Idealist Quotes

• Inside every cynical person, there is a disappointed idealist.

  George Carlin

  Funny, Disappointment, Humor

  "A Note on George Carlin about Steroids and Sports from a Practical Idealist" by Carol Smaldino, www.huffingtonpost.com. June 19, 2009.

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

  Henry Ford

  Inspirational, Helping Others, People

  "Thesaurus of Epigrams: A New Classified Collection of Witty Remarks, Bon Mots and Toasts". Book by Edmund Fuller, 1948.

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• I'm an idealist. I don't know where I'm going, but I'm on my way.

  Carl Sandburg

  Funny, Life, Motivational

  Incidentals (1907) p. 8

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• The leader has to be practical and a realist, yet must talk the language of the visionary and the idealist.

  Eric Hoffer

  Leadership, Coaching, Vision

  Eric Hoffer (1980). “The True Believer”

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• You can tell the ideals of a nation by its advertisements.

  Norman Douglas

  Business, Advertising, Nigeria Independence

  SouthWind ch. 7 (1917)

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• America is the only idealistic nation in the world.

  Woodrow Wilson

  America, Presidential, World

  Address supporting League of Nations, Sioux Falls, S.D., 8 Sept. 1919

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• Idealists foolish enough to throw caution to the winds have advanced mankind and have enriched the world.

  Emma Goldman

  Wind, World, Foolish

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• 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.

  Sydney J. Harris

  Love, Inspirational, Running

  Sydney J. Harris (1985). “Pieces of Eight Pa”, Mariner Books

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

  Friedrich Nietzsche

  Heaven, Hell, Incorrigible

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• I'm an idealist without illusions.

  John F. Kennedy

  Political, Politics, Illusion

  John F. Kennedy, Dominique Enright (2003). “The Wicked Wit of John F. Kennedy”, Michael O'Mara Books

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

  John Galsworthy

  Inspirational, Distance, Problem

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• I am a mixture of idealist and realist.

  Roger Moore

  Mixtures, Realist

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• Scratch the surface of most cynics and you find a frustrated idealist — someone who made the mistake of converting his ideals into expectations.

  Peter Senge

  Mistake, Expectations, Frustrated

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• Any idealist who tries to join the Peace Corps must realize he is not going to change the world overnight.

  Sargent Shriver

  Peace, Trying, World

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• When they come downstairs from their Ivory Towers, idealists are very apt to walk straight into the gutter.

  Logan Pearsall Smith

  Ivory Tower, Towers, Gutters

  Afterthoughts (1931) "Other People"

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• There is no proletarian, not even a Communist movement, that has not operated in the interests of money, and for the time being permitted by money - and that without the idealists among its leaders having the slightest suspicion of the fact.

  Oswald Spengler

  Leader, Movement, Facts

  Oswald Spengler (1991). “The Decline of the West”, p.367, Oxford University Press, USA

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• Cynics regarded everybody as equally corrupt... Idealists regarded everybody as equally corrupt, except themselves.

  Robert Anton Wilson

  Cynical, Cynicism, Idealism

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• Sometimes people call me an idealist. Well, that is the way I know I am an American. America is the only idealistic nation in the world.

  Woodrow Wilson

  4th Of July, Patriotic, America

  Address supporting League of Nations, Sioux Falls, S.D., 8 Sept. 1919

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• I'm no idealist to believe firmly in the integrity of our courts and in the jury system -- that is no ideal to me, it is a living, working reality. Gentlemen, a court is no better than each man of you sitting before me on this jury. A court is only as sound as its jury, and a jury is only as sound as the men who make it up.

  Harper Lee

  Integrity, Believe, Reality

  To Kill a Mockingbird ch. 20 (1960)

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• 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.

  Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr.

  Men, Philanthropy, Ends

  Oliver Wendell Holmes, Richard A. Posner (1997). “The Essential Holmes: Selections from the Letters, Speeches, Judicial Opinions, and Other Writings of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.”, p.95, University of Chicago Press

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• Idealist: a cynic in the making.

  Irving Layton

  Cynic, Ideals

  Irving Layton (1969). “The whole bloody bird: obs, aphs & pomes”

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• The democratic idealist is prone to make light of the whole question of standards and leadership because of his unbounded faith in the plain people.

  Irving Babbitt

  Light, People, Standards

  Irving Babbitt (2005). “On Literature, Cultures, and Religion”, p.150, Transaction Publishers

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• I fear that, in the end, the famous debate among materialists, idealists, and dualists amounts to a merely verbal dispute that is more a matter for the linguist than for the speculative philosopher

  Moses Mendelssohn

  Matter, Philosopher, Debate

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• The idealists dream and the dream is told, and the practical men listen and ponder and bring back the truth and apply it to human life, and progress and growth and higher human ideals come into being and so the world moves ever on.

  Anna Howard Shaw

  Dream, Moving, Men

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• You're an idealist, and I pity you as I would the village idiot.

  Stanley Kubrick

  Village Idiots, Pity, Village

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