On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History (1840-1841)

Their wordsFor, as I take it, Universal History, the history of what man has accomplished in this world, is at bottom the History of the Great Men who have worked here.

Their wordsWe see men of all kinds of professed creeds attain to almost all degrees of worth or worthlessness under each or any of them.

Their wordsQuackery and dupery do abound; in religions, above all in the more advanced decaying stages of religions, they have fearfully abounded: but quackery was never the originating influence in such things; it was not the health and life of such things, but their disease, the sure precursor of their being about to die!

Their wordsSociety is founded on Hero-worship. All dignities of rank, on which human association rests, are what we may call a Heroarchy (Government of Heroes),—or a Hierarchy, for it is "sacred" enough withal!

Their wordsNo sadder proof can be given by a man of his own littleness than disbelief in great men. There is no sadder symptom of a generation than such general blindness to the spiritual lightning, with faith only in the heap of barren dead fuel.

Their wordsOur current hypothesis about Mahomet, that he was a scheming Impostor, a Falsehood incarnate, that his religion is a mere mass of quackery and fatuity, begins really to be now untenable to any one.

Their wordsA false man found a religion? Why, a false man cannot build a brick house!

Their wordsI should say sincerity, a deep, great, genuine sincerity, is the first characteristic of all men in any way heroic.

Their wordsI confess, I have no notion of a truly great man that could not be all sorts of men.

Their wordsAt bottom, it turns still on power of intellect; it is a man's sincerity and depth of vision that makes him a Poet.

Their wordsIndian Empire will go, at any rate, some day; but this Shakspeare does not go, he lasts forever with us; we cannot give up our Shakspeare!

Their wordsWithout sovereigns, true sovereigns, temporal and spiritual, I see nothing possible but an anarchy; the hatefulest of things.

Their wordsIt is not honest inquiry that makes anarchy; but it is error, insincerity, half-belief and untruth that make it.

Their wordsThe true University of these days is a Collection of Books.

Their wordsPrinting, which comes necessarily out of Writing, I say often, is equivalent to Democracy: invent Writing, Democracy is inevitable.

Their wordsWe will understand that destruction of old forms is not destruction of everlasting substances; that Scepticism, as sorrowful and hateful as we see it, is not an end but a beginning.

Their wordsFind in any country the Ablest Man that exists there; raise him to the supreme place, and loyally reverence him: you have a perfect government for that country; no ballot-box, parliamentary eloquence, voting, constitution-building, or other machinery whatsoever can improve it a whit.

Their wordsNo, we cannot figure Cromwell as a Falsity and Fatuity; the longer I study him and his career, I believe this the less.

Their wordsI find in him no such sincerity as in Cromwell; only a far inferior sort.

Their wordsThe heavier this Napoleon trampled on the world, holding it tyrannously down, the fiercer would the world's recoil against him be, one day. Injustice pays itself with frightful compound-interest.