Idealism Quotes

People change, though, especially after they are dead.

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.

Lincoln, considering a Cabinet nominee: "He is a Radical without the petulance and fretfulness of many radicals.

The United States is a successful nation that is constantly susceptible to melancholy because things are not perfect.

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

In the fluid world of 1919, it was possible to dream of great change, or have nightmares about the collapse of order.

Philosophic concepts are a form of sentiment. Conflicts between lofty ideas and vouchsafed values are endemic for any thinking person.

Sometimes it's only the young ones who are crazy enough to change the world.

The more idealism proves futile, the more I respect idealists.

I lost something magical in the process of growing up – my disillusionment.

An ethical idealist, a person whom embraces the honorable philosophy of ethical idealism, performs acts that are honest, pure, and righteous regardless of their fearfulness.

A realist is a slave to reality.

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.

For even if we know very little that is certain about spirit or soul, the true nature of the body, of materiality, is totally unknown and incomprehensible to us.

As sometimes happens with men who wish to fight but do not or cannot, Reagan developed a romantic image of the military.

While I think of it, Mr. Werle, junior — don't use that foreign word: ideals. We have the excellent native word: lies.

He wanted to toast mad idealism, forbidden desires, the dreams that drove one to criminal acts. He wanted, quite starkly, oblivion.

I can't bear the thought that a man of lofty mind and heart begins with the ideal of the Madonna and ends with the ideal of Sodom.

Cronkite was always one step short of disillusionment.

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

a grin that wasn't natural, and that combined in a strange way affection and arrogance, the arrogance of the idealist who doesn't realize how easily he can be fooled.

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

She had dealt with her pregnancy by wrapping herself in dreams.

Ideas are great arrows, but there has to be a bow. And politics is the bow of idealism.