I don't have anything like a hero, but I do have people I look up to.
Mark Twain:
"All you need in this life is ignorance and confidence; then success is sure."
Just makes me think of politicians.
"It is curious that physical courage should be so common in the world and moral courage so rare."
also makes me think of politics
"I have never let my schooling interfere with my education."
people can talk about how important schooling is, but quibble all you want, this man knew the true shape of the world. True learning can only come from within.
"Get your facts first, and then you can distort them as much as you please."
Speaks for itself
"It was enough to make a body ashamed of the human race."
This reminds me of most everything I am exposed to from our modern world.
"If you pick up a starving dog and make him prosperous, he will not bite you. This is the principal difference between a dog and a man."
"There is something fascinating about science. One gets such wholesale returns of conjecture out of such a trifling investment of fact."
This man had the intelligence and wisdom to do anything he wanted, but instead of pursuing fame or fortune, he followed his heart and simply did what he wanted and fuck what everyone else thought.
Albert Einstein. Just for how smart he was and how willing he was to admit his own mistakes on the Manhattan project
"Great spirits have always found violent opposition from mediocrities. The latter cannot understand it when a man does not thoughtlessly submit to hereditary prejudices, but honestly and courageously uses his intelligence and fulfills the duty to express the results of his thought in clear form."
"I know not with what weapons World War III will be fought, but world War IV will be fought with sticks and stones."
And the founding fathers, because the were willing to fight for what they believed in, and didn't insist on being made gods because of it. Particularly Thomas Jefferson
"An honest man can feel no pleasure in the exercise of power over his fellow citizens."
"Shake off all the fears of servile prejudices, under which weak minds are servilely crouched. Fix reason firmly in her seat, and call on her tribunal for every fact, every opinion. Question with boldness even the existence of a God; because, if there be one, he must more approve of the homage of reason than that of blindfolded fear."
"I would rather be exposed to the inconveniences attending too much liberty than to those attending too small a degree of it"