Quotes About Idealism

All you earnest young men out to save the world please, have a laugh.

Idealistic? Ruddy stupid, if you'll pardon the language, miss,: Mr Roberts said. "All this talk about power for the people and down with the ruling classes and everyone should govern themselves. It can never happen, I told him. The ruling classes are born to rule. They know how to do it. You take a person like you or me and you put us up there to run a country and we'd make a ruddy mess of it.

When the Soviet foreign minister Vyacheslav Molotov visited Washington in 1942, he'd been invited to sleep at the White House. "I think," Roosevelt told Churchill in 1942 referring to Stalin, "that if I give him everything I can and ask him for nothing in return, noblesse oblige, he won't try to annex anything and will work with me for a world of democracy and peace." The American president clung to that illusion until his death in April 1945.

He'll die of idealism, of being right when the world is wrong.

Step 8 is a marvelous tool and technology for very practical incarnation, which keeps Christianity grounded, honest, and focused on saving others instead of just ourselves. "Anyone who claims to be in the light, but hates his brother or sister, is still in the dark" (1 John 2:9). Until religion becomes flesh, it is merely Platonic idealism instead of Jesus radicalism.

She could have happily lived inside any nineteenth century novel.

a common language was a wonderful idea, but utterly utopian. All good ideas were, she said sadly. Ursula

His head was always in the clouds. 'I'm writing a novel,' he told her. As if that was something to crow about. As if there weren't enough novels in the world already.

Romances serve but to feed the imagination of the young; they add nothing to the sum of truth.

If I were young and in love with a man, said Mademoiselle, turning on the stool and pressing her wiry hands between her knees as she looked down at Edna, who sat on the floor holding the letter, it seems to me he would have to be some grand esprit; a man with lofty aims and ability to reach them; one who stood high enough to attract the notice of his fellow-men. It seems to me if I were young and in love I should never deem a man of ordinary caliber worthy of my devotion.

For we were, as I say, an idealistic generation for whom the question was not simply one of how well one practised one's skills, but to what end one did so; each of us harboured the desire to make our own small contribution to the creation of a better world

But Wilson was an idealist who believed that the force of righteousness would overcome all obstacles. He underestimated the need to flatter, cajole, and seduce.

When Ethel said we should give everyone free education and free health care and unemployment insurance, I told her she was living in a dream world. But now look: everything she campaigned for has come to pass, and yet England is still England.

We're all idealists," said Lord Silverman, smoothing over the conflict like a good host. "That's why we're in politics. People without ideals don't bother. But we have to confront the realities of elections and public opinion.

This is a crucial point, because it alerts us to the fact that, no matter how high-minded, idealistic, or altruistic a cause might appear—from ecology to cultural diversity to spirituality to world peace—the simple mouthing of intense support for that cause is not enough to determine why, in fact, that cause is being embraced.

Joining the Liberal Party was a no-brainer for me... And when you are a young man, you don't get a calculator out saying, 'Am I going to get to power?' You get propelled forward by idealism.

Idealism is frequently another word for self-righteousness, a disease that can only be corrected by a profound understanding power in its complete sense.

I've always been inspired by Don Quixote as a role model of sorts, of the power of books to sort of make you insane in maybe a beautiful way.

I am convinced that love is the most durable power in the world. It is not an expression of impractical idealism, but of practical realism.

It is very important that you express your idealism actively, to what ever extent you can, for this increases your sense of worth and power.

People - not just in their teenage years - hold on to this fantasy of love when they're not ready to have a real relationship.

I think that there is always a part of utopia in any romantic relationship.

So many small nations had been bullied into humiliating surrender, the dictators had won so many cheap victories, that idealism had been left starving....

Mary McCarthy that "The happy ending is our national belief