Idealist Quotes - Page 5

• I've never understood the division between so-called realists and so-called idealists.

  Hillary Clinton

  Division, Realist, Understood

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• I heard somebody open and shut the gate to the barn lot, but I didn't look around. If I didn't look around it would not be true that somebody had opened the gate with the creaky hinges, and that is a wonderful principle for a man to get hold of... What you don't know know don't hurt you, for it ain't real. They called that Idealism in my book I had when I was in college, and after I got hold of that principle I became an Idealist... If you are an Idealist it does not matter what you do or what goes on around you because it isn't real anyway.

  Robert Penn Warren

  Hurt, Real, Book

  Robert Penn Warren (2006). “All the King's Men”, p.45, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• Anyone too undisciplined, too self-righteous or too self-centered to live in the world as it is has a tendency to idealize a world which ought to be. But no matter what political or religious direction such idealists choose, their visions always share one telling characteristic: in their utopias, heavens or brave new worlds, their greatest personal weakness suddenly appears to be a strength.

  David James Duncan

  Religious, Brave New World, Self

  David James Duncan (2010). “The Brothers K”, p.320, Dial Press

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• You are the most dangerous kind of female the world can ever know. You carry the seeds for your own destruction and the destruction of everyone who loves you. And a great many will love you for your beautiful face for your seductive body; but you will fail them all because you will believe they all fail you first. You are an idealist of the worst kind - the romantic idealist. Born to destroy and self destruct.

  Virginia C. Andrews

  Beautiful, Believe, Love You

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• I don't consider myself a cynic. I think of myself as a skeptic and a realist. But I understand the word "cynic" has more than one meaning, and I see how I could be seen as cynical. "George, you're cynical." Well, you know, they say if you scratch a cynic you find a disappointed idealist. And perhaps the flame still flickers a little, you know?

  George Carlin

  Thinking, Cynical, Realist

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• I wince at her use of the word "human." I've never liked that differentiation. She is living and I'm dead, but we're both human. Call me an idealist.

  Isaac Marion

  Use, Differentiation, Wince

  Isaac Marion (2016). “Warm Bodies and The New Hunger: A Special 5th Anniversary Edition”, p.50, Simon and Schuster

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• She is Living and I'm Dead, but I'd like to believe we're both human. Call me an idealist.

  Isaac Marion

  Believe, Call Me, Humans

  Isaac Marion (2016). “Warm Bodies and The New Hunger: A Special 5th Anniversary Edition”, p.50, Simon and Schuster

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• Truth, though, is nothing in the face of self-falsehood, and principles are of no value if the idealist cannot live up to his own standards.

  R. A. Salvatore

  Self, Principles, Faces

  R.A. Salvatore (2009). “Homeland: The Legend of Drizzt”, p.256, Wizards of the Coast

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• We are the puzzle pieces who seldom fit with other puzzle pieces. Romantics, idealists, eccentrics, we inhabit single-dom as our natural resting state. In a world where proms and marriage define the social order, we are, by force of our personalities and inner strength, rebels.

  Sasha Cagen

  Order, Personality, Inner Strength

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• Anyone can be an idealist. Anyone can be a cynic. The hard part lies somewhere in the middle.

  Hugh Jackman

  Lying, Middle, Cynic

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• The Big Bang has made Idealists out of almost anybody who thinks. First there was absolutely nothing, then Bang! Something. This is beyond weird. Out of sheerest Emptiness, manifestation arises.

  Ken Wilber

  Thinking, Bangs, Firsts

  Ken Wilber (2007). “A Brief History of Everything”, p.36, Shambhala Publications

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• They look for a victim to chivy, and howl him down, and finally lynch him in a sheer storm of sexual frenzy which they honestly imagine to be moral indignation, patriotic passion or some equally allowable emotion, it may be an innocent Negro, a Jew like Leo Frank, a harmless half-witted German; a Christ-like idealist of the type of Debs, an enthusiastic reformer like Emma Goldman.

  Aleister Crowley

  Passion, Patriotic, Storm

  "The Confessions of Aleister Crowley". Book by Aleister Crowley. Chapter 57, 1969.

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• Sooner or later, many idealists transform themselves into disheartened realists who mistakenly believe that giving up is the same thing as being realistic.

  Seth Godin

  Giving Up, Believe, Being Real

  Seth Godin (2015). “Poke The Box: When Was the Last Time You Did Something for the First Time?”, p.29, Penguin

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• I used to think if it wasn't possible to be a family man and a totally dedicated artist, I'd rather be the former. I'm an idealist and a romantic.

  Charlton Heston

  Artist, Men, Thinking

  "Charlton Heston: Great sport with a line in heroic role models". "The Sunday Times" Newspaper, June 17, 1990.

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• None of this is fair to you. And should it continue, it will make it more difficult to keep attracting the kind of driven, patriotic, idealist Americans to public service that our citizens deserved and that our system of self-government demands.

  Barack Obama

  Patriotic, Government, Self

  "Partisan-in-chief Obama – crossing the line with America's federal workforce" By Tony Shaffer, www.foxnews.com. October 03, 2013.

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• An idealist who couldn't cope becomes cynical.

  Amy Ray

  Cynical

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• It is curious that Christianity, which is idealism, is sturdily defended by the brokers, and steadily attacked by the idealists.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Christian, Curious, Idealism

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (2014). “The Heart of Emerson's Journals”, p.263, Courier Corporation

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• Wives invariably flourish when deserted; ... it is the deserting male, the reckless idealist rushing about the world seeking a non-existent felicity, who often ends in disaster.

  William McFee

  Rushing, Wife, Infidelity

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• You Europeans know nothing about America. Because we amass large fortunes you think we care for nothing but money. We are nothing for it; the moment we have it we spend it, sometimes well, sometimes ill, but we spend it. Money is nothing to us; it's merely the symbol of success. We are the greatest idealists in the world; I happen to think that we've set our ideal on the wrong objects; I happen to think that the greatest ideal man can set before himself is self-perfection.

  W. Somerset Maugham

  Men, Thinking, America

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• If you are not an idealist by the time you are twenty you have no heart, but if you are still an idealist by the time you are thirty, you don't have a head.

  Randolph Bourne

  Heart, Twenties, Thirty

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• I'm still a bit of a romantic and an idealist and hopelessly naive.

  Brit Marling

  Stills, Naive, Bits

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• Some people are pragmatists, taking things as they come and making the best of the choices available. Some people are idealists, standing for principle and refusing to compromise. And some people just act on any whim that enters their heads. I pragmatically turn my whims into principles.

  Bill Watterson

  People, Choices, Principles

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• A cynic should never marry an idealist. For the cynic, marriage represents the welcome end of romantic life, with all its agony and ecstasy. But for the idealist, it is only the beginning.

  Julie Burchill

  Agony, Welcome, Cynicism

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• When people who are seeking change start out, they are driven by commitment to a cause. But as internecine power struggles take over, one-time idealists fall prey to corruption. They become just as corrupt and manipulative as the system that they want to overthrow.

  Anurag Kashyap

  Struggle, Fall, Commitment

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• Man's indecency to man all over the world rules out the idea of humanity as an actuality. It is a dream of young idealists. In practice a misnomer

  Errol Flynn

  Dream, Wisdom, Men

  Errol Flynn, Jeffrey Meyers (2002). “My Wicked, Wicked Ways: The Autobiography of Errol Flynn”, p.410, Rowman & Littlefield

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