Quotes About Idealism

Mort drove one of those little hybrid cars that, when not running on gasoline, was fueled by idealism.

little hybrid cars that, when not running on gasoline, was fueled by idealism. It was made out of crepe paper and duct tape and boasted a computer system that looked like it could have run the NYSE and NORAD, with enough attention left over to play tic-tac-toe. Or possibly Global Thermonuclear War.

They come from all over, and they are on the average very young, very earnest, and not very much in touch with the larger scene, less refugees from it than children who do not quite apprehend it.

This was a California girl, and she was raised on a history that placed not much emphasis on why. She was never an idealist, and this pleased no one. She was tainted by survival. She came back from the other side with a story no one wanted to hear, a dispiriting account of a situation in which delusion and incompetence were pitted against delusion and incompetence of another kind, and in the febrile rhythms of San Francisco in the midseventies it seemed a story devoid of high notes.

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

Disarming an idealist was easy. One only needed to ask why the idealist was not on the front line of the particular battle he had chosen.

Disarming an idealist was easy. One only needed to ask why the idealist was not on the front line of the particular battle he had chosen. The

He winced. I had hit him where it hurt, in the solar plexus of his conscience, where everyone who was an idealist was vulnerable. Disarming an idealist was easy. One only needed to ask why the idealist was not on the front line of the particular battle he had chosen. The question was one of commitment.

Desarmar a un idealista era fácil. Solamente hacía falta preguntarle por qué no estaba en el frente de la batalla concreta que hubiera elegido.»

He winced. I had hit him where it hurt, in the solar plexus of his conscience, where everyone who was an idealist was vulnerable. Disarming an idealist was easy. One only needed to ask why the idealist was not on the front line of the particular battle he had chosen.

What kind of love was it that I felt when I was twenty? It is difficult to define - my physical passions were very weak then, perhaps because of a few years of great poverty and hard work. But my intellectual passions were strong, meaning that without asking anything in return, without wanting any pity, I wanted only to give, but not to receive. Foolish, wrong, exaggerated, proud, rash - for in love one must not only give, but also take; and, reversing it, one must not only take but also give.

Der kluge Idealismus steht dem klugen Materialismus näher als der dumme Materialismus.

He never stopped wanting to save the world.

We are people who fantasize too much to begin with. We read too much, we feel too much, we fantasize too much - we want all the wrong things!

Go gently into the day. Honor your idealism, resist cynicism. Keep your heart open to the world, try and make the world better. Don't give up.

Even the fragments of his words when 'repeated at second-hand' (Symp.) have in all ages ravished the hearts of men, who have seen reflected in them their own higher nature. He is the father of idealism in philosophy, in politics, in literature. And many of the latest conceptions of modern thinkers and statesmen, such as the unity of knowledge, the reign of law, and the equality of the sexes, have been anticipated in a dream by him.

There is something that mankind can never destroy in spite of an unreasoning will to destruction, and this is its own idealism, that integral part of its very being.

utopias always turn out to be one version of hell or another.

Charm was the luxury of those who still believed in the essential rightness of things. In purity and picket fences.

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

I was a dreamer when I was younger.

I'm a dreamer.

Everybody's a dreamer.

The democratic idealist is prone to make light of the whole question of standards and leadership because of his unbounded faith in the plain people.