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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• 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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• 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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• We were idealists. We thought that when we got the vote the whole pattern of politics would be greatly improved and would be dominated by women.

  Jessie Daniel Ames

  Women, Would Be, Patterns

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• The idealist's program of political or economic reform may be impracticable, absurd, demonstrably ridiculous; but it can never be successfully opposed merely by pointing out that this is the case. A negative opposition cannot be wholly effectual: there must be a competing idealism; something must be offered that is not only less objectionable but more desirable.

  Charles Horton Cooley

  Political, Reform, Negative

  Charles Horton Cooley (1909). “Two Major Works: Social Organization. Human Nature and the Social Order”, Glencoe, Ill., Free P

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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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• 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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• 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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• 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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• Children see things very well sometimes and idealists even better.

  Lorraine Hansberry

  Inspirational, Children, Acceptance

  Lorraine Hansberry (2011). “A Raisin in the Sun”, p.116, Vintage

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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 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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• 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.

  Harper Lee

  Integrity, Believe, Reality

  To Kill a Mockingbird ch. 20 (1960)

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• The idealists will always be in society, and we will survive

  John Zorn

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