Quotes About Ideals

Part of what's so powerful about this performance is it reminds us of the vital, crazy, kinetic energy that's at the heart of America--that people who have a vision and a set of ideals can transform the world., Every single step of progress that we've made has been based on this notion that people can come together, and ideas can move like electricity though them, and a world can change

practical people who knew life was too hard to judge each other's choices, too messy to live according to abstract ideals

our actions often contradicted the ideals of democracy, self-determination, and human rights we professed to embody.

We, the People, recognize that we have responsibilities as well as rights; that our destinies are bound together; that a freedom which only asks what's in it for me, a freedom without a commitment to others, a freedom without love or charity or duty or patriotism, is unworthy of our founding ideals, and those who died in their defense.

What greater form of patriotism is there than the belief that America is not yet finished; that we are strong enough to be self-critical that each successive generation can look upon our imperfections and decide that it is in our power to remake this nation to more closely align with our highest ideals?

I recognize that there are those who believe that it's time to discard the myth—that an examination of America's past and an even cursory glance at today's headlines show that this nation's ideals have always been secondary to conquest and subjugation, a racial caste system and rapacious capitalism, and that to pretend otherwise is to be complicit in a game that was rigged from the start.

Los sacerdotes que predican el pensamiento positivo en Estados Unidos seguramente se quedarán desolados si ven que se habla de ellos en el mismo capítulo (y hasta en el mismo libro) que de los censores y propagandistas del estalinismo.

The church is more than a bundle of ideals, as these younger fellows seem to believe. It's more than a spiritual Boy Scout troop. The church is a Force … and one does not set a Force in motion lightly.

Opponents denounced the treaty as an imperialist grab of a distant land that shamed American ideals

They led to the fall of leaders who embraced American ideals, and the imposition of others who detested everything Americans hold dear.

maps of the way things are, or realities, and maps of the way things should be, or values.

They were not hacks, working surreptitiously for Victorian special-interest groups. They were not blinded by politics or personal ambition. They were blinded, instead, by an idea.

The ideals of the Enlightenment are products of human reason, but they always struggle with other strands of human nature: loyalty to tribe, deference to authority, magical thinking, the blaming of misfortune on evildoers.

Today the campaign for world government lives on mainly among kooks and science fiction fans.

As the economist Ludwig von Mises put it centuries later, "If the tailor goes to war against the baker, he must henceforth bake his own bread.") Many Enlightenment thinkers, including Montesquieu, Kant, Voltaire, Diderot, and the Abbé de Saint-Pierre, endorsed the ideal

The Enlightenment has worked—perhaps the greatest story seldom told. And because this triumph is so unsung, the underlying ideals of reason, science, and humanism are unappreciated as well. Far from being an insipid consensus, these ideals are treated by today's intellectuals with indifference, skepticism, and sometimes contempt. When properly appreciated, I will suggest, the ideals of the Enlightenment are in fact stirring, inspiring, noble—a reason to live.

The Enlightenment principle that we can apply reason and sympathy to enhance human flourishing may seem obvious, trite, old-fashioned. I wrote this book because I have come to realize that it is not. More than ever, the ideals of reason, science, humanism, and progress need a wholehearted defense

I will present a different understanding of the world, grounded in fact and inspired by the ideals of the Enlightenment: reason, science, humanism, and progress.

El ideal del progreso tampoco debería confundirse con el movimiento del siglo XX para rediseñar la sociedad al antojo de los tecnócratas y los planificadores, que el politólogo James Scott denomina «alto modernismo autoritario».

I love judges, and I love courts. They are my ideals, that typify on earth what we shall meet hereafter in heaven under a just God.

Had there been no Plato, the Christians would have had a harder time selling the idea that all God really wanted from us was fraternal love.

It is a curious fact that with every great revolutionary movement the question of 'free love' comes into the foreground.

I am a die-hard romantic at heart and love the idea of love. But, when it comes to love, I kinda believe in the old world charm of romance - where there's mystery and intrigue.

you cease to utter falsehoods and live according to the dictates of your conscience, you can maintain your nobility, even when facing the ultimate threat; if you abide, truthfully and courageously, by the highest of ideals, you will be provided with more security and strength than will be offered by any short-sighted concentration on your own safety; if you live properly, fully, you can discover meaning so profound that it protects you even from the fear of death.