Quotes About Idealism

I cling to some saving romance in things.

The young Hindu, of course, is optimistic. He has been to America and he has been contaminated by the cheap idealism of the Americans, contaminated by the ubiquitous bathtub, the five-and-ten-cent store bric-a-brac, the bustle, the efficiency, the machinery, the high wages, the free libraries, etc., etc.

Dondequiera que fuese fomentaba la discordia: no porque fuera idealista, sino porque era como un reflector que revelaba la estupidez y futilidad de todo.

We were young, we were foolish, we were arrogant, but we were right.

When you are young, you are fervent about the things you believe in.

When I first ran for public office, it was with the passion and idealism of a young man who believed that government could help make our lives better, that public service was a calling and that citizenship demanded responsibilities. There was a greater good.

I was a very serious young man, very committed to saving the world.

In 1967 I entered Harvard as a freshman, confident - in the way that only 17-year-olds are - that I could change the world. My major was African Studies, and my plan was to travel to Tanzania, where President Julius Nyerere was creating a government based on democracy and socialism.

Look, I would say that anyone who does this work and doesn't have a strain of idealism is an adrenaline junkie or completely narcissistic. There is no other justification. You're risking your life, and if anything happens, it's our families who suffer tremendously.

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.

The world is imperfect, and young people are always trying to perfect it and they always fail - which is a good thing. Who'd want to live in a perfect world?

The new arrivals from Eastern Europe were ragged, dirt-poor, culturally energetic, toughened by years of torment, idealistic, and socialistic.

When you think back to your first kiss, your hair is perfect and she was wearing a cool outfit. We remember it with restraint and we remember it with style. We remember it as idealistically as you can think.

Your idealism will get you killed or, worse, knighted, and you'll spend the rest of your days among fools and MPs. As for me, the chance to refuse an audience with the queen would be exquisite.

I instantly regretted it. Cynicism is a decadent pose, a façade of apathetic ennui that's antithetical to the committed idealism of the true internationalist. But when you're a private eye, it sort of gets to be a habit.

To my detriment I'm quite rosy-visioned about the idea of love. It's slightly embarrassing but it's part of who I am.

Most kids are smarter than most grown-ups. Kids see the world in black and white... They look through all the garbage and see a world run by fools and dullards and lazy people. And there's nothing they can do about it because they have no power.

God preserve us from fuddle-headed young men who want money for building cloud-castles!

She was aware that in love even the most passionate idealism will not rid the body's surface of its terrible, basic importance.

They love their bodies. We neglected ours. They love to travel. We stayed put. They love adventure. We spent all our time at meetings. They love jazz. We were satisfied with pale imitations of folk music. They're interested in themselves. We wanted to save the world and with our messianic vision nearly destroyed it. Maybe they with their egotism will be the ones to save it.

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

Leave it to a naive world-saver like you to view our love as a Sacred Cause when in actual fact all it was was some barking at the moon.

On the one hand, I'm a kind of crazy anarchist-sympathizer with a hippie background, so this sounds pretty good to me. Make something for the love of it! But the reality is so much more complicated.

They were so in love with the world, and so disappointed in every aspect of it.