the work but to the desires it once carried. It’s like we die into adulthood.

he just didn’t get it. He’d never understood the whole hero worship thing over actors and singers and sports stars. Cops and firemen, yeah. Soldiers, absolutely. He appreciated and admired a great athlete’s abilities, but just because a guy had the eye-hand coordination to swing a bat and hit a ball didn’t make him a hero. Neither did riding a bull in a rodeo.

Formerly, it is pointed out, heroism was linked to the honor of accomplishment. Honor was accorded to the person with some genuine achievement, whether in character, virtue, wisdom, the arts, sport, or warfare. Today, however, the media offer a shortcut to fame—instantly fabricated famousness with no need for the sweat, cost, and dedication of true greatness. The result is not the hero but the celebrity, the person famously described as “well-known for being well-known.” A big name rather than a big person, the celebrity is someone for whom character is nothing, coverage is all.

In short, this country has developed a ridiculous blind spot: the power and glorification of money. This is truly an affliction. It is holding us back as a nation, as a community. The true heroes of America are not the new Internet billionaires or the overpaid sports stars and movie actors or the wise guys who jack up their companies’ stocks. The true heroes of America are the men, women, and teenagers who go to work for a modest wage, fulfill their responsibilities to their families and friends, and are kind and generous to others—because that’s the right way to live.… The working people of the United States are the most important ingredient in the enduring American story. But

Marcus Armytage, the Telegraph’s racing correspondent, hails a champion as AP McCoy is voted Liontrust’s Sporting Hero of the Month for February To all the other accolades, and his astounding total of 4,368 winners (as of Monday, March 16 morning), AP McCoy has added another – being voted the Liontrust Sporting Hero of the Month for February by Telegraph readers. The soon-to-be-retiring champion jump jockey beat cricket’s Chris Gayle, who

You were my hero when I was fourteen or fifteen because you represented a totally new philosophy of football. You will always embody the ideas of loyalty and fair play in football.

Sheldon Kopp, the author and psychologist, wrote, “There are no great men. If you have a hero, look again: you have diminished yourself in some way.

BENJAMIN Age: 10 Height: 5’1 Favourite animal: His dog, Spooky   Of all the Cluefinders, Benjamin is the most interested in sports. He is very physically active, playing football and cricket at the weekends, and often going for a morning jog with Jake, his next-door neighbour, and their Dads. Ben took some karate lessons until he decided that he never wanted to fight another person if he could help it. Like Chris, he loves to read comic books, and his favourite super-hero is Spider-Man, who is also very athletic. He says, “I love to exercise because it means I can eat whatever I want without getting fat!” Ben especially loves spaghetti Bolognese and pizza.   Ben has a dog, Spooky, who he plays with all the time. Ben has a soft spot for all animals, and supports the World Wildlife Fund, which aims to protect endangered wild animals which are at risk of going extinct. His goals for the future include travelling around the world, an ambition he shares with Clara. He would like to visit the countries of South America, where there is an abundance of wildlife.

A national obsession with a particular sport does not occur in a vacuum. Something lights the match. In the early twentieth century, Finland was a poor, nonindustrialized country where many people worked outdoors and got around on foot and (during the winter) on cross-country skis. These fertile conditions produced Hannes Kolehmainen, who won three gold medals in running events at the 1912 Olympics. Kolehmainen’s triumphs ignited an intense running craze in his home country. Every Finnish boy wanted to be the next Olympic hero. The result was a quarter-century of Finnish dominance of distance running, a dynasty that produced a number of athletes whose performances far surpassed those of the man who’d started it all. Ultimately, the passionate and widespread participation in running that Hannes Kolehmainen inspired had a much stronger impact on the performance of Finland’s top runners than did the conditions of poverty, lack of industrialization, and human-powered transportation that produced the first great Finnish runner. Sociologist

One must have heroes, which is to say, one must create them. And they become real through our envy, our devotion. It is we who give them their majesty, their power, which we ourselves could never possess. And in turn, they give some back.

The needs of a society determine its ethics, and in the Black American ghettos the hero is that man who is offered only the crumbs from his country's table but by ingenuity and courage is able to take for himself a Lucullan feast. Hence the janitor who lives in one room but sports a robin's-egg-blue Cadillac is not laughed at but admired, and the domestic who buys forty-dollar shoes is not criticized but is appreciated.

But while presidents and popes came and went, while wars exploded and came to an end, while some lost their jobs only later to have their talents recognized, while children grew sickly and later became sports heroes, while all this and more transpired, something was being formed that neither death nor illness could destroy. For those who have eyes to see and ears to hear, much in our fleeting lives is not passing but lasting, not dying but coming to life, not temporary but eternal. Amid the fragility of our lives, we have wonderful reason to hope. Some call this hidden reality “grace,” others “God’s life in us,” others still “the kingdom of God among us.

Destiny has called you to be a god. Are you hero enough for the task? Will you switch on your inner “hero program”, or slink off to the shopping mall or the sports stadium and put it off for yet another day? Maybe you’ll take in a movie. So much easier to watch others doing the heavy lifting, and the actors are just faking it anyway. Where are the real heroes? Where are YOU?!

In sport, there are champions and there are heroes. Champions win because they are good at what they do and take particular advantage of their victories. Heroes win when least expected, overcome their own limits, and when they receive their laurels they share their victories with an entire nation.

Soon, with the help of Lisl Popper and visits to Peter Jones, he had once again recreated the distinctive Fleming décor – part gentleman’s club, part ship’s cabin. The old photographs of Ian at Eton, the hero of the school sports, went up in the drawing-room, and his pretty Austrian housekeeper agreed to accompany him to his new flat. Robert Harling, knowing Ian’s innocent craving for roots, chipped in playfully with an enormous coat of arms which Ian placed at the end of a corridor with a spotlight trained on it.

In sport, there are champions and there are heroes. Champions win because they are good at what they do and take particular advantage of their victories. Heroes win when least expected, surpass their own limits and, when they receive their laurels, share their victories with an entire nation.

The heroes of war and the heroes of sport are indistinguishable in militarized societies. War is sold to a gullible public as a noble game... War is not a sport. It is about killing. It is dirty, messy, and deeply demoralizing. The pay is lousy. The working conditions are horrific. And those who come back from war are usually discarded.

We are a people pathologically in love with mourning not only our deceased family members but our national heroes as well. Poets, mathematicians, philosophers, politicians, sports heroes, cosmonauts. I swear that the funeral is to Russia what baseball is to the United States, its national pastime.

We’re talking about them as athletes, rather than some of the conversations we had in ’99: My god, who are these women? They’re kind of hot!” Julie Foudy said. After the team won in 1999, the players turned into one-of-a-kind heroes, pioneers, and role models overnight. Many people rooted for them as a larger statement about women in sports. But by 2015, the players of the national team were athletes that America grew to love simply as athletes. If fans were going to be jubilant about a victory in the 2015 World Cup final, it wouldn’t just be because of some deeper meaning or greater impact—it would be because fans knew these players and wanted them to win. It was evidenced by Alex Morgan’s almost 2 million followers on Twitter, Hope Solo’s autobiography becoming a New York Times bestseller, and Abby Wambach appearing in Gatorade television ads on heavy rotation. No longer did the players need to show up at schools and youth clinics to hand out flyers, like the 1999 team did. The word about the national team was already out. In the team’s three May 2015 send-off games, they sold out every match, drawing capacity crowds at Avaya Stadium, the StubHub Center, and Red Bull Arena. Consider what Foudy told reporters in 1999 after the World Cup win: “It transcends soccer. There’s a bigger message out there: When people tell you no, you just smile and tell them, Yes, I can.” By 2015? Players like Carli Lloyd were talking about world domination. It was all about the soccer—and that, in and of itself, was something special and powerful.

Individuals with the Love-Sexuality Survival Style are highly energetic, attractive, and successful. They are the doers and the winners of the world, the sports heroes, cheerleaders, top actors and actresses, the people who often become the icons of our collective consciousness.

You are often unable to hold on to personal heroes or villains. Inevitably you will meet your hero, and he may turn out to be less than impressive, while your villain turns out to be the coolest cat you’ve ever met. You never can tell, so you eventually learn to live without a rooting interest in the parade of stars, musicians, sports champions, and politicians. And you lose the ability to participate in the real American pastime: beating up on people you don’t like and glorifying people you do.

When you vicariously live through the heroes on your screens and get your taste of victory from a favorite sports team, your ambition is being robbed.

It became sport, which is itself a form of sacrifice,” writes Sansone. “For only if sport is a form of sacrifice can we explain its ritual associations. There is no other plausible reason to account for the fact that the Hurons played a game of lacrosse in order to influence the weather for the benefit of their crops. It is only because they engaged in ritual sacrifice that natives of the Sudan hold wrestling matches at the time of sowing and harvesting. In Homer’s Iliad the hero Achilles honors the death of his companion Patroclus with an elaborate funeral that consists of various kinds of sacrifice: hair offering; holocausts of sheep and cattle; libations of oil, honey, and wine; slaughter of horses and dogs; human sacrifice and athletic contests.”3 Once the ritual expenditure of energy was decoupled from the hunt, it didn’t especially matter how that energy was squandered. The rules and forms could proliferate a thousand ways, to accommodate the terrain and the materials at hand. The rules and conventions could morph and become subject to contention, debate, wagering, and technical innovation

As rituals are drained of their intensity, their roots are buried in the sediment of years, centuries, even millennia. As the human movements that are meant to expend energy become easier, more comfortable, less intense—a leisurely tour through the Nautilus circuit, watching TV on the elliptical—sport becomes exercise. Without intensity, it’s not a ritual. It’s just a grind. Ritual becomes habit. The memory and meaning are lost. But the roots of the ritual are still alive. And when the habits, for some reason, are re-endowed with intensity, they become rituals again. Because the root of the ritual, sport as sacrifice, is still alive inside us, it feels like a memory of something. It is a new shoot from an old root that makes a Hero WOD come alive. It’s why, in a CrossFit box, you can be outrun or outlifted, but there’s no way to feel defeated unless you slack off. The visceral sense of sacrifice, of giving all of one’s energy up—underlies every WOD. Detonating all the fireworks means there will be more and bigger fireworks next time. Giving everything you have banishes regret.

Heroes get remembered, but legends never die.

You should have to be a lot more than decent to be a kid's hero.

D. Symptoms cause clinically significant impairment in social, occupational, or other important areas of current functioning. Oh right, keyboard heroes declaring on social media that "everyone's a little autistic" - nope. According to the DSM it has to really, really affect you. People with autism will miss days at work or have trouble with relationships, friends and family. They can't keep up in school because thirty kids with clicking pens and smelly deodorant drive them up the walls. They get kicked off the sports team because, according to them, something happened that wasn't in line with the rules (which was probably true, but the autistic in question just couldn't let it go). People who arrange their shoes by colour aren't "a little autistic", they're just shoe freaks.

Gunnar Bale was not only a soccer player, he was a pretty strong hockey player as well. There was one sport Slayton High was better at than soccer: ice hockey. It was the most prestigious sport in the town.

And he achieved all this with a grace and generosity of spirit that transcended sport.

The Kai-lao girls were arrayed in a triangular formation, but they did not hold themselves as any warriors I knew. Each young woman was posed in strange, exaggerated ways, some balancing on one foot with arms raised, others crouched low and back with hands scrunched up in imitation of animal claws… I think. More so, they all dressed in identical uniforms save for the color, a literal rainbow. Each uniform… or maybe the girls themselves?... sported ears like a Terran feline with tails to match. Considering they twitched and moved, I could only guess they were natural. “Andrea Baker,” I said into the comms, “I misunderstand. You said when you spoke of ‘a cat fight,’ that it was a figure of speech? Perhaps you misspoke?” “Oh my God, Aylin,” Andrea laughed into the comms, “I really thought it was a joke, but I guess I was wrong. It really will be a cat fight!

The professionals were heroes. The physicians and nurses and medical students and student nurses who were all dying in large numbers themselves held nothing of themselves back. And there were others. Ira Thomas played catcher for the Philadelphia Athletics. The baseball season had been shortened by Crowder’s “work or fight” order, since sport was deemed unnecessary labor. Thomas’s wife was a six-foot-tall woman, large-boned, strong. They had no children. Day after day he carried the sick in his car to hospitals and she worked in an emergency hospital.

Whichever way you look at it, the story of soccer in Australia is not a happy one. It is as a vast mess of shattered dreams, colonised tribes and forgotten heroes, splayed out like a Jackson Pollock painting across the landscape of Australian history. It is a story that haunts rather than comforts. 'There are a lot of broken people in the game,' Michael Cockerill once said. 'Yet it's still the sport with the most blue sky in Australia. Even after everything, it's still only scratched the surface'.

It’s because fear sells. It’s because war is sport. And it’s also very good business. We warred with ourselves until we found someone to war with together.” “Well, there you go,” I say, snapping my fingers. “There’s no stopping it. So why try? Look at me—” I wave my arm at the beacon. “I’m the hero because I checked out.” “That’s exactly right,” Scarlett says. “The problem is, you didn’t take the rest of us with you.

Women have complained, justly, about the behavior of “macho” men. But despite their he-man pretensions and their captivation by masculine heroes of sports, war, and the Old West, most men are now entirely accustomed to obeying and currying the favor of their bosses. Because of this, of course, they hate their jobs—they mutter, “Thank God it’s Friday” and “Pretty good for Monday”—but they do as they are told. They are more compliant than most housewives have been. Their characters combine feudal submissiveness with modern helplessness. They have accepted almost without protest, and often with relief, their dispossession of any usable property and, with that, their loss of economic independence and their consequent subordination to bosses. They have submitted to the destruction of the household economy and thus of the household, to the loss of home employment and self-employment, to the disintegration of their families and communities, to the desecration and pillage of their country, and they have continued abjectly to believe, obey, and vote for the people who have most eagerly abetted this ruin and who have most profited from it. These men, moreover, are helpless to do anything for themselves or anyone else without money, and so for money they do whatever they are told. They know that their ability to be useful is precisely defined by their willingness to be somebody else’s tool. Is it any wonder that they talk tough and worship athletes and cowboys? Is it any wonder that some of them are violent?

It measures just 9 inches in circumference, weighs only about 5 ounces, and it made of cork wound with woolen yarn, covered with two layers of cowhide, and stiched by hand precisely 216 times. It travels 60 feet 6 inches from the pitcher's mound to home--and it can cover that distance at nearly 100 miles an hour. Along the way it can be made to twist, spin, curve, wobble, rise, or fall away. The bat is made of turned ash, less than 42 inches long, not more than 2 3/4 inches in diameter. The batter has only a few thousandths of a second to decide to hit the ball. And yet the men who fail seven times out of ten are considered the game's greatest heroes. It is played everywhere. In parks and playground and prison yards. In back alleys and farmers fields. By small children and by old men. By raw amateurs and millionare professionals. It is a leisurely game that demands blinding speed. The only game where the defense has the ball. It follows the seasons, beginning each year with the fond expectancy of springtime and ending with the hard facts of autumn. Americans have played baseball for more than 200 years, while they conquered a continent, warred with one another and with enemies abroad, struggled over labor and civil rights and the meaning of freedom. At the games's heart lie mythic contradictions: a pastoral game, born in crowded cities; an exhilarating democratic sport that tolerates cheating and has excluded as many as it has included; a profoundly conservative game that sometimes manages to be years ahead of its time. It is an American odyssey that links sons and daughters to father and grandfathers. And it reflects a host of age-old American tensions: between workers and owners, scandal and reform, the individual and the collective. It is a haunted game, where each player is measured by the ghosts of those who have gone before. Most of all, it is about time and timelessness, speed and grace, failure and loss, imperishable hope, and coming home.

Tension stretches across my back like a wire hanger. “What does that mean?” “It’s just an awkward time to be talking black and sleeping white.” He shrugs the linebacker shoulders rebelling against his tweed sports jacket with patches on the elbows. “To be dating someone outside your community when you’re emerging as such a voice for it.” The smartest man I know just said some dumb shit. “You see those two things as somehow incongruous?” My question is laced with dread as I brace myself for the man I saw as a hero to show his feet of clay.

The mounting wave of discontent culminated in a riot that broke out off base in April 1942 as black and white soldiers queued outside Waldron’s Sports Palace. What happened next is unclear. In one version, a black soldier wanting to use a telephone took offense when a white MP told him he couldn’t leave the line. In the ensuing violence, some fifty shots were fired and three soldiers lay dead, two black privates and one white MP. The post’s public relations officer later explained opaquely that the melee was triggered by “some persons with a little too much race consciousness getting off track.” The situation remained unchanged one year later, when the Afro-American reported that the base was still a “veritable powder keg.” The incidents certainly belied the findings of a 1942 report by the Army General Staff that concluded that the policy of segregation had “practically eliminated the colored problem, as such, within the Army.” Even when violence wasn’t an issue,

Charlestown’s most characteristic pastime had long been the reckless sport of “looping.” The young “looper” played by a rigid set of rules. First, he stole a car in downtown Boston. Then he roared into Charlestown, accelerating as he reached City Square, where the District 15 police station stood in a welter of bars, nightclubs, and pool halls. Often he had to take a turn around the square before the first policeman dashed for his patrol car or motorcycle. Then the chase was on: down Chelsea Street to Hayes Square, up the long slope of Bunker Hill Street to St. Francis de Sales’ Church at the crest, then down again, picking up speed, often to 70 or 80 miles per hour, until a screeching left into Sullivan Square took him onto Main Street, where, dodging the stanchions of the El, he roared into City Square again, completing the “loop.” All that remained was to ditch the car before the police caught up. Looping was an initiation rite, proof that a Townie had come of age. But it was something else as well: a challenge flung at authority, a middle finger raised to the powers that be. Before long, looping became a kind of civic spectacle, pitting the Town’s young heroes against the forces of law and order. Plans for a loop circulated well in advance. At the appointed hour, hundreds of men, women, and children gathered along Bunker Hill Street, awaiting the gladiators. When the stolen car came in sight, racing up the long hill, a cheer would rise from the spectators, followed by jeers for the pursuing policemen. The first recorded “loop” was performed in 1925 by a sixteen-year-old daredevil named Jimmy “Speed King” Murphy, but most renowned of all was “Shiner” Sheehan, the teenage son of a federal alcohol agent, whose exploits so electrified the Town that he drew round him a group of young acolytes. Membership in their “Speeders Club” was limited to those who could produce newspaper clippings showing they had bested the police.

He was thinking about his grandfathers, the hardships they endured for their families’ sake, and for the generations to continue and survive. They were real heroes, and they were sportsmen too, diving is one of the hardest sports in the world.

GoPro is essentially a lifestyle company more than a camera company. It relies on early adopters to live up to its marketing promises, at least enough to convince the larger market of nonextreme consumers that it’s possible that we too could “be a hero” and “go Pro.” Their exploits make GoPro seem an opportune investment for the once-a-year vacation surfer who wants to ensure that the evidence of their own occasional daring will stand out. It’s a consumer-aggrandizing ad approach perfected by the likes of Mountain Dew and Monster Energy. Only in GoPro’s case, the product actually creates the marketing materials. But for GoPro to sustain its meteoric rise, the company cannot remain relegated to extreme sports for long. To continue to grow the company will have to try to expand the meaning of heroism. The cameras won’t stay on surfboards and mountain bikes for long. The company is already featuring family footage, concerts, and more on YouTube, pushing its lenses into the everyday. The founder has filmed the birth of his baby with a GoPro strapped to his head.

Rarely has a new player on the game captured so much attention so fast.