Daily Inspiration Quote by Charles Kuralt

Kuralt’s line performs a neat two-step: it sounds like modesty, then quietly insists on moral agency. “Just by luck” is the disarming opener, a folksy shrug from a journalist whose brand was curiosity without swagger. But the sentence pivots on “picked.” Heroes aren’t assigned; they’re chosen. He frames that choice as accident to avoid self-congratulation, even as he admits that who you “worship” becomes a personal CV - a record of what you value when nobody’s grading you.

The word “heroes” carries old American weight: not influencers, not mere “role models,” but figures you treat as North Stars. Kuralt is writing from a 20th-century media ecosystem that still believed in public exemplars - and also from a profession where cynicism is the default language. By calling hero-selection “luck,” he inoculates himself against the knowing sneer: sure, everyone claims they admired the right people after the fact. Yet “good heroes” implies a real test: some idols age badly, revealed as frauds, bigots, or opportunists once the mythology peels off. Kuralt’s subtext is that cultural drift can make your youthful worship look naive, even complicit.

So the intent is both confession and caution. He’s telling you his moral bearings held because his influences did. The line flatters the reader into asking the uncomfortable follow-up: if your heroes changed you, what does it say about you that you chose them - and would you still choose them now?