Zora Neale Hurston Quotes

People in power, they're so used to people kind of playing up to them.

I have watched people around members of the royal family for a long time now, and something very strange happens to them. They turn into sycophants.

The idea of celebrity has always been very strange to me because it's taking the focus away from the music and attaching it to a person. When we put someone on a pedestal or idolize them, we're giving our own power away.

I don't believe in hero worship.

Whenever he met a great man he groveled before him, and my-lorded him as only a freeborn Briton can do.

Worship of a hero is transcendent admiration of a great man.

May heaven protect us, cher monsieur, from being set on a pedestal by our friends!!!

Hero-worship is the deepest root of all; the tap-root, from which in a great degree all the rest were nourished and grown . . . Worship of a Hero is transcendent admiration of a Great Man. I say great men are still admirable; I say there is, at bottom, nothing else admirable! No nobler feeling than this of admiration for one higher than himself dwells in the breast of men.

Success! to thee, as to a God, men bend the knee.

The English, the plain English, of the politest address of a gentleman to a lady is, I am now, dear Madam, your humble servant: Pray be so good as to let me be your Lord and Master.

I can't imagine what it is like to be raised in a society where their only statues that exist are to you and your father.

A Gorean slave girl in the presence of a free man or woman always kneels, unless excused from doing so.

To vilify a great man is the readiest way in which a little man can himself attain greatness.

Hero-worship is strongest where there is least regard for human freedom.

It is the coward who fawns upon those above him. It is the coward who is insolent whenever he dares be so.

It's just not my nature to go around idolizing people.

Sir, I am no sycophant or worshipper of power anywhere.

We have to put people on pedestals; otherwise, there's no one to knock off pedestals.

Men trust a great man because they do not trust themselves. And hence the worship of great men always appears in times of weakness and cowardice; we never hear of great men until the time when all other men are small.

Already I realize the tremendous effort it requires not to be taken over by the Civil Service. My Minister’s room is like a padded cell, and in certain ways I am like a person who is suddenly certified a lunatic and put safely into this great vast room, cut off from real life ... Of course, they don’t behave quite like nurses because the Civil Service is profoundly deferential – “Yes, Minister! No, Minister! If you wish it, Minister! Yes minister.”

I have neither eye to see, nor tongue to speak here, but as the House is pleased to direct me.

In all Places it is observed, that Great Men alwayes have their Followers, who hang on their Skirts; and some who have no thoughts of their own, make the Rich and Powerful their Oracle

I am well aware that there is such a great craving in man for heroism and the heroic, and that hero worship forms not a small motif in his complex. I am also aware that, unless man believes in his own heroism and the heroism of others, he cannot achieve much or great things. We must, however, take proper care that we do not make a fetish of this cult of hero-worship, for then we will turn ourselves into votaries of false gods and prophets.

The hierarchy plays out in the writers room, and you, as a staff writer, need to know your place.

People want to adulate people.