"Heroes do extraordinary things. What I did was not an extraordinary thing. It was normal."

Irena Sendler Music See all quotes by Irena Sendler →

React to this quote

More by Irena Sendler

“Let me stress most emphatically that we who were rescuing children are not some kind of heroes. Indeed, that term irritates me greatly. The opposite is true. I continue to have pangs of conscience that I did so little.”

“Irena Sendler at yadvashem.org”

“I still carry the marks on my body of what those "German supermen" did to me then. I was sentenced to death.”

“I am the only person still alive of that rescuing group but I want everyone to know that, while I was coordinating our efforts, we were about twenty to twenty five people. I did not do it alone.”

“Over a half-century has passed since the hell of the Holocaust, but its spectre still hangs over the world and doesn’t allow us to forget.”

“Irena Sendler at holocaustforgotten.com”

Resonant Thoughts

"'For as long as I can remember,' I said, continuing to speak to the figure standing in the archway, 'I have had an intense and highly aesthetic perception of what I call the icy bleakness of things. A…"

— Thomas Ligotti

Literature1953

#art

"Now Daniel, considered the horns, and behold there came up among them another horn, before whom there were three of the first horns plucked up by the roots; and behold in this horn were eyes like the …"

— Isaac Newton

Mathematics1934–2014

#justice

"The seeing of things as they really are — the seeing of a proportion veiled from other eyes , is what makes a man an artist. What makes him a great artist is a high fervour of spirit, which produces a…"

— John Galsworthy

Literature1867–1933

#art