Quotes about Idealism

There's something romantic about poverty when you're young and hopeful.

For at least two thirds of our miseries spring from human stupidity, human malice and those great motivators and justifiers of malice and stupidity, idealism, dogmatism and proselytizing zeal on behalf of religious or political idols

The function of the well-intentioned individual, acting in isolation, is to formulate or disseminate theoretical truths. The function of the well-intentioned individuals in association is to live in accordance with those truths, to demonstrate what happens when theory is translated into practice, to create small-scale working models of the better form of society to which the speculative idealist looks forward.

So long as it remains out of touch with the rest of the world, an ideal society can be a viable society.

There is nothing so pitiful as a young cynic because he has gone from knowing nothing to believing nothing.

Oh, he was a pretentious fool, making careers out of cocktails and meanwhile regretting, weakly and secretly, the collapse of an insufficient and wretched idealism. He had garnished his soul in the subtlest taste and now he longed for the old rubbish. He was empty, it seemed, empty as an old bottle —

I'm romantic - a sentimental person thinks things will last - a romantic person hopes against hope that they won't.

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

Life feels like a real fight - as if there were something really wild in the universe which we, with all our idealities and faithfulnesses, are needed to redeem.

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

I say let's be idealists. "Faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not yet see" (Hebrews 11:1).

But the idealist subdued to vulgar necessities must employ vulgar minds to draw the inferences to which he cannot stoop