Idealistic Quotes

• 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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• I was lucky to get into computers when it was a very young and idealistic industry. There weren't many degrees offered in computer science, so people in computers were brilliant people from mathematics, physics, music, zoology, whatever. They loved it, and no one was really in it for the money.

  Steve Jobs

  People, Degrees, Lucky

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• We should cease to talk about vague and unreal objectives such as human rights, the raising of the living standards, and democratization. The day is not far off when we are going to have to deal in straight power concepts. The less we are then hampered by idealistic slogans, the better.

  George F. Kennan

  Rights, Should, Standards

  "PPS No. 23". Memo by George Kennan, en.wikisource.org. February 28, 1948.

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• Because I don't think it's very healthy to hold people to idealized views. I think that's a certain stage in life, something kids do. You have to go through that idealistic phase with your parents, but at a certain point, you need to see people as just people.

  Joan Cusack

  Kids, Thinking, Views

  Interview with Tasha Robinson, film.avclub.com. May 26, 2008.

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• Cynicism and naivety lie cheek by jowl in the American imagination; if the United States is one of the most venal nations on Earth, it is also one of the most earnestly idealistic.

  Terry Eagleton

  Lying, Imagination, United States

  "Age of innocence" by Terry Eagleton, www.theguardian.com. July 25, 2008.

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• It's actually cool to be positive and optimistic and idealistic. It's cool to see yourself doing beautiful, great things.

  Tom DeLonge

  Beautiful, Optimistic, Being Positive

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• I think Google is the most successful attention merchant - profitable attention merchant in the history of the world, most successful advertising-only based company - most profitable. They started a very idealistic, beautiful company in many ways, but they didn't have a business model.

  Tim Wu

  Beautiful, Successful, Thinking

  "How Free Web Content Traps People In An Abyss Of Ads And Clickbait". "Fresh Air" with Terry Gross, www.npr.org. October 17, 2016.

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• We're all idealistic when young.

  Pat Oliphant

  Young

  Pat Oliphant, Harry L. Katz, Sara Day, Library of Congress (1998). “Oliphant's Anthem”, p.23, Andrews McMeel Publishing

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• For every idealistic peacemaker willing to renounce his self-defence in favour of a weapons-free world, there is at least one warmaker anxious to exploit the other's good intentions.

  Margaret Thatcher

  Self, Weapons, Favour

  "Statecraft: Strategies for a Changing World". Book by Margaret Thatcher, April 16, 2002.

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• Education in the true sense is helping the individual to be mature and free, to flower greatly in love and goodness. That is what we should be interested in, and not in shaping the child according to some idealistic pattern.

  Jiddu Krishnamurti

  Children, Flower, Patterns

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• No one was ever born without that light or flame of life. Some event, some person stifles or drowns it altogether. I was always tempted to resuscitate such men by my own joyousness or luminosity.When I break glasses in a night club, as the Russians do, when my unconscious breaks out in wild rebellions, it is against life which has crippled these idealistic, romantic men. I respect these men, cold, pure, faithful, devoted, moral, delicate, sensitive, and unequal to life, more than I respect the tough-minded ones who return three blows to one received, who kill those who hurt them.

  Anais Nin

  Hurt, Blow, Night

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• We all have our individual romantic or idealistic ideas. To get information that masturbation is our basic form of sex is hard, because who wants to admit they're masturbating?

  Betty Dodson

  Sex, Ideas, Want

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• Consider what it takes for successful businessmen and businesswomen, effective entrepreneurs and hardworking associates, shrewd retirees and idealistic students to combine forces with a creative pastor to grow a "successful church" today. Clearly, it doesn't require the power of God to draw a crowd in our culture. A few key elements that we can manufacture will suffice.

  David Platt

  Successful, Church Today, Keys

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• I have an idealistic view of science as a liberalising and progressive force for humanity.

  Paul Nurse

  Views, Humanity, Progressive

  "Sir Paul Nurse - Biographical". "Les Prix Nobel" ("The Nobel Prizes 2001") edited by Tore Frängsmyr, Nobel Foundation, Stockholm, www.nobelprize.org. 2002.

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• Darwinism as presented by Darwin contradicted idealistic philosophy, and this contradiction grew deeper with the development of its materialist teaching.

  Trofim Lysenko

  Philosophy, Teaching, Development

  Trofim Denisovich Lysenko (1948). “Soviet Biology: Report to the Lenin Academy of Agricultural Sciences”

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• To work for libertarianism - to oppose the growth of government and aid the liberation of the individual - used to be an idealistic choice taken for purely idealistic reasons. Now it is an act of intelligent and almost desperate self-defense.

  Robert Anton Wilson

  Taken, Intelligent, Self

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• These [Arab] youth who have been inspired by universal values are idealistic enough to imagine a magnificent future and, at the same time, realistic enough to balance this kind of imagination and the process leading to it - not using violence, not trying to create chaos.

  Wadah Khanfar

  Imagination, Balance, Trying

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• Being idealistic really helps you overcome some of the many obstacles put in your path.

  Andy Hertzfeld

  Overcoming, Path, Helping

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• Fights over ideas are the most vicious of all. If it were merely food, or water, or shelter, we would work something out. But in the realm of ideas one can become idealistic .

  Kim Stanley Robinson

  Fighting, Ideas, Water

  Kim Stanley Robinson (2009). “Galileo's Dream”, p.423, Spectra

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• An idealistic lover is a blind lover, and therefore a true lover; a pragmatic lover is a sighted lover, and therefore a false lover.

  Kedar Joshi

  Love, Blind, Pragmatic

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• The military mind tends to be conservative, realistic and historical. The civilian mind tends to be liberal, idealistic and Utopian. Journalists, obviously, are civilians, and they tend to distrust, and to suspect, the military's motives.

  Mark Riebling

  Military, Historical, Mind

  "Rumsfeld’s Spy Unit". "To the Point" with Warren Olney, NPR, markriebling.blogs.com. October 31, 2002.

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• I've had a chance to meet some of my civil rights heroes and, more recently, members of the young generation around [Barack] Obama, people in their teens and twenties who were determined to make history and who were too idealistic to think that what they were trying to do might be impossible. They proved that visionary pragmatism can win over the majority. That comes from a particular place in your heart that generation Y is offering America. They just can't afford to be naive now, in terms of the ferocity of the opposition.

  Van Jones

  Hero, Heart, Winning

  Source: aalbc.com

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• In some way they are all self-portraits, but I think I know what you mean by asking this - I would say, it is too idealistic to paint yourself.

  Kehinde Wiley

  Mean, Thinking, Self

  "'I try to create a place of disorientation' - interview with Kehinde Wiley". Interview With Anna Savitskaya, artdependence.com. February 16, 2015.

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• I'm very interested in how idealistic young people can get caught up in all sorts of systems of extreme belief, you know, whether it's cults or whether it's suicide bombers.

  Emma Donoghue

  Suicide, People, Bombers

  "Emma Donoghue's New Novel Follows "The Wonder" Of Starvation". Interview with Scott Simon, www.npr.org. September 17, 2016.

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• Faith is being idealistic, because we have made an idol out of the status quo.

  Shane Claiborne

  Idols, Made, Status Quo

  "Plotting goodness together: An interview with Shane Claiborne". Interview with Jonathan Merritt, religionnews.com. May 22, 2013.

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