Ideal Quotes & Sayings
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Top Ideal Quotes
Conan O'Brien has talked about how comedians try to emulate their heroes, fall short, and end up doing their own thing. Johnny Carson tried to be Jack Benny but ended up Johnny Carson. David Letterman tried to copy Johnny Carson but ended up David Letterman. And Conan O'Brien tried to be David Letterman but ended up Conan O'Brien. In O'Brien's words, "It is our failure to become our perceived ideal that ultimately defines us and makes us unique." Thank goodness. — Austin Kleon
A happy marriage perhaps represents the ideal of human relationship
a setting in which each partner, while acknowledging the need of the other, feels free to be what he or she by nature is: a relationship in which instinct as well as intellect can find expression; in which giving and taking are equal; in which each accepts the other, and I confronts Thou. — Anthony Storr
I speak as an unregenerate reader, one who still believes that language and not technology is the true evolutionary miracle. I have not yet given up on the idea that the experience of literature offers a kind of wisdom that cannot be discovered elsewhere; that there is profundity in the verbal encounter itself, never mind what further profundities that author has to offer; and that for a host of reasons the bound book is the ideal vehicle for the written word. — Sven Birkerts
Religious creeds are a great obstacle to any full sympathy between the outlook of the scientist and the outlook which religion is so often supposed to require ... The spirit of seeking which animates us refuses to regard any kind of creed as its goal. It would be a shock to come across a university where it was the practice of the students to recite adherence to Newton's laws of motion, to Maxwell's equations and to the electromagnetic theory of light. We should not deplore it the less if our own pet theory happened to be included, or if the list were brought up to date every few years. We should say that the students cannot possibly realise the intention of scientific training if they are taught to look on these results as things to be recited and subscribed to. Science may fall short of its ideal, and although the peril scarcely takes this extreme form, it is not always easy, particularly in popular science, to maintain our stand against creed and dogma. — Arthur Stanley Eddington
Photographs are perhaps the most mysterious of all the objects that make up, and thicken, the environment we recognize as modern. Photographs really are experience captured, and the camera is the ideal arm of consciousness in its acquisitive mood. — Susan Sontag
Shakespeare has way too many lines. My ideal theatre piece is about 40 minutes long with no interval. — Daniel Craig
The effects of mescalin or LSD can be, in some respects, far more satisfying than those of alcohol. To begin with, they last longer; they also leave behind no hangover, and leave the mental faculties clear and unimpaired. They stimulate the faculties and produce the ideal ground for a peak experience. — Colin Wilson
Oddly enough, the only person likely to be an ideal victim of complete manipulation is the President of the United States. Because of the immensity of his job, he must surround himself with advisers, the "National Security Managers", as they have been recently called by Richard Barnet, who "exercise their power chiefly by filtering the information that reaches the President and interpreting the outside world for him". — Hannah Arendt
Besides, what's in a name? Actually, a lot. Whether taken from a parent or grandparent, some saint, or even the late great Elvis, your name insists another person's dream of what you should have been. The portrait of some ancestral ideal lingers through heirloom names. Gender specific names imply all sorts of expectations. More than just a signifier used to summon, instruct, address, accuse, sometimes praise us, our names define and thereby limit us. They put us in a cage. — Brien Piechos
Ordinary women attempt to change our bodies to resemble a pornographic ideal. Ordinary women construct a false self and come to hate this self. — Susan Griffin
Annabel, one of my clients who cherished her perfectionism because she felt that it made her a fine writer and an excellent mother, was having a hard time with some of David Burns's teachings against perfectionism in his book, Feeling Good. Dr. Burns, she thought, told her to give up all ideal goals and stick only to realistic and average ones. Then she couldn't be disappointed or depressed. — Albert Ellis
He who wishes to teach us a truth should not tell it to us, but simply suggest it with a brief gesture, a gesture which starts an ideal trajectory in the air along which we glide until we find ourselves at the feet of the new truth. — Jose Ortega Y Gasset
Every man should take up his own ideal and endeavour to accomplish it. That is a surer way of progress than taking up other men's ideals, which he can never hope to accomplish. — Swami Vivekananda
When our gifts are remembered and lived, we discard the idea that happiness requires an ideal life in which we are comparatively the best. Many beautiful and enjoyable things are messy and far from ideal. Some of the greatest cooks have the messiest of kitchens, and beautiful gardens are the result of sweat and dirt. As we move closer to our essence, we better understand that we can have a wonderful life in the absence of perfection. — Robert A. Giacalone
Solitude is one thing and being alone is another. Solitude can be isolation, an escape, an unwanted thing; but to be alone without the burden of life, with that utter freedom in which time/thought has never been, is to be with the universe. In solitude there is despairing loneliness, a sense of being abandoned, lost, craving for some kind of relationship, like a ship lost at sea. All our daily activity leads to this isolation, with its endless conflicts and miseries, and rare joys thrown in. This isolation is corruption, manifested in politics, in business and of course in organized religions. Corruption exists in the very high places and on the very doorstep. To be tied is corruption; any form of attachment leads to it, whether it be to a belief, faith, ideal, experience, or any conclusion. — Jiddu Krishnamurti
Watercolour could have been used more by the modernists. It is so direct, and when the white paper convention is accepted, so powerful, even brutal, that it would seem an ideal medium. — David Milne
I may think that hornets do not have an ideal social organization. But I know better than to poke their nest. — Fred Reed
On several occasions, we are informed that the professional ideal 'took steps', 'organised assaults', and 'selected social problems'. But this is anthropomorphic metaphor implausibly masquerading as historical explanation. — David Cannadine
The more sincerity is developed, the greater share of truth you will have. And however much sincerity a person may have, there is always a gap to fill, for we live in the midst of falsehood, and we are always apt to be carried away by this world of falsehood. Therefore we must never think we are sincere enough, and we must always be on our guard against influences which may carry us away from that sincerity which is the bridge between ourselves and our ideal. No study, no meditation is more helpful than sincerity itself. — Hazrat Inayat Khan
Machines were the ideal metaphor for the central pornographic fantasy of the nineteenth century, rape followed by gratitude. — Robert Hughes
The Roman clergy thus adopted the old aristocracy's ideal of libertas, which had little to do with freedom; rather, it referred to the maintenance of the privileged position of the ruling class, lest society lapse into barbarism. — Karen Armstrong
With thought, with the ideal, is immortal hilarity, the rose of joy. Round it all the muses sing. — Ralph Waldo Emerson
We can become inspired to shape a higher, more ideal future, and when we do, miracles happen. — James Redfield
I am certain and have always stressed that the destination of mankind is to become more and more humane. The ideal of humanity has to be revived. — Albert Schweitzer
Wilderness appealed to those bored or disgusted with man and his works. It not only offered an escape from society but also was an ideal stage for the Romantic individual to exercise the cult that he frequently made of his own soul. The solitude and total freedom of the wilderness created a perfect setting for either melancholy or exultation. — Roderick Nash
The ideal student would be one who was not working for grades but was working because he was interested in the work and not trying to compete with fellow students. — Carl David Anderson
Fool! The Ideal is in thyself, the impediment too is in thyself: thy Condition is but the stuff thou art to shape that same Ideal out of: what matters whether such stuff be of this sort or that, so the Form thou give it be heroic, be poetic? O thou that pinest in the imprisonment of the Actual, and criest bitterly to the gods for a kingdom wherein to rule and create, know this of a truth: the thing thou seekest is already with thee, 'here or nowhere,' couldst thou only see! — Thomas Carlyle
Excellence isn't a one-week or one-year ideal. It's a constant. — Michael Jordan
The ideal ratio is one computer to every five students; we are nowhere close to that percentage in a lot of schools in America. — Spencer Abraham
Let us be quite clear that the ideal is a paradox. Most of us, having grown up among the ruins of the chivalrous tradition, were taught in our youth that a bully is always a coward. Our first week at school refuted this lie, along with its corollary that a truly brave man is always gentle. It is a pernicious lie because it misses the real novelty and originality of the medieval demand upon human nature. Worse still, it represents as a natural fact something which is really a human ideal, nowhere fully attained, and nowhere attained at all without arduous discipline. It is refuted by history and Experience. Homer's Achilles knows nothing of the demand that the brave should also be the modest and the merciful. He kills men as they cry for quarter or takes them prisoner to kill them at leisure. — C.S. Lewis
What sets worlds in motion is the interplay of differences, their attractions and repulsions. Life is plurality, death is uniformity. By suppressing differences and pecularities, by eliminating different civilizations and cultures, progress weakens life and favors death. The ideal of a single civilization for everyone, implicit in the cult of progress and technique, impoverishes and mutilates us. Every view of the world that becomes extinct, every culture that disappears, diminishes a possibility of life — Octavio Paz
Ours is the only civilization in history which has enshrined mediocrity as its national ideal. Others have been corrupt, but leave it to us to invent the most undistinguished of corruptions. No orgies, no blood running in the street, no babies thrown off cliffs. No, we're sentimental people and we horrify easily. True, our moral fiber is rotten. Our national character stinks to high heaven. But we are kinder than ever. No prostitute ever responded with a quicker spasm of sentiment when our hearts are touched. Nor is there anything new about thievery, lewdness, lying, adultery. What is new is that in our time liars and thieves and whores and adulterers wish also to be congratulated by the great public, if their confession is sufficiently psychological or strikes a sufficiently heartfelt and authentic note of sincerity. Oh, we are sincere. I do not deny it. I don't know anybody nowadays who is not sincere. — Walker Percy
The ideal reasoner, he remarked, would, when he had once been shown a single fact in all its bearings, deduce from it not only all the chain of events which led up to it but also all the results which would follow from it. — Arthur Conan Doyle
If anything is to exist at all, then the Original Thing must be, not a principle nor a generality, much less an 'ideal' or a 'value', but an utterly concrete fact. — C.S. Lewis
In an ideal world the script is written lean and tight and therefore there are no scenes left on the cuttring room floor and therefore no extended edition. — Peter Jackson
We are haunted by an ideal life, and it is because we have within us the beginning and the possibility of it. — Phillips Brooks
How do you find your mount, Miss de Lacy?"
Amy found it a slug. It was clear Rowanford had taken her caution too seriously. This horse would be ideal for a non-equestrian grandmother. "I feel very safe," she said.
"Excellent. I shall take good care of you, Miss de Lacy. Have no fear."
Amy sighed and wished there was a convenient piece of furniture to heft to prove she was not as fragile as she appeared. — Jo Beverley
Imagination in poetry, as distinguished from mere fancy is the transfiguring of the real or actual to the ideal. — Alfred Austin
That which an age considers evil is usually an unseasonable echo of what was formerly considered good - the atavism of an old ideal. — Friedrich Nietzsche
The ideal historian goes to the mouth of the tomb, cries: "Lazarus, come forth!" and sets him that was dead for ages, blinking and passionate, in the sun. — Austin O'Malley
The cloud represents the creative power of the mind, which can assume any imaginable form. It is the ideal medium of creation for the enlightened mind, which manifests itself on the plane of timeless meditative vision. — Anagarika Govinda
Musical myths speak with authority about our society, its fragility, its strengths, its desires, and its limits. Music becomes a wise version of the utopian messenger, pleasing us with his account of an ideal land but also warning us, in his tones, of all the dangers. — Edward Rothstein
If the corrupt Jordanian monarchy were overthrown, it would be the ideal opportunity to solve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, because the West Bank and Jordan could then be united. There is already a Palestinian majority in Jordan, and there is enough room for everyone there. That would be the best revolution I could imagine. — Tom Segev
There is nothing the matter with Americans except their ideals. The real American is all right; it is the ideal American who is all wrong. — G.K. Chesterton
Education is not filling the mind with a lot of facts. Perfecting the instrument and getting complete mastery of my own mind [is the ideal of education]. — Swami Vivekananda
The social system tends to be dominated by images ... especially of the future, which act cybernetically , constantly guided by perceived divergences between the real and the ideal — Kenneth E. Boulding
Life seemed ideal to him right then, and he was happy for the first time in a long time, and it felt like the sun was shining from his heart. - from the novel Brainjob by David Sloma. — David Sloma
My ideal relationship with the reader is that at certain points they will have said, 'I'm finding this quite tough, but I'm going to hang in there,' then at the end they will say, 'Oh God, I'm glad I hung on, it was so worth it.' — Sebastian Faulks
Let me also remind you that zero, like all of mathematics, is fictional and an idealization. It is impossible to reach absolute zero temperature or to get perfect vacuum. Luckily, mathematics is a fairyland where ideal and fictional objects are possible. — Doron Zeilberger
I was raised in the Marine Corps and I was taught as a boy that you feed your own men before you feed yourself. It was my belief then, and it remains so today, that my platoon who loves and respect me will slaughter your platoon that hates you. But here is the great lesson I took from the plebe system - it let me know exactly the kind of man I wanted to become. It made me ache to be a contributing citizen in whatever society I found myself in, to live out a life I could be proud of, and always to measure up to what I took to be the highest ideal of a Citadel man - or, now, a Citadel woman. The standards were clear to me and they were high, and I took my marching orders from my college to take my hard-won education and go out to try to make the whole world a better place. — Pat Conroy
Art is the indispensable medium for the communication of a moral ideal ... — Ayn Rand
When a finished work of 20th century sculpture is placed in an 18th century garden, it is absorbed by the ideal representation of the past, thus reinforcing political and social values that are no longer with us. — Robert Smithson
It seems there is an ideal degree of aging which is admired. Things should not be new, but neither should they be rotten with age (except in New Orleans, which fosters a cult of decay). — Stewart Brand
An intimate friend and a hated enemy have always been indispensable requirements for my emotional life; I have always been able to create them anew, and not infrequently my childish ideal has been so closely approached that friend and enemy coincided in the same person. — Sigmund Freud
At certain epochs, man has felt conscious of something about himself - body and spirit - which was outside the day-to-day struggle for existence and the night-to-night struggle with fear; and he has felt the need to develop these qualities of thought and feeling so that they might approach as nearly as possible to an ideal of perfection - reason, justice, physical beauty, all of them in equilibrium. He has managed to satisfy this need in various ways - through myths, through dance and song, through systems of philosophy and through the order that he has imposed upon the visible world. — Kenneth Clark
Self-sacrifice, we drool, is a virtue. Is sacrifice a virtue? Can a man sacrifice his integrity? His honor? His freedom? His ideal? His convictions? The honesty of his feeling? The independence of his thoughts? But these are a man's supreme possessions. Anything he gives up for them is not a sacrifice but an easy bargain. — Ayn Rand
Hold on to your own ideal ... Above all, never attempt to guide or rule others, or, as the Yankees say, "boss" others. Be the servant of all. — Swami Vivekananda
Ideal society is a drama enacted exclusively in the imagination. — George Santayana
It's all heartbreak, death, and unrequited love." "Well, that is what most songs are about," said Will. "Requited love is ideal but doesn't make much of a ballad — Cassandra Clare
In previous ages the word 'art' was used to cover all forms of human skill. The Greeks believed that these skills were given by the gods to man for the purpose of improving the condition of life. In a real sense, photography has fulfilled the Greek ideal of art; it should not only improve the photographer, but also improve the world. — David Hurn
The only religion that can satisfy today's ideal is a religion that will give consecration to life, and direction to human endeavor, inspire men with faith in themselves, dedicate them to high moral purpose, and give them the strength to live through their failures, and to face with high courage their supreme tragedies. — Sterling M. McMurrin
But in simple substances the influence of one monad over another is ideal only. — Gottfried Leibniz
Man's ideal state is realized when he has fulfilled the purpose for which he is born. And what is it that reason demands of him? Something very easy-that he live in accordance with his own nature. — Seneca The Younger
For me a work of art must be an elevated interpretation of nature. The search for the ideal has been the purpose of my life. In landscape or seascape, I love above all the poetic motif. — William-Adolphe Bouguereau
I had often joked in my speeches that I had imaginary conversations with Mrs. Roosevelt to solicit her advice on a range of subjects. It's actually a useful mental exercise to help analyze problems, provided you choose the right person to visualize. Eleanor Roosevelt was ideal. — Hillary Clinton
Competitiveness is just as much a part of our nature as empathy. The ideal, in my view, is a democratic system with a social market economy, because it takes both tendencies into account. — Frans De Waal
The Annex is an ideal place to hide in. It may be damp and lopsided, but there's probably not a more comfortable hiding place in all of Amsterdam. No, in all of Holland. — Anne Frank
You may have an overall target to achieve with each prospect, but if you are going to have an ideal outcome for each call, should you not also have a tolerable outcome to fall back on? Something you are willing to put up with if things don't go completely to plan, but something that still moves things forward ever so slightly? — Chris Murray
I'm not one of those writers who insist they don't read reviews and don't care much about them. I do read them, and I do care about them, and they're not always what you want them to be in an ideal world. — Tom Stoppard
To be an ideal guest, stay at home. — E.W. Howe
We can either own our circumstances and be creative in them, or we can throw up our hands and say, I cannot be held accountable because the conditions are not ideal. — Patti Digh
The Weak Point Dealer is an ideal man fighting his inner himself who is drowned by the outer himself, desperate to deal with the weak points. The man who is wildly in love with what he wants and madly hates for what he has to wait for. — Bhavik Sarkhedi
Don't accept less than what it is that you know that you want. Don't allow someone to be a jerk. Don't allow someone to disrespect you. Listen to the bigger voice in your head telling you that you deserve the best, whatever that is whatever that is you decide you like for yourself. It may differ from what I like or what is ideal for me. But the bottom line is to never accept less than what you know you deserve. — Kimora Lee Simmons
The cheeky ideal I am calling for is that Muslims should be viewed as equal citizens, nothing more and nothing less. — Maajid Nawaz
An ideal is but a reality whose meaner features are hidden by a gilding of enthusiasm. — Elizabeth Lodor Merchant
...the whole of American life was organized around the cult of the powerful individual, that phantom ideal which Europe herself had only begun to outgrow in her last phase. Those Americans who wholly failed to realize this ideal, who remained at the bottom of the social ladder, either consoled themselves with hopes for the future, or stole symbolical satisfaction by identifying themselves with some popular star, or gloated upon their American citizenship, and applauded the arrogant foreign policy of their government. — Olaf Stapledon
One of the very hallmarks of our nation is the ideal of E Pluribus Unum. It is a concept that richly flows from the highest ideals of our nation. — Cory Booker
Tripping and falling are part of what makes living real
Rising and reaching are what make you capture the ideal
Don't sit there mourning
Get up rejoicing
It is a new day...
with a will, there is a way! — Manuela George-Izunwa
A smart soldier wants to know the causes of wars. Also how to end them. After all, war is the normal state of affairs, isn't it? Peace is the name of the ideal we deduce from the fact that there have been interludes between wars. — Jerry Pournelle
According to the classic liberal-arts ideal, learning promises liberation, but it is not liberation from demanding moral ideals and social norms, or liberation to act on our desires-it is, rather, liberation from slavery to those desires, from slavery to self. — Robert P. George
Are we all living like this? Two lives, the ideal outer life and the inner imaginative life where we keep our secrets? — Jeanette Winterson
No [movie is really worth watching] which does not either impart valuable knowledge; or set before us some ideal of beauty, strength, or nobility of character. There are enough [great movies] to occupy us during all our short and busy years. If we are wise, we will resolutely avoid all but the richest and the best. — J.R. Miller
An ideal sanctified by the sacrifices of such master spirits as Lenin cannot go in vain, the noble example of their renunciation will be emblazoned for ever and quicken and purify the ideal as time passes. — Mahatma Gandhi
The ideal may seem remote of execution, but the democratic ideal of education is a farcical yet tragic delusion except as the ideal more and more dominates our public system of education. — John Dewey
America has always been torn between the ideal and the real, between noble goals and inevitable compromises. So was Jefferson. In his head and in his heart, as in the nation itself, the perfect warred with the good, the intellectual with the visceral. — Jon Meacham
The Complete Idiots Guide to Eating Raw is ideal for anyone looking to seamlessly adopt eating habits that will benefit overall health and boost athletic performance. — Brendan Brazier
I've been wondering if in fact ideal platonic love isn't just an intensely concentrated form of what inspires the best teachers. — Edmund Marlowe
People paying attention to vibratory activity, not in reaction to a fixed ideal performance, but each time attentively to how it happens to be this time, not necessarily two times the same. A music that transports the listener to the moment where he is. — John Cage
The grey is certainly inspired by the photo-paintings, and, of course, it's related to the fact that I think grey is an important colour - the ideal colour for indifference, fence-sitting, keeping quiet, despair. In other words, for states of being and situations that affect one, and for which one would like to find a visual expression. — Gerhard Richter
At IBM, a corporation that embodied the ideal of the company man, the sales force gathered each morning to belt out the company anthem, "Ever Onward," and to harmonize on the "Selling IBM" song, set to the tune of "Singin' in the Rain. — Susan Cain
That's what we did. We saved each other. He forced me to see that living in fear got me nowhere and that holding out for some unobtainable ideal of perfection was just silly. I made him realize that whoever he wanted to be and whatever he chose to do was enough. He didn't have to be anything more. He wasn't perfect, I wasn't perfect, but the love we had for each other . . . nothing was more perfect than that. — Jay Crownover
Wherever there is evil and wherever there is ignorance and want of knowledge, I have found out by experience that all evil comes, as our scriptures say, relying upon differences, and that all good comes from faith in equality, in the underlying sameness and oneness of things. This is the great Vedantic ideal. — Swami Vivekananda
The New Hampshire girls who came to Lowell were descendants of the sturdy backwoodsmen who settled that State scarcely a hundred years before ... They were earnest and capable; ready to undertake anything that was worth doing. My dreamy, indolent nature was shamed into activity among them. They gave me a larger, firmer ideal of womanhood. — Lucy Larcom
Sex is our deepest form of consciousness. It is utterly non-ideal, non-mental. It is pure blood-consciousness ... It is the consciousness of the night, when the soul is almost asleep. — D.H. Lawrence
The ideal artist is he who knows everything, feels everything, experiences everything, and retains his experience in a spirit of wonder and feeds upon it with creative lust. — George Bellows
They spent the next hour nibbling their way through the food stalls, sharing spiral-cut potatoes, pork sandwiches, and cream puffs. They found a table in one of the many shaded beer gardens, and Lou retrieved some ice-cold Summer Shandys to go with their food. The beer had a light lemon edge that offset the malt, making it an ideal hot-summer-day drink. The potato spirals, long twirls coated in bright orange cheese, combined the thin crispiness of a potato chip with a French fry. And the cream puffs... The size of a hamburger on steroids, the two pate a choux ends showcased almost two cups of whipped cream- light, fluffy, and fresh. — Amy E. Reichert
We have an historic opportunity for a great global healing and renewal. If we will accept the challenge of nonviolent activism with faith, courage, and determination, we can bring this great vision of a world united in peace and harmony from a distant ideal into glowing reality. — Coretta Scott King
The ruling of men is the effort to direct the individual actions of many persons toward some end. This end theoretically should be the greatest good of all, but no human group has ever reached this ideal because of ignorance and selfishness. — W.E.B. Du Bois