Hero Quotes

“Across some of the harshest and most difficult terrain in the world, led by a man who already had a price on his head.”
― Michael Korda, Hero: The Life and Legend of Lawrence of Arabia

“Like any man who has two masters with opposing interests, he was torn between them.”
― Michael Korda, Hero: The Life and Legend of Lawrence of Arabia

“It is worth noting that the desert provides every kind of torment-- heat, cold, rain, flash floods, windstorms, biting insects, and sandstorms, sometimes all on the same day.”
― Michael Korda, Hero: The Life and Legend of Lawrence of Arabia

“Even those who die in terrorist attacks, and have thus had the bad luck to be in the wrong place at the wrong time, are described as "heroes", though given a choice most of them would no doubt have preferred to be somewhere else when the blow was struck.”
― Michael Korda, Hero: The Life and Legend of Lawrence of Arabia

“He may also have been sensitive enough to guess that young Lawrence was not only a potential man of action, but something even more dangerous: a man of destiny.”
― Michael Korda, Hero: The Life and Legend of Lawrence of Arabia – The Definitive Biography of the British Soldier, Scholar, and Strategist

“It is a reflection of a well-known social problem during the Victorian age, when female servants were often made pregnant by the master of the house or one of his sons.”
― Michael Korda, Hero: The Life and Legend of Lawrence of Arabia

“Lawrence: A man who gives himself to the possession of aliens leads a Yahoo life. In my case my effort for these years to live in the dress of Arabs, and to imitate their mental foundation, quitted me of my English self, and let me look at the West and its conventions with new eyes, and destroyed it all for me. At the same time I could not sincerely take on the Arab skin: it was an affectation only.”
― Michael Korda, Hero: The Life and Legend of Lawrence of Arabia

“Lawrence: Clayton, I've decided to go off alone to Damascus, hoping to get killed on the way: for all sakes try and clear this show up before it goes further. We are calling them to fight for us on a lie, and I can't stand it.”
― Michael Korda, Hero: The Life and Legend of Lawrence of Arabia

“Lawrence's detractors, then and now, still argue that this was merely a "pinprick" in "a sideshow of a sideshow" compared with the western front, but it in fact was a modest first effort at a new kind of warfare-- in which an organized, modern, occupying army was forced to deal with small but lethal attacks by an enemy who appeared suddenly out of nowhere, struck hard, and vanished again; in which the ambush, the roadside or railway "improvised explosive device," the grenade thrown onto a busy café terrace, the destruction of rolling stock, even the "suicide bombers", would take the place of battle; and in which it was almost impossible to distinguish enemy combatants from the surroundings civilian population.”
― Michael Korda, Hero: The Life and Legend of Lawrence of Arabia

“Lawrence's concern about the loss of twenty Arabs may seem odd during a war in which British war dead would exceed 750,000, but he felt strongly that "Our men were not materials, like soldiers, but friends of ours, trusting in our leadership.”
― Michael Korda, Hero: The Life and Legend of Lawrence of Arabia

“No matter how peaceful a situation might seem, you could never be protected from sudden, unexpected violence that might also engulf the stranger.”
― Michael Korda, Hero: The Life and Legend of Lawrence of Arabia

“A man who gives himself to the possession of aliens leads a Yahoo life… . He is not one of them… . In my case my effort for these years to live in the dress of Arabs, and to imitate their mental foundation, quitted me of my English self, and let me look at the West and its conventions with new eyes, and destroyed it all for me. At the same time I could not sincerely take on the Arab skin: it was an affectation only.”
― Michael Korda, Hero: The Life and Legend of Lawrence of Arabia – The Definitive Biography of the British Soldier, Scholar, and Strategist

“Howeitat, Auda’s own tribe, where they were feasted with one of those lavish meals that Lawrence loathed so much: hot grease and pieces of mutton on a bed of rice, decorated with the singed heads of the slaughtered sheep.”
― Michael Korda, Hero: The Life and Legend of Lawrence of Arabia – The Definitive Biography of the British Soldier, Scholar, and Strategist

“It was the face of a nonreligious ascetic, capable of enduring hardship and pain beyond what most men would even want to contemplate, a true believer in other people’s causes, a curious combination of scholar and man of action, and, most important of all, a dreamer.”
― Michael Korda, Hero: The Life and Legend of Lawrence of Arabia – The Definitive Biography of the British Soldier, Scholar, and Strategist