Top 135 Idealist Quotes & Sayings - Page 2

Although sometimes I might sound sometimes idealist or too optimistic but I think my father used to say to me in everything bad there's something good that is going to come out of it and there will always be a tomorrow.

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.

The idealist is incorrigible: if he is thrown out of his heaven he makes an ideal of his hell.

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

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.

How many people in the pews know that [ Jonathan Edwards] is both a founder of evangelicalism and, say, an idealist who denied that the material world exists?

. . . idealism is one of the greatest forces in the world. It makes seeming impossibilities possible and succeeds where prudence fails. But unless the idealist is brave and has the courage to face the truth, his idealism creates nothing.

I'm an idealist. You do things your way well enough, for long enough, you'll get rewarded.

A state department official once told me this about the role of the president. He said: "We wage war for realist reasons, we justify wars for idealist reasons, and it's the president's job to balance the two." I agree.

An idealist is ahead of his time only in the sense that he is articulate. The same is true of a nation. For even primitive people, even effete races have a message for those above or below them. The heritage of the Ideal, however small can not be exhausted.

Three qualities of greatness stood out in Woodrow Wilson. He was a man of staunch morals. He was more than just an idealist; he was the personification of the heritage of idealism of the American people. He brought spiritual concepts to the peace table. He was a born crusader.

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

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.

Man is by nature a pragmatic materialist, a mechanic, a lover of gadgets and gadgetry; and these are the qualities that characterize the "establishment" which regulates modern society: pragmatism, materialism, mechanization, and gadgetry. Woman, on the other hand, is a practical idealist, a humanitarian with a strong sense of noblesse oblige, an altruist rather than a capitalist.

I may be a businessman in that I set up and run companies for profit, but when I try to plan ahead and dream up new products and new companies, I'm an idealist.

I am a realist as well as an idealist, and I think that it is incumbent upon those of us in opposition to try to work within what are always arduous circumstances to stretch the limits of the possible.

I wanted to do journalism, as I was an idealist. Then, in my second year of journalism, I realized that in real life, things don't work the way you expect them to. I realized that I could express my ideas better through films.

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.

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.

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.

When I was younger, I was somewhat of an idealist. I guess I'm a little bit more of a realist now. I think there's a lot that can be done to make the world a better place, but it's more about choosing your battles.

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?

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

The Minimalists are idealist. They want to minimise themselves in favour of the ideal. But I just can't. You see, my paintings are not cool. ... I'm very careful not to have ideas, because they're inaccurate.

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.

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.

A strong man must be militant as well as moderate. He must be a realist as well as an idealist.

Living with a dog is easy- like living with an idealist.

An idealist is one who, on noticing that roses smell better than a cabbage, concludes that it will also make better soup.

Jesus, in fact, was typical of a certain kind of fanatical young idealist: at one moment holding forth, with tears in his eyes, about the need for universal love; at the next, furiously denouncing the morons, crooks and bigots who did not see eye to eye with him. It is very natural and very human behaviour. But it is not superhuman.

I'm not an idealist. I know we're not going to be living in a world that's peace and love all the time. But we can live in a world where we kill each other a lot less.

Personal, inner change without a change in circumstances and structures is an idealist illusion, as though man were only a soul and not a body as well.

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.

What is Southern California but an ever-changing dreamscape backdrop for the postmodern ideal? The psychology of the postmodern world is the continual state of change as we live in its idealist manufactured dream, built by developers.

I was very excited about the idea that I could be an idealist, that I could be my age, the eager beaver who had hope in the justice system and the one who gets disappointed just like the audience.

To say that a man is an idealist is merely to say that he is a man.

Charles Kiss is a legendary James Bond-style British spy. And McGrath is the young idealist who is given the task of following in his footsteps. It's a mission that forces McGrath to question everything he thought he believed in.

Really, I have to laugh because there was a whole set of stories that made me sound like the Dragon Lady, you know, 'tough this and tough that.' Then there is this business about 'gooey.' The bottom line is I am a pragmatic idealist.

I am an absurd idealist. But I believe that all that must come true. For, unless it comes true, the world will be laid desolate. And I believe that it can come true.

No, I didn't think of myself as an idealist. I consider myself as a believer in what I regard as the Labour Party's basic principles, which have to do with equality and 'do unto others as you would have them do unto you'. You know, the golden rules.

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.

My father is a real idealist, and he's all about learning. If I asked for a pair of Nikes growing up, it was just a resounding 'No.' But if I asked for a saxophone, one would appear and next day and I'd be signed up for lessons. So anything to do with education or learning, my father would spare no expense.

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.

Cynic: an idealist whose rose-colored glasses have been removed, snapped in two and stomped into the ground, immediately improving his vision

You'd be a fool or a deluded idealist to think ethics would be prominent on Wall Street. That is not a statement against people in the money business, just a fact.

I think my mother has always understood what a romantic idealist I am, so she's never had trouble supporting what might be aberrant behavior to others.

The true idealist pursues what his heart says is right in a way that his head says will work.

We come to think of an idealist as one who seeks to realize what is not in fact realizable. But, it is necessary to insist, to have ideals is not the same as to have impracticable ideals, however often it may be the case that our ideals are impracticable.

Only one American has given his life for Iranian democracy. He was a young idealist from Nebraska named Howard Baskerville. In 1907, fresh out of Princeton, Baskerville went to Iran as a schoolteacher. He found himself in the midst of a revolution against tyranny, and was carried away with passion for the democratic cause.

Now I call myself a bleeding heart libertarian. Because I do believe in the principles of Libertarianism as an ideal - because I'm an idealist.

The impatient idealist says: 'Give me a place to stand and I shall move the earth.' But such a place does not exist. We all have to stand on the earth itself and go with her at her pace.

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.

I am personally an idealist. I was lucky enough to follow my dreams in my own life, so you should definitely follow your dreams.

Mohammed Ali. He's much more than a boxer. He's also a passionate idealist who fought for his people. I respect him - and, of course, he was very handsome in his younger days.

Ideas first and last: yet it is not till these are formulated and utilized that the devotees of the common sense discern their value and advantages. The idealist is the capitalist on whose resources multitudes are maintained life long. Ideas in the head set hands about their several tasks, thus carrying forward all human endeavors to their issues.

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

I could safely declare, I am an idealist... I believe in everything - I am only looking for proofs.

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.

First, I was an idealist (that was early - fools are born, not made, you know); next I was a realist; now I am a pessimist, and, by Jove! if things get much worse I'll become a humorist.

I am a misanthrope and yet utterly benevolent, have more than one screw loose yet am a super-idealist who digests philosophy more efficiently than food.