Quotes & Sayings About Idealism

Fond of bewailing the decadence of the modern world, of denouncing the younger generation for its lack of idealism and public spirit, he is blind to the fact of his own enormous selfishness. He is one of those invalids who make use of their real or imagined sufferings to get their own way. — Christopher Isherwood

I don't think that brutality and idealism are mutually exclusive. It's a common denominator in my work - rabid idealism. — Richard Grossman

One thing I carried my whole life, especially from my grandparents in Chicago, was a huge idealism for the world. — Abigail Washburn

Pseudo idealism: apparent charitable behaviour that on scrutiny is revealed as selfish, because the giver is engaging in it only so that he or she can feel good about him or herself — Jeremy Griffith

All human beings are vines. But especially the idealist. He is a vine, and he needs to clutch and climb. And he despises the man who is a mere potato, or turnip, or lump of wood. — D.H. Lawrence

[in the]..curious way that my idealism has been mixed with my fatalism, so that I can possess the soul of a dreamer and that of a cynic at the same time ... I possess a power of magic ... [to] destroy the balance of a well-designed destiny with my diabolical mind ... — Anais Nin

What's the bee in your bonnet? Seems to be some kind of idealism. — Robert Musil

He loved the people just as much as he feared and detested persons. — Sinclair Lewis

But for a long time, and probably far too long, I had a secret wish: the adolescently romantic idea that there was someone out there for me; someone I hadn't met yet who would ask me on a date and make sense of my life. I harbored the hope, I'm now embarrassed to admit, that like a girl in a Lifetime movie, I would look into someone's eyes and find a reflection of my inner life. But sometime between my teenage years and the first years in New York, that idea had pretty well evaporated. I'd grown up. — Diane Meier

The United States is a successful nation that is constantly susceptible to melancholy because things are not perfect. — George F. Will

Ego trips by coteries of self-exalting people are treated in the media as idealism, rather than the petty tyranny it is. — Thomas Sowell

The real universe is always one step behind logic. — Frank Herbert

Those who profess the faith of Life regard the ideals of mankind as an expression of man's higher needs. Ideals which were once incentives to development thus become a drag upon it whenever life's needs demand new forms that are not recognised by the prevailing idealism. — Ellen Key

Idealism has devolved into madness. — Ralph Peters

Marriage is love put to it's ultimate test - the grindstone of life. Where the idealism of love meets the everydayness of marriage. — Carew Papritz

Hold onto your creativity, that idealism that is rooted in some degree of innocence and a firm belief in something finer than the things we already have. — Janvier Chouteu-Chando

Royce is the father of the thesis that German idealism is a story about the discovery and development of the Kantian transcendental ego - the "I" that accompanies all my representations - as an absolute cosmic supersubject who, god-like, creates the entire universe. — Frederick C. Beiser

I've always wanted to play Don Quixote in some way. It's a great role. I think the idealism of the man shows that hope that we have in the human breast to achieve something. — Dominic Chianese

What is it in humans that makes us so eager to believe ill of one another? ... What makes us so hungry for it? Failed idealism, he suspected. We disappoint ourselves and then look around for other failures to convince ourselves: it's not just me. (15) — Mary Doria Russell

In other words, "free markets" ideology, with its libertarian idealism, has in fact produced Mussolini-style corporatism. And until we learn to call the resulting looting by its proper name, it is certain to continue. — Yves Smith

Idealism leads to realism if it is strictly thought out. — Ludwig Wittgenstein

Cynicism is idealism turned inside out. It stems from an expectation unrealized and a promise perverted. That is so much of Washington today in a nutshell. — Mark Leibovich

What makes Geoffrey Chaucer such compelling reading is his creation of a riveting conversation between the ideal and the everyday. — John Mark Reynolds

For he (Cato) gives his opinion as if he were in Plato's Republic, not in Romulus' cesspool. — Marcus Tullius Cicero

I think a lot of people start out full of idealism and fresh ideas. And then a lot of times, being re-elected becomes more important than staying true to your principles. — Matt Salmon

Marx is like Plato, he has dreams that can't come true as long as people are people. — Jo Walton

I believe, with Gandhi, that we need to take an imaginative leap forward toward fresh and generous idealism for the sake of all humanity - that we neeed to renew this ancient wisdom of nonviolence, to strive for a disarmed world, and to create a culture of nonviolence. — Mairead Corrigan

have learned that the process of teaching and learning, of communication, involves movement, back and forth: the one who is healed and the one who is healing constantly change places. As we begin to understand ourselves, we begin to understand others. It is part of the process of moving from idealism to reality, from the sky to the earth. We do not have to be perfect or to deny our emotions. — Jean Vanier

People don't want children to know what they need to know. They want their kids to know what they ought to need to know. If you're a teacher you're in a constant battle with mildly deluded adults who think the world will get better if you imagine it is better. You want to teach about sex? Fine, but only when they're old enough to do it. You want to talk politics? Sure, but nothing modern. Religion? So long as you don't actually think about it. Otherwise some furious mob will come to your house and burn you for a witch. — Nick Harkaway

A dead martyr is just another corpse. — Leo Gordon

Sometimes it's best to trade an ideal for something more practical that you can guarantee. — A.J. Darkholme

Words without actions are the assassins of idealism. — Herbert Hoover

The young habitually mistake lust for love, they're infested with idealism of all kinds. — Margaret Atwood

Idealism is an ideal which is based on the idea of someone of the perfect world or the perfect life. An idealist fails to understand the limitation of his idea and believes that the real world can be converted into the world of his idea. — Awdhesh Singh

The actual well seen is ideal. — Thomas Carlyle

My formula for greatness in a human being is amor fati: that one wants nothing to be different, not forward, not backward, not in all eternity. Not merely bear what is necessary, still less conceal it - all idealism is mendaciousness in the face of what is necessary - but love it — Friedrich Nietzsche

I am an absurd idealist. But I believe that all that must come true. For, unless it comes true, the world will be laid desolate. And I believe that it can come true. I believe that, by the grace of God, men will awake presently and be men again, and colour and laughter and splendid living will return to a grey civilisation. But that will only come true because a few men will believe in it, and fight for it, and fight in its name against everything that sneers and snarls at that ideal. — Leslie Charteris

Three qualities of greatness stood out in Woodrow Wilson. He was a man of staunch morals. He was more than just an idealist; he was the personification of the heritage of idealism of the American people. He brought spiritual concepts to the peace table. He was a born crusader. — Herbert Hoover

A thing can be fine on paper but utterly crummy in the field. — Robert A. Heinlein

Anyone who fights for the future, lives in it today. — Ayn Rand

If there is anything I have learned about men and women, it is that there is a deeper spirit of altruism than is ever evident. Just as the rivers we see are minor compared to the underground streams, so, too, the idealism that is visible is minor compared to what people carry in their hearts unreleased or scarcely released. — Albert Schweitzer

Give and you shall receive' is not sentimental idealism, it is a simple, practical rule. That which we can and must give to the land is work, and if that work is given in love it will not be drudgery. — Walter Ernest Christopher James

People change, though, especially after they are dead. — Margaret Atwood

You're the medium Weed and I use to communicate, that's all, this set of holes, pleasantly framed, this little femme scampering back and forth with scented messages tucked in her little secret places.
She was too young then to understand what he thought he was offering her, a secret about power in the world. That's what he thought it was. Brock was young then too. She only took it as some parable about his feelings for her, one she didn't exactly understand but covered for with the wide invincible gaze practiced by many sixties children, meaning nearly anything at all, useful in a lot of situations, including ignorance. — Thomas Pynchon

But he had always believed in fighting for the underdog, against the top dog. He had learned it, not from The Home, or The School, or The Church, but from that fourth and other great moulder of social conscience, The Movies. From all those movies that had begun to come out when Roosevelt went in.
He had been a kid back then, a kid who had not been on the bum yet, but he was raised up on all those movies that they made then, the ones that were between '32 and '37 and had not yet degenerated into commercial imitations of themselves like the Dead End Kid perpetual series that we have now. He had grown up with them, those movies like the every first Dead End, like Winternet, like Grapes Of Wrath, like Dust Be My Destiny, and those other movies starring John Garfield and the Lane girls, and the on-the-bum and prison pictures starring James Cagney and George Raft and Henry Fonda. — James Jones

In the countries of Europe, one after another, the gentleman has been ousted by politicians and entrepreneurs, as materialism has given rewards to the sort of cunning incompatible with any kind of idealism. — Richard M. Weaver

It was idealism that made him so angry. He expected too much out of life. — Milan Kundera

In 1954 the gulag at Kengir witnessed an uprising by Christian and Muslim prisoners. The guards were driven out, and for forty days worship was freely practiced in the camp. Solzhenitsyn later documented the atmosphere of elation and idealism which prevailed in this doomed island of faith: the Muslims put on turbans and robes again, and 'the grey-black camp was a blaze of color'. The Chechens made kites from which they showered the neighboring villages with messages about the evils of the atheist system. Many marriages were celebrated. Survivors recall the forty days as a testimony to a possible way of living which had been suffocated by dreary unbelief. Delight in the present, and the knowledge of heaven outweighed the awareness of Khrushchev's inevitable revenge. The rebels were crushed under the attacks of tanks, but in the long term, this same spiritual outweighing insured the atheist dystopia's downfall. — Abdal Hakim Murad

Every Anglophile has his own private England which is, of course, unrecognizable to the English. — Mark Dery

We must rekindle the fire of idealism in our society, for nothing suffocates the promise of America more than unbounded cynicism and indifference. — Joe Biden

I hope that I state your case fairly: One of my great fears is misrepresenting you, even to myself, now that you are not here to set me right. The truth is that you did not believe in idealism. All love was suspect; even a saint's was just differed self-interest. And it was impossible to argue without sounding either sentimental or naive. Cynicism has all the smart words on it's side; idealism uses a nursery school dictionary. And you studied early to disguise your childhood pain. But it is not universal. — Michael Arditti

Unfulfilled dreams, ongoing relational tension, the loss of friendships, a hard marriage, rebellious teenagers, the death of loved ones, remaining sinful patterns - whatever it is for you - live long enough, lose enough, suffer enough, and the idealism of youth fades, leaving behind the reality of life in a broken world as a broken person. — Tullian Tchividjian

For, after all, you do grow up, you do outgrow your ideals, which turn to dust and ashes, which are shattered into fragments; and if you have no other life, you just have to build one up out of these fragments. And all the time your soul is craving and longing for something else. And in vain does the dreamer rummage about in his old dreams, raking them over as though they were a heap of cinders, looking in these cinders for some spark, however tiny, to fan it into a flame so as to warm his chilled blood by it and revive in it all that he held so dear before, all that touched his heart, that made his blood course through his veins, that drew tears from his eyes, and that so splendidly deceived him! — Fyodor Dostoyevsky

The starry-eyed idealists of today have submerged their critical faculties beneath a tidal wave of slop marketed by those old hippies who now sell a user-friendly dilution of their original enlightenment. — Peter J. Carroll

Idealism without pragmatism is impotent. Pragmatism without idealism is meaningless. The key to effective leadership is pragmatic idealism. — Richard M. Nixon

For if we regard space and time as properties that must, as regards their possibility, be found in things in themselves, [ ... ] then we really cannot blame the good Bishop Berkeley for degrading bodies to mere illusion. Nay, even our own existence, which would thus be made dependent on the self-subsistent reality of a non-entity such as time, would, along with this time, be changed into mere illusion - an absurdity of which hitherto no one has been guilty. — Immanuel Kant

If you have realistic ideals and can generally live up to them, your self-esteem will not be threatened. If your ideals are exaggerated and you cannot reach them, your good feelings from successes may be short lived, and you may feel that you are never good enough.
The continued hope for the impossible, the expectation that you will or can be unconditionally loved and adored, is not facing reality but rather holding onto an idealized image of yourself and an idealized version of what others can provide. If this is the case, your sense of self may be threatened by shame and its resulting depression, or by feelings of inadequacy for not living up to your unrealistic ideals. A better understanding of shame may help you recognize your tendency to hide what you feel from yourself and others. — Mary C. Lamia

One of the fundamental reasons why so many doctors become cynical and disillusioned is precisely because, when the abstract idealism has worn thin, they are uncertain about the value of the actual lives of the patients they are treating. This is not because they are callous or personally inhuman: it is because they live in and accept a society which is incapable of knowing what a human life is worth. — John Berger

True Americanism is practical idealism. Its aims, instead of being materialistic and mechanical, are idealistic to the point of being Utopian. In this way, the U.S. can provide and express ideals that strike a chord in humans everywhere - a declaration of independence on behalf of all the peoples of the world. — Maurice Saatchi

It has flowered; flowered from vanity, ambition, idealism, passion, loneliness, courage, laziness, the usual seeds — Virginia Woolf

My generation failed to change the world, but at least I did not let the world change me. — Chronis Missios

Economy is idealism in its most practical form. — Calvin Coolidge

So popular is alliteration that in the 1960s it actually made a grab for political power. In the 1960s a vast radical youth movement began campaigning to do things for the sole reason that they began with the same letter. Ban the bomb. Burn your bra. Power to the people. For a moment there it seemed as though alliteration would change the world. But then the spirit of idealism faded and those who had manned the barricades went off and got jobs in marketing. — Mark Forsyth

Reality is what people who lack vision see. — Mokokoma Mokhonoana

But no matte what kind of an understanding is adopted, whether associated with positivism, which asserts that the truth can only be reached by trial and error, or rationalism, which asserts that everything can be explained and grasped by reason, whether the perspective of romanticism, which overemphasizes imagination and sensitivity, or an approach based on ardent naturalism, whether based on realism, which aims to describe everything as it is including its shortcomings, or a curiosity-raising approach such as surrealism, whether idealism, which asserts that there is nothing real but ideas, or cubism, which asserts that there is nothing real but instead of direct description, or some other such current or perspective, that is not true poetry. — M. Fethullah Gulen

I think it is important for readers to know that it is possible to bring intellectualism and idealism to the White House and still be political enough to advance an agenda. — A. Scott Berg

The exclusion of true esoteric religion has been the business of the State since ancient times. At first this was done via the establishment of the popular idealism of exoteric religious institutions in league with the State. But in modern times the same process is done by the strategic exclusion of conventional religious cultism, mystical idealism, and higher evolutionary Wisdom from the mechanisms of popular culture. — Adi Da

In attaining our ideals,our means should be as pure as the end! — Rajendra Prasad

Throughout the history of the Deutschritter the German genius is very evident, romantic idealism implemented with utter ruthlessness. — Desmond Seward

Much that passes as idealism is disguised hatred or disguised love of power. — Bertrand Russell

But to lose my idealism, to quit believing in the ability of human beings to rise above their baser instincts, was to become old and bitter and of no service to anyone, not even myself. — Joe R. Lansdale

Idealistic reformers are dangerous because their idealism has no roots in love, but is simply a hysterical and unbalanced rage for order amidst their own chaos. — William Irwin Thompson

By concentrating on what is good in people, by appealing to their idealism and their sense of justice, and by asking them to put their faith in the future, socialists put themselves at a severe disadvantage. — Ian McEwan

Ideals are great in theory ... but they don't work too well in real life. — Laurell K. Hamilton

Idealism is fine, but as it approaches reality, the costs become prohibitive. — William F. Buckley Jr.

You see, Risa, survival is a dance between our needs and our consciences. When the need is great enough, and the music loud enough, we can stomp conscience into the ground.'
Risa closes her eyes. She knows the dance ...
'It's the way of the world,' Divan continues. 'Look at unwinding, society's grand gavotte of denial. There will, no doubt, come a time when people look to one another and say, 'My God, what have we done?' But I don't believe it will happen any time soon. Until then, the dance must have music; the chorus must have its voice. Give it that voice, Risa. Play for me.'
But Risa's fingers offer him nothing, and the Orgao Organico holds the obdurate, unyielding silence of the grave. — Neal Shusterman

It supported participatory governance in both friendly and adversarial countries; it played a leading role in articulating new humanitarian principles, and since 1945 it has, in five wars and on several other occasions, spent American blood to redeem them in distant corners of the world. No other country would have had the idealism and the resources to take on such a range of challenges or the capacity to succeed in so many of them. American idealism and exceptionalism were the driving forces behind the building of a new international order. — Henry Kissinger

A human relationship is not based on differentiation and perfection, for these only emphasize the differences or call forth the exact opposite; it is based, rather, on imperfection, on what is weak, helpless and in need of support - the very ground for dependence. The perfect have no need of others, but weakness has, for it seeks support and does not confront its partner with anything that might force him into an inferior position and even humiliate him. This humiliation may happen only too easily when high idealism plays too prominent a role. — C. G. Jung

When that time come, nobody will care for each other.
You don't have to prove me wrong, you'll need that energy. — Toba Beta

Scratch the surface of most cynics and you find a frustrated idealist - someone who made the mistake of converting his ideals into expectations. — Peter M. Senge

A lot of my idealism was frustrated by the end of the '60s because of the way things went with the assassinations and the sense that the political establishment was so fixed in its ways you couldn't change anything. — David Talbot

It was 1988, and I was just finishing a D.Phil at Oxford University on the topic of 'Nietzsche and German Idealism.' — Matthew Stewart

Since I neither want not can influence the events of the world, my mission is to preserve the internal integrity and equilibrium of my mind; that will be in which the manor in which I recover the purity of the original act; I shall be my own citadel, and to it I shall retire to protect myself against a hostile and corrupt world. I shall be my own citadel and, within it, my own and only citizen. — Carlos Fuentes

If a young person has any idealism at all, it's strongest about the time he finishes college. — Sargent Shriver

Idealism easily becomes dangerous because it brings with it, almost inevitably, the belief that the ends justify the means. If you are fighting for good or for God, what matters is the outcome, not the path. People have little respect for rules; we respect the moral principles that underlie most rules. But when a moral mission and legal rules are incompatible, we usually care more about the mission. — Jonathan Haidt

Every decision a person makes stems from the person's values and goals. People can have many different goals and values; fame, profit, love, survival, fun, and freedom, are just some of the goals that a good person might have. When the goal is to help others as well as oneself, we call that idealism. My work on free software is motivated by an idealistic goal: spreading freedom and cooperation. I want to encourage free software to spread, replacing proprietary software that forbids cooperation, and thus make our society better. — Richard Stallman

Idealism misconstrues agency, implying the capacity to bring about influence where that capacity may not exist or where it may only be weak. — James Davison Hunter

Over the years I have felt that both the IAS and IPS have developed a kind of feudal class consciousness that does not go well with the service to the people that India needs. Their initial idealism begins to diminish within a few years of service and they gradually become part of the furniture. — Kuldip Nayar

To endure the pain of living, we all drug ourselves more or less with gin, with literature, with superstitions, with romance, with idealism, political, sentimental, and moral, with every possible preparation of that universal hashish: imagination. — George Bernard Shaw

I have seen in the Halls of Congress more idealism, more humanness, more compassion, more profiles of courage than in any other institution that I have ever known. — Hubert H. Humphrey

Industry, technology, and commerce can thrive only as long as an idealistic national community offers the necessary preconditions. And these do not lie in material egoism, but in a spirit of sacrifice and joyful renunciation. — Adolf Hitler

Happiness too is inevitable. — Albert Camus

The idealist's program of political or economic reform may be impracticable, absurd, demonstrably ridiculous; but it can never be successfully opposed merely by pointing out that this is the case. A negative opposition cannot be wholly effectual: there must be a competing idealism; something must be offered that is not only less objectionable but more desirable. — Charles Horton Cooley

Idealism + Inaction = Depression — Oli Anderson

Idealists mature badly. If they can't outgrow their idealism, they become hypocrites or blind. — Brent Weeks

The desire to experience new kinds of community led a number of thoughtful and idealistic people to reject the patterns of vocation, family life and religion with which they had grown up. Their attempt to establish new patterns of social bonding in uncontaminated rural retreats can be seen as a secular monasticism, but they often discovered that to abolish the boundaries of authority, family and property created a whole series of problems which they did not have the spiritual and personal resources to solve.

At their best, such groups have opened up new horizons of discipleship, but they have often learned some hard lessons about the intractable sinfulness and selfishness of partly-redeemed human nature. — Ian Breward

You see, idealism detached from action is just a dream. But idealism allied with pragmatism, with rolling up your sleeves and making the world bend a bit, is very exciting. It's very real. It's very strong. — Bono

For at least two thirds of our miseries spring from human stupidity, human malice and those great motivators and justifiers of malice and stupidity, idealism, dogmatism and proselytizing zeal on behalf of religious or political idols — Aldous Huxley

America is exceptional in combining standard great-power realism with extravagant idealism about the country's redemptive role in creating international order. — Michael Ignatieff

It is never wise to discourage youthful idealism. — Stephen Kinzer