Idealist Quotes - Page 5

• There's no question I am an idealist, which is another way of saying 'I am an American.'

  Ronald Reagan

  Way, Another Way

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• That said, deciding to avoid other people does not necessarily equate with having no desire whatsoever for company; it may simply reflect a dissatisfaction with what—or who—is available. Cynics are, in the end, only idealists with awkwardly high standards. In Chamfort's words, 'It is sometimes said of a man who lives alone that he does not like society. This is like saying of a man that he does not like going for walks because he is not fond of walking at night in the forêt de Bondy.

  Alain de Botton

  Night, Men, People

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• I don't think the American people had a clear picture of either Nixon or me. I think they thought that Nixon was a strong, decisive, tough-minded guy and that I was an idealist and antiwar guy who might not attach enough significance to the security of the country. The truth is, I was the guy with the war record, and my opposition to Vietnam was because I was interested in the nation's well-being.

  George McGovern

  Country, Strong, War

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• When I reached intellectual maturity and began to ask myself whether I was an atheist, a theist, or a pantheist; a materialist, or an idealist; a Christian, or a freethinker; I found that the more I learned and reflected, the less ready was the answer; until, at last, I came to the conclusion that I had neither art nor part with any of these denominations, except the last.

  Thomas Huxley

  Christian, Art, Atheist

  Thomas Henry Huxley (2012). “Collected Essays, Volume V Science and Christian Tradition: Essays”, p.237, tredition

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• There is a pervasive form of contemporary violence to which the idealist fighting for peace by nonviolent methods most easily succumbs; activism and overwork.

  Thomas Merton

  Fighting, Violence, Form

  Thomas Merton (2009). “Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander”, p.81, Image

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• I've read a couple of reviews that say I'm getting harder in my old age but I don't think that's true at all. I think that you can't help but become a little cynical about life and love but I'm still a romantic, I'm still an idealist.

  Madonna Ciccone

  Couple, Life And Love, Thinking

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• Now of all the idealist abominations that make society pestiferous I doubt if there be any so mean as that of forcing self-sacrifice on a woman under the pretense that she likes it.

  George Bernard Shaw

  Mean, Sacrifice, Self

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• Idealists are not the good friends of the truths; they create their own truth.

  Mehmet Murat Ildan

  Good Friend

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• The battered idealist. It's just my favorite character ... To me, a hero is somebody who is able to accept the environment of the world, deal with the stuff that's thrown in their path ... and somehow keep their heart.

  Cameron Crowe

  Hero, Heart, Character

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• To think great thoughts you must be heroes as well as idealists.

  Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.

  Hero, Thinking, Ideas

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• Someone once said, if you scratch a cynic, and you'll find a disappointed idealist. That really rang a bell with me - because I recognized that, within me, there is this flame, of wishing it were better, wishing people had better lives, that there was more of an authentic sharing and harmony with nature.

  George Carlin

  Flames, People, Wish

  Source: mavericksofthemind.com

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• 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

  Real, Doe, Goes On

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

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• You cannot prove realism to a complete sceptic or idealist; but you can show an honest man that he is not a complete sceptic or idealist, but a realist at heart. So long as he is alive his sincere philosophy must fulfil the assumptions of his life and not destroy him.

  George Santayana

  Philosophy, Heart, Reality

  Durant Drake, Arthur Oncken Lovejoy, James Bissett Pratt, Arthur Kenyon Rogers, George Santayana (1920). “Essays in critical realism: a co-operative study of the problem of knowledge”

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• Stevenson had noble ideas--as did the young Franklin for that matter. But Stevenson felt that the way to implement them was to present himself as a thoughtful idealist and wait for the world to flock to him. He considered it below him, or wrong, to scramble out among the people and ask them what they wanted. Roosevelt grappled voters to him. Stevenson shied off from them. Some thought him too pure to desire power, though he showed ambition when it mattered.

  Garry Wills

  Ambition, Thoughtful, Ideas

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• All idealists imagine that the causes they serve are fundamentally better than any other causes in the world, and they refuse to believe that if their cause is to flourish at all it requires precisely the same foul-smelling manure that is necessary to all other human undertakings.

  Friedrich Nietzsche

  Believe, World, Causes

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• They always believe that 'things are in a bad way now,' but they 'haven't any faith in these idealists.' One minute they call Wilson 'just a dreamer, not practical'- a year later they rail at him for making his dreams realities. They haven't clear logical ideas on one single subject except a sturdy, stolid opposition to all change. They don't think uneducated people should be highly paid, but they won't see that if they don't pay the uneducated people their children are going to be uneducated too, and we're going round and round in a circle. That- is the great middle class.

  F. Scott Fitzgerald

  Dream, Children, Believe

  F. Scott Fitzgerald (2013). “Three Novels: Tender is the Night; The Beautiful and Damned; Thi”, p.996, Simon and Schuster

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• People will say I'm an idealist. I hope so.

  A. Bartlett Giamatti

  People

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• Success is achieved by people who deeply understand reality and know how to use it to get what they want. The converse is also true: idealists who are not well-grounded in reality create problems, not progress.

  Ray Dalio

  Life, Reality, People

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• Jesus is not an impractical idealist; he is the practical realist.

  Martin Luther King, Jr.

  Jesus, Realist, Practicals

  Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. (2012). “A Gift of Love: Sermons from Strength to Love and Other Preachings”, p.64, Beacon Press

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• The most important thing about the gentleman was that he was an idealist. ... He was bred up to a code of self-restraint which taught resistance to pragmatic temptation. He was definitely a man of sentiment, who refused to put matters on a basis of materialism and self-aggrandizement.

  Richard M. Weaver

  Men, Self, Temptation

  Richard M. Weaver (2013). “Ideas Have Consequences: Expanded Edition”, p.50, University of Chicago Press

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• Brant's an idealist, and he's competent. There are few more dangerous combinations in this world... Heroes are even more dangerous than idealists.

  Patricia C. Wrede

  Hero, World, Combination

  Patricia C. Wrede (2010). “Thirteenth Child”, p.129, Scholastic Inc.

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• I'm a cynical idealist.

  F. Scott Fitzgerald

  Cynical

  F. Scott Fitzgerald, James L. W. West (1995). “This Side of Paradise”, p.84, Cambridge University Press

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• God save me from idealists.

  Jim Butcher

  Save Me, Thomas Raith

  Jim Butcher (2008). “Grave Peril: Book three of The Dresden Files”, p.213, Penguin

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• In fact I'm in too much of a mental muddle to know where I am - an idealist or not. I'm a mere man of letters, and I do what I can with those subjects.

  Jorge Luis Borges

  Men, Letters, Too Much

  Jorge Luis Borges, Richard Burgin (1998). “Jorge Luis Borges: Conversations”, p.79, Univ. Press of Mississippi

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• For the establishment, philosophy is both an elitist and an idealist discipline: In high school, it is a compulsory subject; at university, they teach the idealist line. They are conducting a conversation with themselves.

  Michel Onfray

  Philosophy, School, Discipline

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