I am everlastingly angry at those who assert vociferously that the Four Freedoms and the Atlantic Charter are nonsense because they are unattainable. If those people had lived a century and a half ago they would have sneered and said that the Declaration of Independence was utter piffle. If they had lived nearly a thousand […]
Ideal - Idealists Quotes
Idealism is one of the greatest forces in the world. It makes seeming impossibilities possible and succeeds where prudence fails. But unless the idealist is brave and has the courage to face the truth, his idealism creates nothing.
Some men can live up to their loftiest ideals without ever going higher than a basement.
One has honor if he holds himself to an ideal of conduct though it is inconvenient, unprofitable, or dangerous to do so.
In our ideals we unwittingly reveal our vices.
The true ideal is not opposed to the real but lies in it; and blessed are the eyes that find it.
It is only in marriage with the world that our ideals can bear fruit: divorced from it, they remain barren.
There was a time when the American citizen was an idealist himself. Now he is only idealism’s raw material, as a cow is the raw material of butter, ice-cream and custard pie – a stuff milked, tickled, clubbed and pulverized into beauty by ordained virtuosi. I am still so young that my toupee looks natural, […]
It seems to be the fate of idealists to obtain what they have struggled for in a form that destroys their ideals.
It is not materialism that is the chief curse of the world, as pastors teach, but idealism. Men get into trouble by taking their visions and hallucinations too seriously.
