Quotes About Ideals

The effect of pornographic fantasy is to 'commodify' the object of desire, and to replace love and its vestigial sacraments with the law of the market. This is the final disenchantment of the human world. When sex becomes a commodity, the most important sanctuary of human ideals becomes a market, and value is reduced to price.

Two people seemed to coexist inside George Washington's breast. One was the political militant who mouthed republican slogans; this Washington thought his troops would fight better if motivated by patriotic ideals. The other, schooled in the British military system, believed devoutly in top-down discipline and rank as necessary to a well-run army. This Washington was also the Virginia planter who felt little in common with the scruffy plebeians around him.

With an unaccustomed rhetorical flourish, he affirmed that in the near future "the dividing line will not be Mason & Dixons but between patriotism, & intelligence on the one side & superstition, ambition & ignorance on the other.

Each side possessed a lurid, distorted view of the other, buttressed by an idealized sense of itself.

Life is not an easy matter…. You cannot live through it without falling into frustration and cynicism unless you have before you a great idea which raises you above personal misery, above weakness, above all kinds of perfidy and baseness.

The search for truth and the desire for beauty were the twin ideals he strove to attain. The keenness of this pursuit saved him from the blemish of egoism which aloofness from his surroundings would otherwise have forced upon him.

Theory and practice sometimes clash. And when that happens, theory loses. Every single time.

The Partisan case was advanced as well by Trilling's insistence that what commends modernist writing to progressive readers is, precisely, the challenge it often makes to progressive belief: "The contemporary authors we most wish to read and most wish to admire for their literary qualities demand of us a great agility and ingenuity in coping with their antagonism to our social and political ideals.

Western women have been controlled by ideals and stereotypes as much as by material constraints.

Now different races and nationalities cherish different ideals of society that stink in each other's nostrils with an offensiveness beyond the power of any but the most monstrous private deed.

When a society abandons its ideals just because most people can't live up to them, behavior gets very ugly indeed.

One of the ideals [Margaret Thatcher] grew up with was self-denial and postponement of gratification, and yet she went about to create a greedy, short-term society. It is a paradox.

The standard dreaming of a society has to be listened to.

Moral certainty, clear standards, and a commitment to spiritual ideals will set you apart in a world that searches for meaning.

The ideals which have always shone before me and filled me with joy are goodness, beauty, and truth.

Is it not better for a man to die for a cause in which he believes, such as peace, than to suffer for a cause in which he does not believe, such as war?

The ideals which have lighted my way, and time after time have given me new courage to face life cheerfully, have been kindness, beauty, and truth. Albert Einstein (1879-1955)

Science, however, cannot create ends and, even less, instill them in human beings; science, at most, can supply the means by which to attain certain ends. But the ends themselves are conceived by personalities with lofty ethical ideals and—if these ends are not stillborn, but vital and vigorous—are adopted and carried forward by those many human beings who, half unconsciously, determine the slow evolution of society.

The ideals which have always shone before me and filled me with the joy of living are goodness, beauty, and truth. To make a goal of comfort or happiness has never appealed to me; a system of ethics built on this basis would be sufficient only for a herd of cattle.

The people who make wars, the people who reduce their fellows to slavery, the people who kill and torture and tell lies in the name of their sacred causes, the really evil people in a word—these are never the publicans and the sinners. No, they're the virtuous, respectable men, who have the finest feelings, the best brains, the noblest ideals.

Casi todos desean la paz y la libertad, pero son muy pocos los que tienen gran entusiasmo por las ideas, sentimientos y actos que hacen factibles esos ideales. Inversamente

The people who make wars, the people who kill and torture and tell lies in the name of their sacred causes, the really evil people in a word- these are never the publicans and the sinners. No, they're the virtuous, respectable men, who have the finest feelings, the best brains, the noblest ideals.

Crass," Dr Robert agreed, "but crass precisely because you're such inadequate materialists. Abstract materialism—that's what you profess. Whereas we make a point of being materialists concretely—materialistic on the wordless levels of seeing and touching and smelling, of tensed muscles and dirty hands. Abstract materialism is as bad as abstract idealism, it makes immediate spiritual experience almost impossible.

Sometimes it was difficult to be as tolerant as he wanted to be; but then, thought Ulf, the whole point about high ideals is that they are high. Being Swedish was not always easy, but you had to do your best, and hope that you didn't slip, and become... well, Mediterranean in outlook.