Quotes About Idealism

Young lovers see a vision of the world redeemed by love.

Men readily listen to Utopias, and are easily induced to believe that in some wonderful manner everybody will become everybody's friend, especially when someone is heard denouncing the evils now existing,... which are said to arise out of the possession of private property. These evils, however, arise from quite another source—the wickedness of human nature.

Utopias of equality are biologically doomed[.]

Cornell off to realise another impossible dream, righting more geopolitical wrongs. In a way, she thought, you had to admire someone like that. They burned brighter than ordinary mortals.

Isn't it sad, growing up? You start off like my Charlie. You start off thinking you can kill all the baddies and save the world. Then you get a little bit older, maybe Little Bee's age, and you realize that some of the world's badness is inside you, that maybe you're a part of it.

Do you remember back when you felt you could actually do something to make the world better?" "You're talking to the wrong man. I work for central government, remember? Actually doing something is the mistake we're trained to avoid.

War is always about betrayal, betrayal of the young by the old, of idealists by cynics and of troops by politicians.

We let rip with idealism and grand words, but it's nothing but rationalizations of our own egoistic behavior. Not only do we lie to others; we also lie to ourselves. Each one of us lives inside a house of mirrors -- our own instinctive self-righteousness distorts the way we view reality so that we can justify our actions to ourselves. And there's no way we can escape.

As I have pointed out, it is the Christian tradition that is the most fundamental element in Western culture. It lies at the base not only of Western religion, but also of Western morals and Western social idealism.

How often we find ourselves turning our backs on our actual friends, that we may go and meet their ideal cousins.

An idealist is a person who helps other people to be prosperous.

Yet after withdrawing from three wars in two generations—each begun with idealistic aspirations and widespread public support but ending in national trauma—America struggles to define the relationship between its power (still vast) and its principles.

A insistência impensada em fazer o que é certo pode virar desculpa para deixar de pensar em todas as consequências das políticas, afirma ele. As pessoas que querem usar o poder para mudar o mundo são com frequência idealistas, apesar de os realistas serem vistos mais comumente como pessoas dispostas a usar a força.

He suffered from an unlucky faculty—common to many men, especially Russians—the faculty of seeing and believing in the possibility of good and truth, and at the same time seeing too clearly the evil and falsity of life to be capable of taking a serious part in it.

Stepan Arkadyich smiled. He knew so well this feeling of Levin's, knew that for him all the girls in the world were divided into two sorts: one sort was all the girls in the world except her, and these girls had all human weaknesses and were very ordinary girls; the other sort was her alone, with no weaknesses and higher than everything human.

WE MUST, all of us, be prepared for the most terrible. Is not death, in the midst of humiliation, a way to give oneself even more? Sacrifice admits of neither calculation nor reserve. If I had lied like the rest where would I have landed? Yet, I believe even so, more than ever, only the idealists can change the world. The soul that remains is the soul.

The Formalist school represents an abortive idealism applied to the question of art. The Formalists show a fast ripening religiousness. They are followers of Saint John. They believe that "In the beginning was the Word." But we believe that in the beginning was the deed. The word followed, as its phonetic shadow.

A liberal is a man or a woman or a child who looks forward to a better day, a more tranquil night, and a bright, infinite future.

There is only one emotion which money has ever extended to idealism - contempt." - Loneliness and History

No matter how far they might have strayed from their origins as they became institutionalized over time, the historical record clearly indicates that what we now call the drive for social justice was the idealistic underpinning of monotheistic faith.

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.

Simon Templar, with the old careless swashbuckling days behind him, more stern and sober, playing bigger games than he had ever touched before – yet with the light of all the old ideals in blue eyes that would never grow old, and all the old laughing hell-for-leather recklessness waiting for his need.

If he tells the truth, it is because the most reeking lie no longer intoxicates him, even though he swallow it not in the modest doses that idealism offers, but in immoderate quantities, thousand-gallon-barrel gulps. He would taste the bitterness, but it would not make his head turn, as it does Schiller's, or Dostoevsky's, or even Socrates', whose head, as we know, could stand any quantity of wine, but went spinning with the most commonplace lie.

'Realistic' is a loaded word for me. Anyone who uses the word 'realistic' is all bad.