The Threat of Virtue

"Pity the country that requires a hero, Bertolt Brechtonce remarked, but pity the heroes too. They are the other homeless, the peoplewho don’t fit in.  They are theones who see the hardest work and do it, and pay the price we charge those whodo what we can’t or won’t. If the old stories were about heroes who saved usfrom others, modern heroes — Nelson Mandela, Cesar Chavez, Rachel Carson, EllaBaker, Martin Luther King, Aung San Suu Kyi — endeavored to save us fromourselves, from our own governments and systems of power."

— Rebecca Solnit