Quotes About Idealism

#1. For we, too, have our ideals, even if we differ from those who have tried to establish a monopoly of idealism.

Henry Cabot Lodge

#2. Mix idealism with realism and add hard work. This will often bring much more than you could ever hope for.

John Wooden

#3. Idealism, however impractical, gives a meaning to our existence.

Anirban Bose

#4. I'm annoyed by those who love mankind but are discourteous to people.

John Howard Griffin

#5. The evils of envy and hatred masquerading as humanitarian idealism had darkened his life from its outset, stamping him as a man quick to search for the reality behind the expression of fine sentiments.

Theodore Dalrymple

#6. In other words, "free markets" ideology, with its libertarian idealism, has in fact produced Mussolini-style corporatism. And until we learn to call the resulting looting by its proper name, it is certain to continue.

Yves Smith

#7. The real battlefield is the realm of ideas.

Bryant McGill

#8. My parents are wonderful people and they instilled in me an idealism for which I'm grateful.

Hugh Hefner

#9. The energy of the Kennedy years was completely compelling ... I had a sense of a generous society eager to change the world. Idealism was very contagious. So that's why I went to America. I didn't intend to stay.

Howard Stringer

#10. The beauty and riddle in studying the motives of any politician is in trying to decide what is idealism and what is self-interest; and often we are left to conclude that the answer is a mixture of the two.

Boris Johnson

#11. Economy is idealism in its most practical form.

Calvin Coolidge

#12. Your idealism will get you killed or, worse, knighted, and you'll spend the rest of your days among fools and MPs. As for me, the chance to refuse an audience with the queen would be exquisite.

Stephen Hunter

#13. You can use your idealism to further your aims, if you realize that nothing is Nirvana, nothing is perfect.

Jon Stewart

#14. In the countries of Europe, one after another, the gentleman has been ousted by politicians and entrepreneurs, as materialism has given rewards to the sort of cunning incompatible with any kind of idealism.

Richard M. Weaver

#15. Bravery usually looked stupid from the outside.

Damon Suede

#16. We want wealth, but there are many other things we want very much more. Among them are peace, honor, charity, and idealism.

Calvin Coolidge

#17. So many technologies start out with a burst of idealism, democratization, and opportunity, and over time, they close down and become less friendly to entrepreneurship, to innovation, to new ideas. Over time, the companies that become dominant take more out of the ecosystem than they put back in.

Tim O'Reilly

#18. I do not care a fig for any woman that knows even what an author means.

William Hazlitt

#19. There are some who become spies for money, or out of vanity and megalomania, or out of ambition, or out of a desire for thrills. But the malady of our time is of those who become spies out of idealism.

Max Lerner

#20. Young, healthy communities can afford to roll the dice.

Richard Brookhiser

#21. I'm not ready to let the youthful part of myself go yet. If maturity means becoming a cynic, if you have to kill the part of yourself that is naive and romantic and idealistic - the part of you that you treasure most - to claim maturity, is it not better to die young but with your humanity intact?

Kenneth Cain

#22. She had never had a friend like this, in her private room, combing her hair, listening to her, talking about silly nonsense and the uselessness of one's parents; how the future was perfect, because they hadn't lived it yet.

Jessie Burton

#23. Reality is what people who lack vision see.

Mokokoma Mokhonoana

#24. To put a dreamer in their place isn't dreaming.

Mokokoma Mokhonoana

#25. It is the style of idealism to console itself for the loss of something old with the ability to gape at something new.

Karl Kraus

#26. Pure pragmatism can't imagine a bold future. Pure idealism can't get anything done. It is the delicate blend of both that drives innovation.

Simon Sinek

#27. But how can psychotherapists purport to dispel the illusions of their clients while protecting and maintaining their own? Furthermore, a therapist's belief in and commitment to the therapeutic process ought not to be based on naive idealism, but rather on realistic appraisal.

Michael Sussman

#28. Idealism and realism meet in the actual.

Mary Parker Follett

#29. If your children want to alter society, listen to their reasons and the idealism behind them. Don't crush them with some clever remark straight away.

Prince Charles

#30. The world will never have lasting peace so long as men reserve for war the finest human qualities. Peace, no less than war, requires idealism and self-sacrifice and a righteous and dynamic faith.

John Foster Dulles

#31. It's hard to renounce heroes unless you have one to start with.

Joseph Bottum

#32. Cynicism is idealism turned inside out. It stems from an expectation unrealized and a promise perverted. That is so much of Washington today in a nutshell.

Mark Leibovich

#33. Royce is the father of the thesis that German idealism is a story about the discovery and development of the Kantian transcendental ego - the "I" that accompanies all my representations - as an absolute cosmic supersubject who, god-like, creates the entire universe.

Frederick C. Beiser

#34. They said that I should lose my ideals and begin to believe in the methods of practical politicians. Now, I have not lost my ideals in the least; my faith in fundamentals is exactly what it always was. What I have lost is my childlike faith in practical politics.

G.K. Chesterton

#35. Der Mensch kann tun was er will; er kann aber nicht wollen was er will.
Man can do what he wills but he cannot will what he wills.

Arthur Schopenhauer

#36. Idealism increases in direct proportion to one's distance from the problem.

John Galsworthy

#37. Those who profess the faith of Life regard the ideals of mankind as an expression of man's higher needs. Ideals which were once incentives to development thus become a drag upon it whenever life's needs demand new forms that are not recognised by the prevailing idealism.

Ellen Key

#38. It wasn't idealism that made me, from the beginning, want a more secure and rational society. It was an intellectual judgment, to which I still hold. When I was young its name was socialism. We can be deflected by names. But the need was absolute, and is still absolute.

Raymond Williams

#39. What's the bee in your bonnet? Seems to be some kind of idealism.

Robert Musil

#40. As I have pointed out, it is the Christian tradition that is the most fundamental element in Western culture. It lies at the base not only of Western religion, but also of Western morals and Western social idealism.

Christopher Dawson

#41. Reality - Dreams = Animal Being Reality + Dreams = A Heart-Ache (usually called Idealism) Reality + Humor = Realism (also called Conservatism) Dreams - Humor = Fanaticism Dreams + Humor = Fantasy Reality + Dreams + Humor = Wisdom

Lin Yutang

#42. When that time come, nobody will care for each other.
You don't have to prove me wrong, you'll need that energy.

Toba Beta

#43. If you have not even a little imagination, you are simply a brute. So you must not lower your ideal, neither are you to lose sight of practicality. We must avoid the two extremes ... You must try to combine in your life immense idealism with immense practicality.

Swami Vivekananda

#44. Living is a constant process of debunking our romantic notions of how our personal life will unfold. Reality oftentimes fails to meet a person's glamorous expectations.

Kilroy J. Oldster

#45. The sharpest criticism often goes hand in hand with the deepest idealism and love of country.

Robert F. Kennedy

#46. The enemy of idealism is zealotry.

Neil Kinnock

#47. Well," Bush answered, "I'm worried that sometimes your idealism will get in the way of what I think is sound governance.

Jon Meacham

#48. But all categories of art, idealistic or realistic, surrealistic or constructivist (a new form of idealism) must satisfy a simple test (or they are in no sense works of art): they must persist as objects of contemplation.

Herbert Read

#49. Industry, technology, and commerce can thrive only as long as an idealistic national community offers the necessary preconditions. And these do not lie in material egoism, but in a spirit of sacrifice and joyful renunciation.

Adolf Hitler

#50. A realist is a slave to reality.

Mokokoma Mokhonoana

#51. Let hope inspire you, but let not idealism blind you. Don't look back, you can never look back.

Don Henley

#52. I am eternally, devastatingly romantic, and I thought people would see it because 'romantic' doesn't mean 'sugary.' It's dark and tormented - the furor of passion, the despair of an idealism that you can't attain.

Catherine Breillat

#53. No period of history has ever been great or ever can be that does not act on some sort of high, idealistic motives, and idealism in our time has been shoved aside, and we are paying the penalty for it.

Alfred North Whitehead

#54. I shall not be alive a half decade hence," said Seldon, "and yet it is of overpowering concern to me. Call it idealism. Call it an identification of myself with that mystical generalization to which we refer by the term, 'man.

Isaac Asimov

#55. Realism is in the work when idealism is in the soul, and it is only through idealism that we resume contact with reality.

Henri Bergson

#56. The idealism of Berkeley is only a crude statement of the idealism of Jesus, and that again is a crude statement of the fact thatall nature is the rapid efflux of goodness executing and organizing itself.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

#57. Idealism is based on big ideas. And, as anybody who has ever been asked "What's the big idea?" knows, most big ideas are bad ones.

P. J. O'Rourke

#58. Perfectionism is a mean, frozen form of idealism, while

Anne Lamott

#59. The imagination offers up ideal visions of experiences which then leave us disappointed when the visions don't come true.

David Brooks

#60. It is through the idealism of youth that man catches sight of truth, and in that idealism he possesses a wealth which he must never exchange for anything else.

Albert Schweitzer

#61. A genius is a grown-up that did not grow up.

Mokokoma Mokhonoana

#62. In politics, you know, as well as I do, there are no men, but ideas - no feelings, but interests.

Alexandre Dumas

#63. As long as the vision of heaven is always changing, the vision of earth will be exactly the same. No ideal will remain long enough to be realized, or even partly realized. The modern young man will never change his environment; for he will always change his mind.

G.K. Chesterton

#64. Sometimes idealism and all that make believe makes the world a better place.

Sung Kang

#65. I'm pretty much the same person I was 20 years ago. My politics haven't changed. I have the same feeling of idealism. But I am a little bit wiser and more experienced.

Lucinda Williams

#66. I became a communist because later on I was going to become a Christian.

Joy Davidman

#67. Once people said: Give me liberty or give me death. Now they say: Make me a slave, just pay me enough.

Todd Garlington

#68. I believe, with Gandhi, that we need to take an imaginative leap forward toward fresh and generous idealism for the sake of all humanity - that we neeed to renew this ancient wisdom of nonviolence, to strive for a disarmed world, and to create a culture of nonviolence.

Mairead Corrigan

#69. Idealism is just an escape from reality. There is no utopia.

Libba Bray

#70. Realism arises from the maturity of the minds, while Idealism arises from their conformity.

M.F. Moonzajer

#71. Plato understood love as a powerful engine that can destroy mankind or turn us to the good. Christ made that turn possible, and Spenser shows what can be done in the human soul if we take it.

John Mark Reynolds

#72. Without magic, there is no art. Without art, there is no idealism. Without idealism, there is no integrity. Without integrity, there is nothing but production.

Raymond Chandler

#73. Only through the conscious action of the working masses in city and country can it be brought to life, only through the people's highest intellectual maturity and inexhaustible idealism can it be brought safely through all storms and find its way to port.

Rosa Luxemburg

#74. When you have both parties who will not find ways to compromise, who won't meet in the middle, you have paralysis. It's the perversion of idealism.

Beau Willimon

#75. The great German idealists from Kant to Hegel saw this idealism or nihilism as a reductio ad absurdum of any philosophy, and so they struggled by all conceptual means to avoid it.

Frederick C. Beiser

#76. In attaining our ideals,our means should be as pure as the end!

Rajendra Prasad

#77. Whatever happened to a sense of idealism and embracing an idea that will help people and, in this case, children?

Rod Blagojevich

#78. Idealism and science continue to function in separate compartments; and yet 'the happiness of man on earth' depends upon their combination.

Lewis Mumford

#79. The romantic idealism of my youth has been replaced with realism and hard work at what I love.

Monique Roffey

#80. The history of "The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy" is one of idealism, struggle, despair, passion, success, failure, and enormously long lunch-breaks.

Douglas Adams

#81. Culture is the study of perfection, and the constant effort to achieve it.

Allen Tate

#82. Idealistic reformers are dangerous because their idealism has no roots in love, but is simply a hysterical and unbalanced rage for order amidst their own chaos.

William Irwin Thompson

#83. Hold onto your creativity, that idealism that is rooted in some degree of innocence and a firm belief in something finer than the things we already have.

Janvier Chouteu-Chando

#84. So much for youthful idealism.

Ian McEwan

#85. There is something mankind can never destroy in spite of an unreasoning will to destruction, and this is its own idealism, that integral part of its very being.

Radclyffe Hall

#86. We must rekindle the fire of idealism in our society, for nothing suffocates the promise of America more than unbounded cynicism and indifference.

Joe Biden

#87. Let us depart instead for the fields of Dreams and wander those blue, romantic hills where stands the abandoned tower of the Supernatural, where cool mosses clothe the ruins of Idealism. Let us, in short, indulge in a little fantasy!

Eca De Queiros

#88. I didn't want her to be like me, robbed of innocence and idealism, baptized in the bloody waters of randomness and cruelty, the fabric of trust forever torn.

Patricia Cornwell

#89. Idealism that makes no distinction between areas where our national interest lies and those from which it is remote does no good for America. The weariness of the post-Versailles, post-Korea, post-Vietnam eras is never far from the national mood.

Dick Morris

#90. 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.

Nick Clegg

#91. You'll never succeed in idealizing hard work. Before you can dig mother earth you've got to take off your ideal jacket. The harder a man works, at brute labor, the thinner becomes his idealism, the darker his mind.

D.H. Lawrence

#92. Americans admire a people who can scratch a desert and produce a garden. The Israelis have shown qualities that Americans identify with: guts, patriotism, idealism, a passion for freedom. I have seen it. I know. I believe that.

Richard M. Nixon

#93. The materialistic idealism that governs American life, that on the one hand makes a chariot of every grocery wagon, and on the other a mere hitching post of every star, lets every man lead a very enticing double life.

Louis Kronenberger

#94. If you didn't have some sense of idealism, then what is there to sustain you?

James Carville

#95. Criticism alone can sever the root of materialism, fatalism, atheism, free-thinking, fanaticism, and superstition, which can be injurious universally; as well as of idealism and skepticism, which are dangerous chiefly to the Schools, and hardly allow of being handed on to the public.

Immanuel Kant

#96. I'm an idealist
who has outgrown
my idealism
I have nothing to do
the rest of my life
but do it
and the rest of my life
to do it

Jack Kerouac

#97. So self-assured were they all by nature that it never occurred to me to doubt that their perfection was predetermined by forces I did not understand. They were all royalty. They were all gods. They were all broken.

Chelsey Philpot

#98. I think a lot of people start out full of idealism and fresh ideas. And then a lot of times, being re-elected becomes more important than staying true to your principles.

Matt Salmon

#99. The other aspect of idealism is the one which gives us our notion of the absolute Self. To it the first is only preparatory. This second aspect is the one which from Kant, until the present time, has formed the deeper problem of thought.

Josiah Royce

#100. Being an idealist is not being a simpleton; without idealists there would be no optimism and without optimism there would be no courage to achieve advances that so-called realists would have you believe could never come to fruition.

Alisa Steinberg