Quotes About Ideals

Nor is it surprising that three of the first four leaders of Islam were killed by fellow Muslims, though it is important to recognize that both the rebels who murdered Uthman and the Kharijites who assassinated Ali were, like their spiritual successors among the Jihadists of today, far more concerned with maintaining their personal ideal of Muhammad's community than with protecting that community from external enemies. After Ali's death, Mu'awiyah was

Nor is it surprising that three of the first four leaders of Islam were killed by fellow Muslims, though it is important to recognize that both the rebels who murdered Uthman and the Kharijites who assassinated Ali were, like their spiritual successors among the Jihadists of today, far more concerned with maintaining their personal ideal of Muhammad's community than with protecting that community from external enemies. After

The only thing that shatters dreams is compromise.

In the United States Christmas has become the rape of an idea.

There is no greater bore than perfection.

It cannot be too firmly realized that every Soul in incarnation is down here for the specific purpose of gaining experience and understanding, and of perfecting his personality towards those ideals laid down by the Soul. Let everyone remember/hat his Soul has laid down for him a particular work, and that unless he does this work, though perhaps not consciously, he will inevitably raise a conflict between his Soul and personality which of necessity reacts in the form of physical disorders

Many of us today owe the few attractive and redeeming features of our existence to the sixties, and Che Guevara personifies that era ... better than anyone (Castaneda 1997:410).

In other words, in order to believe in what we think our nation stands for, we must constantly, every day, in small acts or thoughts and large, deceive ourselves

The great genius of the Shiah was its tragic perception that it is impossible fully to implement the ideals of religion in the inescapably violent realm of politics.

The ambition of most beings is just to stay alive, overeat, spend too much, and avoid hard work. I'm happy that I can achieve much more than that…and we all die sooner or later. A death in service of a great ideal is a fine thing.

Those professions which are not so much involved in life itself as concerned with abstract truths are the most dangerous for the young man whose principles are not yet firm and whose convictions are not yet strong and unshakeable. At the same time these professions may seem to be the most exalted if they have taken deep root in our hearts and if we are capable of sacrificing our lives and all endeavours for the ideas which prevail in them.

The theological systems of men and schools of men are determined always by the character of their ideal of Christ, the central fact of the Christian system.

When men think and believe in one set of symbols and act in ways which are contrary to their professed and conscious ideas, confusion and insincerity are bound to result.

The man who fights for his ideals is alive.

You know you have a lot of impatience with reality as you see it when you're a young man and full of dynamism and strength and ideals and so on.

Some men can live up to their loftiest ideals without ever going higher than a basement.

The first step in freeing men from external chains was to emancipate them from the internal chains of false beliefs and ideals.

Men and times change-but principles-never.

However toplofty and idealistic a man may be, he can always rationalize his right to earn money.

The world has always been betrayed by decent men with bad ideals.

A really great man has always an idea of something greater than himself.

I looked for great men, but all I found were the apes of their ideals.

Politics and the fate of mankind are formed by men without ideals and without greatness. Those who have greatness within them do not go in for politics.

The old ideals are dead as nails--nothing there. It seems to me there remains only this perfect union with a woman--sort of ultimate marriage--and there isn't anything else.