Aspirational Figures Quotes

I looked for great men, but all I found were the apes of their ideals.

Some people admire the aspirational rock star figures whose biopics make it to TV, the people they watched as kids and made them want to play football for England. For some comics, it is often the Doug Stanhopes and the Joan Rivers.

I think people like Lena Dunham really opened up the door to what was possible, and they've inspired young women to go into filmmaking and writing and directing and acting in a way that maybe they didn't before, because now there is a path and there are jobs.

It's not just children who need heroes.

Madonna is my role model shes such a powerful woman. I love Gwenyth Paltrow, shes an actress I aspire to be like. And, of course, my mom. She drove me from New Jersey to New York every day for commercials so I could get where I am today.

My heroines are part of me and my heroes are part of what I'd like to know.

Unconsciously we all have a standard by which we measure other men, and if we examine closely we find that this standard is a very simple one, and is this: we admire them, we envy them, for great qualities we ourselves lack. Hero worship consists in just that. Our heroes are men who do things which we recognize, with regret, and sometimes with a secret shame, that we cannot do. We find not much in ourselves to admire, we are always privately wanting to be like somebody else. If everybody was satisfied with himself, there would be no heroes.

I'd like to go for people I admire - I always gravitate towards the people I idolized when I was a teenager: Cher, Diana Ross, and David Bowie.

I think that there are many ways in which people look for heroes, messiahs, things like that in society. I think some people are looking for something that maybe they don't possess. To me, ultimately, you are looking for someone who understands you, or at least you think understands you. It all comes down to understanding for who we look to as heroes.

My role models are Bettie Page and Mia Kirshner. Every day when Mia comes to work she raises the bar for us all.

Kids tend to look up to sports figures and entertainers, probably more than they should, but I've tried to use that in a positive way.

By sending the contradictory message that the famous are just plain folks on Mount Olympus, America has forged a relentless tension between loftiness and accessibility. Stir in the fact that the inborn talent and intelligence needed to achieve fame are immune to distributive tinkering by government programs and you have a definition of fame certain to produce envious rage: somebody screwed democracy.

Leaders are people we as followers want to regard with awe as the fullest flowering of our own possibilities.

Every generation has to find their own heroes.

Heroes are necessary in order to enable the citizens to find their own ideals, courage and wisdom in the society. The hero carries our hopes, our aspirations, our ideals, our beliefs. In the deepest sense the hero is created by us; he or she is born collectively as our own myth. This is what makes heroism so important: it reflects our own sense of identity and from this our own heroism is molded.

I never have compared myself to Jessica Tandy in any way, and that's such a great role model for me to look at. I'm seriously going to put pictures of her in my dressing room and commune with her from now on, I think.

Professional athletes have an enormous opportunity to be a source of inspiration for the younger generation, lead by example, and prove to them that as long as you stand up for what you believe in, everything is possible.

The star is the ultimate American verification of Jean-Jacques Rousseau's Emile. His mere existence proves the perfectability of any man or woman. Oh wonderful pliability of human nature, in a society where anyone can become a celebrity! And where any celebrity . . . may become a star!

I haven't got one or two people that I aspired to be like.

When I see people of my likeness, or who are somebody that I feel connected to, doing something great, I fee like I can do it. It gives me some hope and vision.

There used to be a time when the idea of heroes was important. People grew up sharing those myths and legends and ideals. Now they grow up sharing McDonalds and Disneyland.

Successful people often enjoy telling their story.

I'm not saying that maybe there isn't a kid out there whose behavior hasn't been influenced by me in some way. I'm sure there is. But I can only speak for myself, and if you'd asked if my behavior had ever been affected by people I'd admired from afar, like musicians or footballers, that'd be a yes, totally. Right down to their hand gestures.

There are people you remember and people you dream of.

I think representation is the most important thing in the world. People who are young look up to the things that they see in the media. They want to relate and to be able to say, 'Wow, I can be successful.'