Quotes about ideals and idealism

"Our ideals are our better selves."

Alcott, Amos Bronson on ideals and idealism   

"Idealism is the despot of thought, just as politics is the despot of will."

Bakunin, Mikhail on ideals and idealism   

"The attainment of an ideal is often the beginning of a disillusion."

Baldwin, Stanley on ideals and idealism
3 fans of this quote   

"Idealism is fine, but as it approaches reality the cost becomes prohibitive."

Buckley, William F. on ideals and idealism   

"Instead of killing and dying in order to produce the being that we are not, we have to live and let live in order to create what we are."

Camus, Albert on ideals and idealism
6 fans of this quote   

"The actual well seen is ideal."

Carlyle, Thomas on ideals and idealism   

"Nearly all the Escapists in the long past have managed their own budget and their social relations so unsuccessfully that I wouldn't want them for my landlords, or my bankers, or my neighbors. They were valuable, like powerful stimulants, only when they were left out of the social and industrial routine."

Cather, Willa on ideals and idealism   

"The idealist walks on tiptoe, the materialist on his heels."

Chazal, Malcolm De on ideals and idealism   

"No folly is more costly than the folly of intolerant idealism."

Churchill, Winston on ideals and idealism
8 fans of this quote   

"Why should we strive, with cynic frown, to knock their fairy castles down?"

Cook, Eliza on ideals and idealism   

"The idealist's program of political or economic reform may be impracticable, absurd, demonstrably ridiculous; but it can never be successfully opposed merely by pointing out that this is the case. A negative opposition cannot be wholly effectual: there must be a competing idealism; something must be offered that is not only less objectionable but more desirable."

Cooley, Charles Horton on ideals and idealism   

"There is no force so democratic as the force of an ideal."

Coolidge, Calvin on ideals and idealism   

"An idealist is a person who helps other people to be prosperous."

Ford, Henry on ideals and idealism   

"It's really a wonder that I haven't dropped all my ideals because they seem so absurd and impossible to carry out. Yet, I keep them, because in spite of everything I still believe that people are really good at heart. I simply can't build up my hopes on a foundation consisting of confusion, misery, and death. I see the world gradually being turned into a wilderness, I hear the ever-approaching thunder, which will destroy us too, I can feel the sufferings of millions and yet, if I look up into the heavens, I think that it will all come right, that this cruelty too will end, and that peace and tranquility will return again."

Frank, Anne on ideals and idealism
3 fans of this quote   

"I keep my ideals, because in spite of everything I still believe that people are really good at heart."

Frank, Anne on ideals and idealism
3 fans of this quote   

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

Galsworthy, John on ideals and idealism   

"Idealists are foolish enough to throw caution to the winds. They have advanced mankind and have enriched the world."

Goldman, Emma on ideals and idealism   

"An idealist believes the short run doesn't count. A cynic believes the long run doesn't matter. A realist believes that what is done or left undone in the short run determines the long run."

Harris, Sidney J. on ideals and idealism
4 fans of this quote   

"What we need most, is not so much to realize the ideal as to idealize the real."

Hedge, Francis Herbert on ideals and idealism   

"Ideals are the worlds masters."

Holland, Josiah Gilbert on ideals and idealism   

"Man is born a predestined idealist, for he is born to act. To act is to affirm the worth of an end, and to persist in affirming the worth of an end is to make an ideal."

Holmes, Oliver Wendell on ideals and idealism   

"Words without actions are the assassins of idealism."

Hoover, Herbert Clark on ideals and idealism   

"We for a certainty are not the first have sat in taverns while the tempest hurled their hopeful plans to emptiness, and cursed whatever brute and blackguard made the world."

Housman, A. E. on ideals and idealism   

"When your dreams tire, they go underground and out of kindness that's where they stay."

Houston, Libby on ideals and idealism   

"You should never have your best trousers on when you turn out to fight for freedom and truth."

Ibsen, Henrik on ideals and idealism
3 fans of this quote   

"Don't use that foreign word ideals. We have that excellent native word lies."

Ibsen, Henrik on ideals and idealism   

"The further limits of our being plunge, it seems to me, into an altogether other dimension of existence from the sensible and merely understandable world. Name it the mystical region, or the supernatural region, whichever you choose. So far as our ideal impulses originate in this region (and most of them do originate in it, for we find them possessing us in a way for which we cannot articulately account), we belong to it in a more intimate sense than that in which we belong to the visible world, for we belong in the most intimate sense wherever our ideals belong."

James, William on ideals and idealism   

"Our ideals, like pictures, are made from lights and shadows."

Joubert, Joseph on ideals and idealism   

"Our salvation is in striving to achieve what we know we'll never achieve."

Kapuscinski, Ryszard on ideals and idealism
19 fans of this quote   

"When one paints an ideal, one does not need to limit one's imagination."

Key, Ellen on ideals and idealism   

"A perfect human being: Man in search of his ideal of perfection. Nothing less."

Khan, Pir Vilayat on ideals and idealism   

"The enemy of idealism is zealotry."

Kinnock, Neil on ideals and idealism   

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

Kraus, Karl on ideals and idealism   

"Idealist: a cynic in the making."

Layton, Irving on ideals and idealism   

"If you are going to build something in the air it is always better to build castles than houses of cards."

Lichtenberg, Georg C. on ideals and idealism   

"Some day the soft Ideal that we wooed confronts us fiercely, foe-beset, pursued, and cries reproachful: Was it then my praise, and not myself was loved? Prove now thy truth; I claim of thee the promise of thy youth."

Lowell, James Russell on ideals and idealism   

"The true ideal is not opposed to the real but lies in it; and blessed are the eyes that find it."

Lowell, James Russell on ideals and idealism   

"Many have dreamed up republics and principalities that have never in truth been known to exist; the gulf between how one should live and how one does live is so wide that a man who neglects what is actually done for what should be done learns the way to self-destruction rather than self-preservation."

Machiavelli, Niccolo on ideals and idealism   

"An idealist is one who, on noticing that a rose smells better than a cabbage, concludes that it is also more nourishing."

Mencken, H. L. on ideals and idealism   

"The idealist is incorrigible: if he is thrown out of his heaven he makes an ideal of his hell."

Nietzsche, Friedrich on ideals and idealism