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

  John Galsworthy

  Inspirational, Distance, Problem

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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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• An idealist is one who, on noticing that roses smell better than a cabbage, concludes that it will also make better soup.

  H. L. Mencken

  Life, Food, Vegetables

  H.L. Mencken (2012). “Mencken Chrestomathy”, p.617, Vintage

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• Ideals are like stars; you will not succeed in touching them with your hands. But like the seafaring man on the desert of waters, you choose them as your guides, and following them you will reach your destiny.

  Carl Schurz

  Love, Change, Sports

  Carl Schurz, Frederic Bancroft (1913). “Speeches, Correspondence and Political Papers of Carl Schurz”, Putnam Juvenile

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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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• I am a mixture of idealist and realist.

  Roger Moore

  Mixtures, Realist

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

  Stanley Kubrick

  Village Idiots, Pity, Village

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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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• 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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• The artist is the opposite of the politically minded individual, the opposite of the reformer, the opposite of the idealist. The artist does not tinker with the universe, he recreates it out of his own experience and understanding of life.

  Henry Miller

  Art, Opposites, Understanding

  Henry Miller (1961). “The Cosmological Eye”, p.193, New Directions Publishing

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• I am a realist as well as an idealist, and I think that it is incumbent upon those of us in opposition to try to work within what are always arduous circumstances to stretch the limits of the possible.

  Todd Gitlin

  Thinking, Trying, Limits

  "How to be radical?". The OpenDemocracy Interview, www.opendemocracy.net. April 5, 2011.

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• Idealism is the noble toga that political gentlemen drape over their will to power.

  Aldous Huxley

  Inspirational, Political, Gentleman

  Quoted in his NewYork Herald Tribune obituary, 24 Nov 1963.

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• No period of history has ever been great or ever can be that does not act on some sort of high, idealistic motives, and idealism in our time has been shoved aside, and we are paying the penalty for it.

  Alfred North Whitehead

  Doe, Penalties, Periods

  Alfred North Whitehead, Lucien Price (2001). “Dialogues of Alfred North Whitehead”, p.272, David R. Godine Publisher

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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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• World unity is the wish of the hopeful, the goal of the idealist and the dream of the romantic. Yet it is folly to the realist and a lie to the innocent.

  Don Williams

  Dream, Lying, Goal

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