I worshipped dead men for their strength, forgetting I was strong. This will to be oneself is heroism. True heroism is remarkably sober, very undramatic. The hero is known for achievements, the celebrity for well-knownness. The hero reveals the possibilities of human nature, the celebrity reveals the possibilities of the press and the media.
Celebrities are people who make the news, but heroes are people who make history.
Time makes heroes but dissolves celebrities. There is not a social, political, or religious privilege that you enjoy today that was not bought for you by the blood and tears and patient suffering of the minority. It is the minority that have stood in the van of every moral conflict, and achieved all that is noble in the history of the world. Our tendency to create heroes rarely jibes with the reality that most nontrivial problems require collective solutions. But we all have hero stuff in us.