Skip to content

We all can't be heroes, for someone has to sit on the curb and clap as they go by.

— Will Rogers The Complete Speaker's Index to Selected Stories for Every Occasion (1967)

Another quote →

Notes from Wikiquote

As quoted in Peter's Quotations : Ideas for Our Time (1979) by Laurence J. Peter, p. 240

Variants

We can't all be heroes because somebody has to sit on the curb and clap as they go by.

Topics

Heroes

More quotes by Will Rogers

Half our life is spent trying to find something to do with the time we have rushed through life trying to save.

Heroing is one of the shortest-lived professions there is.

A man that don't love a Horse, there is something the matter with him. If he has no sympathy for the man that does love Horses, then there is something worse the matter with him.

The Illiterate Digest (1924)

We are the first nation to starve to death in a storehouse that's overfilled with everything we want.

You've got to be optimist to be a Democrat, and you've got to be a humorist to stay one.

All Will Rogers quotes →

You may also like

The grandest of heroic deeds are those which are performed within four walls and in domestic privacy.

Jean Paul Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895)

The blood of the heroes is closer to God than the ink of the philosophers and the prayers of the faithful.

Julius Evola Revolt Against the Modern World (1934)

Heroism is a myth you tell idealistic young people—specifically when you want them to go bleed for you.

Brandon Sanderson Rhythm of War (2020)

True heroism is remarkably sober, very undramatic. It is not the urge to surpass all others at whatever cost, but the urge to serve others at whatever cost.

Arthur Ashe

Attribution

Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: Will Rogers (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.