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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• A democracy, the realistic observer is forced to conclude, is likely to be idealistic in its feelings about itself, but imperialistic about its practice.

  Irving Babbitt

  Practice, Feelings, Democracy

  Irving Babbitt (2005). “On Literature, Cultures, and Religion”, p.154, Transaction Publishers

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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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• Industry, technology, and commerce can thrive only as long as an idealistic national community offers the necessary preconditions. And these do not lie in material egoism, but in a spirit of sacrifice and joyful renunciation.

  Adolf Hitler

  Lying, Sacrifice, Technology

  Adolf Hitler (1998). “Mein Kampf”, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• That becomes the revolution, to be idealistic enough that you think you can change the world, and what you find is you can't change anything but yourself.

  Marilyn Manson

  Thinking, World, Revolution

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• You deserve someone better than me. Someone young and idealistic…someone who can experience things for the first time along with you. I'm not always kind, and I have more faults than I'd care to name. All I can promise is that I'll want you until my last breath.

  Lisa Kleypas

  Names, Promise, Care

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• I've got two daughters who will have to make their way in this skinny-obsessed world, and it worries me, because I don't want them to be empty-headed, self-obsessed, emaciated clones; I'd rather they were independent, interesting, idealistic, kind, opinionated, original, funny – a thousand things, before 'thin'. And frankly, I'd rather they didn't give a gust of stinking chihuahua flatulence whether the woman standing next to them has fleshier knees than they do. Let my girls be Hermiones, rather than Pansy Parkinsons. Let them never be Stupid Girls.

  J. K. Rowling

  Girl, Daughter, Stupid

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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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• In the current climate, we live in a pessimistic and non-idealistic world.

  Emilio Estevez

  Climate, Pessimistic, World

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• I still have a suspicion of charity and think the state has a role to play in many areas. And although for most of the years since I have been a rather privileged writer, I identify more closely than perhaps I should with those social workers. Had I not become a writer that would have been me. Lots of our friends are still in that world and I do feel part of that generation of people who were rather idealistic in the 70s and became disillusioned in the 80s. Not just about social services issues, but the world.

  Kazuo Ishiguro

  Thinking, Issues, Years

  "Living memories" by Nicholas Wroe, www.theguardian.com. February 18, 2005.

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• If you take pride in your attainment or become discouraged because of your idealistic effort, your practice will confine you by a thick wall.

  Shunryu Suzuki

  Wall, Pride, Practice

  Shunryu Suzuki (2010). “Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind”, p.126, Shambhala Publications

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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 know that I'm inadequate, but I never thought that at seventeen. I thought I was doing the best I could. I thought I was being idealistic.

  Eric Bogosian

  Seventeen, Knows, Inadequate

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• I grew up with the idealistic notion that writing and literature were noble causes. I had no inkling, no sense of what I would eventually encounter in terms of people who weren't being sincere. I'm not saying that it happens always or a lot, but it happens enough that sometimes it makes me feel a little queasy.

  Oscar Hijuelos

  Writing, People, Encounters

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

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• I know it's very idealistic and utopian, but I believe we need to just let everyone not be judged in terms of religion, groups or nations or region.

  Shahrukh Khan

  Believe, Groups, Needs

  "Shah Rukh Khan: 'My job is to make people smile'" by Grace Wong, www.cnn.com. March 1, 2010.

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• Women are treated as unjustly in poetry as in life. The feminine ones are not idealistic, and the idealistic not feminine.

  Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel

  Literature, Feminine, Treated

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• Sometimes, idealistic people are put off the whole business of networking as something tainted by flattery and the pursuit of selfish advantage. But virtue in obscurity is rewarded only in Heaven. To succeed in this world you have to be known to people.

  Sonia Sotomayor

  Selfish, People, Heaven

  Biography/Personal Quotes, www.imdb.com.

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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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• Republicans: steely, rational, paternalistic, respectful of authority, easy to herd, the party of No. Democrats: sugary, emotional, idealistic, yearning for novelty, hard to marshal, the party of Oh Yeah, Baby, Make Mama Feel Good.

  James Wolcott

  Baby, Party, Emotional

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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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• 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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• The strong man holds in a living blend strongly marked opposites. The idealists are not usually realistic, and the realists are not usually idealistic. The militant are not generally known to be passive, nor the passive to be militant. Seldom are the humble self-assertive, or the self-assertive humble. But life at it's best is a creative synthesis of opposites in fruitful harmony.

  Martin Luther King, Jr.

  Strong, Humble, Men

  Martin Luther King Jr. (1963). “Strength to Love”

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• The command "Be ye prfect" is not idealistic gas. Nor is it a command to do the impossible. He said (in the Bible) that we were "gods" and he is going to make good his words. He will make us into a god or goddess, a dazzling, radiant, immortal creature...a bright stainless mirror which reflects back to God perfectly.

  C. S. Lewis

  Mirrors, Perfection, Promise

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