Quotes About Ideals

Religion, culture, education are all things that sound wonderful in theory. In practice, however, they are not so wonderful.

You see my point? The average person has a very average notion of goodness to which they aspire averagely. To aspire to goodness in any remarkable way would be 'undemocratic'.

But if I am not a criminal, I beg to be permitted to go abroad with my wife temporarily, for at least one year, with the right to return as soon as it becomes possible in our country to serve great ideas in literature without cringing before little men, as soon as there is at least a partial change in the prevailing view concerning the role of the literary artist. ("Letter To Stalin")

The gods of the past are considered simply as idols in our day and the virtues of the distant past would be, at present, moral defects which would prevent men from winning the battle of life, whose ideal is The Best for which all the faculties should strive.

Ideals and morality are often spoken of as virtual antimatter to the behaviors allegedly needed to maximize profits.

And one clouded stream that never ran dry was that choked with the scum of humanism, the poison spewed out by the factory at its headwaters. There it was: its lights burning brilliantly as it worked even through the night - the factory of Western European ideals. The pollution from that factory degraded the exalted fervor to kill; it withered the green of the sakaki's leaves.

Few gods, nations, or revolutions can sustain themselves without martyrs.

La historia de la ética es un triste relato de ideales maravillosos que nadie cumple.

People today spend a great deal of money on holidays abroad because they are true believers in the myths of romantic consumerism.

Just imagine how difficult it would've been to create churches, states or laws, if we could only speak about things that really exist, like lions or rivers

The founders of the United States," he declared, "proclaimed to the world the American belief that all men are created equal. . . . We shall not, however, finally achieve the ideals for which this nation was founded so long as any American suffers discrimination as a result of his race, or religion, or color, or the land of origin of his forefathers.

Every comrade must be brought to understand that the supreme test of the words and deeds of a Communist is whether they conform with the highest interests and enjoy the support of the overwhelming majority of the people.

I can remember when Democrats believed that it was the duty of America to fight for freedom over tyranny.

Fantasies really ought to stay fantasies-reality only ruins them

Un'idea sciocca incanta l'Occidente: l'umanità, che sta andando male, andrà meglio senza frontiere. D'altronde, aggiunge Flaubert nel suo Dizionario dei luoghi comuni, la democrazia ci porta diritto in un mondo senza fuori né dentro.

If the West believed in something, it would prevail overnight. The problem is you can't beat bad faith with no faith.

Betterment of conditions the world over is not essentially dependent on scientific knowledge but on the fulfillment of human traditions and ideals.

But the egoist has no ideals, for the knowledge that his ideals are only his ideals, frees him from their domination. He acts for his own interest, not for the interest of ideals.

idealism, that gaudy coloring matter of passion, fades when it is brought beneath the trenchant white light of knowledge. Ideals, like mountains, are best at a distance.

Americans live not by facts, but by a lengthy list of myths.

Tony Blair has turned his back on the principles he claimed he believed in before he stood shoulder-to-shoulder with George W. Bush. He was an entirely different kind of leader.

Any leaders who disappoint the people, ideals and promises by which they were appointed are by definition themselves dis-appointed.

Ideals survive through change. They die through inertia in the face of challenge.

Or heritage and ideals, our code and standards - the things we live by and teach our children - are preserved or diminished by how freely we exchange ideas and feelings.