Quotes & Sayings About Being An Idealist

Do you ever think you're being an idealist? Do you ever wonder if you're holding out for something that doesn't exist? I'm not being pessimistic, and although I'd like to believe that a boom or we or us exists, I'm not sure I do anymore. Maybe I've been holding out for something that's unrealistic. — Karyn Bosnak

It is interesting that we call something good a "dream," but being called a "dreamer" is somewhat of a putdown.
Without dreamers, no dream would ever be given reality, and we would live in a very small and shallow world.
If you are a secret dreamer, it's your time to announce yourself. — Vera Nazarian

At twenty, if you are not an idealist, then you don't have a heart. And if you continue being an idealist at forty, then you don't have a brain. — Sudha Murty

an idealist is a hypocrite, because he is always trying to become what he is not, instead of being and understanding what he is. — Jiddu Krishnamurti

I don't think the American people had a clear picture of either Nixon or me. I think they thought that Nixon was a strong, decisive, tough-minded guy and that I was an idealist and antiwar guy who might not attach enough significance to the security of the country. The truth is, I was the guy with the war record, and my opposition to Vietnam was because I was interested in the nation's well-being. — George McGovern

I say let's be idealists. "Faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not yet see" (Hebrews 11:1). — Shane Claiborne

As long as one makes some kind of conscious state, whether a "passive sensation" or an "apprehended", come before reality, one will remain more or less in debt to the idealist method. The realist method pursues an exactly opposite course. Every given reality implies the thought which apprehends it. Therefore being is the condition of knowing; knowing is not the condition of being. When this has been established, another step in the direction of metaphysics can be taken. — Etienne Gilson

Being an idealist is not being a simpleton; without idealists there would be no optimism and without optimism there would be no courage to achieve advances that so-called realists would have you believe could never come to fruition. — Alisa Steinberg