Quotes About Idealism

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.

I am an idealist. I don't know where I'm going but I'm on my way.

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.

Now I call myself a bleeding heart libertarian. Because I do believe in the principles of Libertarianism as an ideal - because I'm an idealist.

Idealism increases in direct proportion to one's distance from the problem.

Too many moralists begin with a dislike of reality.

So many technologies start out with a burst of idealism, democratization, and opportunity, and over time, they close down and become less friendly to entrepreneurship, to innovation, to new ideas. Over time, the companies that become dominant take more out of the ecosystem than they put back in.

Teens are passionate, questioning, curious, have a bit of the idealism I still cling to, and they're making decisions for the first time that can alter the course of their lives - and sometimes, the course of the world.

I have always thought that foreign-policy idealism has to be tempered with realism.

Often, when a man is young and idealistic, he believes that if he works hard and does the right thing, success will follow.

The debacle of the early years in Iraq has reinforced the realist dictum, disparaged by idealists in the 1990s, that the legacies of geography, history, and culture really do set limits on what can be accomplished in any given place.

What has our culture lost in 1980 that the avant-garde had in 1890? Ebullience, idealism, confidence, the belief that there was plenty of territory to explore, and above all the sense that art, in the most disinterested and noble way, could find the necessary metaphors by which a radically changing culture could be explained to its inhabitants.

I am obsessed with beauty. I want everything to be perfect, and of course it isn't. And that's a tough place to be because you're never satisfied.

When we peek behind the grinning mask of comic cynicism, we find a frustrated idealist. The comic sensibility wants the world to be perfect, but when it looks around, it finds greed, corruption, lunacy. The result is an angry and depressed artist. If you doubt that, ask one over for dinner. Every host in Hollywood has made that mistake: "Let's invite some comedy writers to the party! That'll brighten things up." Sure...till the paramedics arrive.

so Leola thought that a modest romance with a hero in embryo could do no harm - might even be a patriotic duty.

The optimism of a revolutionary always gives rise to a sense of wonder.

Washington and other founders entertained the fanciful hope that America would be spared the bane of political parties, which they called "factions" and associated with parochial self-interest.

quixotically.

Their pledge, in fact, came close to later communal farming ideas. The communal farm was not born of social or political idealism. It was based on the necessities of survival; there was no other way.

Plato appeals to soaring idealism scornful of the practical. Aristotle appeals to joyful realism on earth. Kant appeals to rage.

In Michelangelo was realized the grandeur of Italy struggling vainly against crushing oppression. He expressed that which was highest in it, reflecting the loftiest side of its idealism mingled with deep pessimism in his survey over life; for, wrapped in austerity, he saw mankind in heroic terms of sadness.

Idealism is just an escape from reality. There is no utopia.

If it were proved to me that in making war, my ideal had a chance of being realized, I would still say "No" to war. For one does not create human society on mounds of corpses.

Those who condemn the immorality of liberal capitalism do so in comparison with a society of saints that has never existed—and never will