Inspirational Quotations

Inspirational Quotations on Ideals

I recognize thart even you, yourself, will change. Your ideals will change, your tastes will change, your desires will change. Your whole understandings of who you are had better change, because if it doesn’t change, you’ve become a very static personality over a great many years, and nothing would displease me more. And so I recognize that the process of evolution will produce changes in you.
Neale Donald Walsch (b.1943) American Spiritual Writer

Should we continue to look upwards? Is the light we can see in the sky one of those which will presently be extinguished? The ideal is terrifying to behold, lost as it is in the depths, small, isolated, a pin-point, brilliant but threatened on all sides by the dark forces that surround it nevertheless, no more in danger than a star in the jaws of the clouds.
Victor Hugo (1802–85) French Novelist

Living up to ideals is like doing everyday work with your Sunday clothes on.
E. W. Howe (1853–1937) American Novelist, Editor

Heads are wisest when they are cool, and hearts are strongest when they beat in response to noble ideals.
Ralph Bunche (1903–71) American Political Scientist, Diplomat

We have a system which, though far from perfect, is strong with idealism. It gives elbow room for men of all races and all beliefs. It is vital and dynamic. And it works. We have the means of shaping the world in our pattern. If we do, freedom will be assured for all men. The decision is in the hands of this generation. It is a challenge to our political competence. For western civilization it is the greatest challenge of all time.
William O. Douglas (1898–1980) American Judge

I’m an idealist. I don’t know where I’m going, but I’m on my way.
Caroline Schoeder American Aphorist

Why should we strive, with cynic frown, to knock their fairy castles down?
Eliza Cook (1818–89) English Author, Poet

Inside every cynical person, there is a disappointed idealist
George Carlin (1937–2008) American Stand-up Comedian

Idealism is fine, but as it approaches reality the cost becomes prohibitive.
William F. Buckley, Jr. (1925–2008) American Conservative Writer, Commentator

Our ideals, like pictures, are made from lights and shadows.
Joseph Joubert (1754–1824) French Writer, Moralist

Nearly all the Escapists in the long past have managed their own budget and their social relations so unsuccessfully that I wouldn’t want them for my landlords, or my bankers, or my neighbors. They were valuable, like powerful stimulants, only when they were left out of the social and industrial routine.
Willa Cather (1873–1947) American Novelist, Writer

Idealists are foolish enough to throw caution to the winds. They have advanced mankind and have enriched the world.
Emma Goldman (1869–1940) Lithuanian-American Anarchist, Feminist

If all the rich and all of the church people should send their children to the public schools they would feel bound to concentrate their money on improving these schools until they met the highest ideals.
Susan B. Anthony (1820–1906) American Civil Rights Leader

Many have dreamed up republics and principalities that have never in truth been known to exist; the gulf between how one should live and how one does live is so wide that a man who neglects what is actually done for what should be done learns the way to self-destruction rather than self-preservation.
Niccolo Machiavelli (1469–1527) Florentine Political Philosopher

I have never looked upon ease and happiness as ends in themselves – such an ethical basis I call more proper for a herd of swine. The ideals which have lighted me on my way and time after time given me new courage to face life cheerfully, have been Truth, Goodness, and Beauty.
Albert Einstein (1879–1955) German-born Physicist

No folly is more costly than the folly of intolerant idealism.
Winston Churchill (1874–1965) British Head of State, Political leader, Historian, Journalist, Author

We for a certainty are not the first have sat in taverns while the tempest hurled their hopeful plans to emptiness, and cursed whatever brute and blackguard made the world.
A. E. Housman (1859–1936) English Poet, Classical Scholar

A perfect human being: Man in search of his ideal of perfection. Nothing less.
Pir Vilayat Inayat Khan (1916–2004) British Sufi Mystic, Religious Leader, Psychologist

To live in the presence of great truths and eternal laws, to be led by permanent ideals—that is what keeps a man patient when the world ignores him, and calm and unspoiled when the world praises him.
Honore de Balzac (1799–1850) French Novelist

An idealist is one who, on noticing that a rose smells better than a cabbage, concludes that it is also more nourishing.
H. L. Mencken (1880–1956) American Journalist, Literary Critic

We are all inclined to judge ourselves by our ideals; others by their acts.
Dwight Morrow (1873–1931) American Businessman, Diplomat

A large portion of human beings live not so much in themselves as in what they desire to be.—They create an ideal character the perfections of which compensate in some degree for imperfections of their own.
Edwin Percy Whipple (1819–86) American Literary Critic

Every life has its actual blanks which the ideal must fill up, or which else remain bare and profitless forever.
Julia Ward Howe (1819–1910) American Feminist, Reformer, Writer

Life without idealism is empty indeed. We just hope or starve to death.
Pearl S. Buck (1892–1973) American Novelist, Human Rights Activist

I looked for great men, but all I found were the apes of their ideals.
Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900) German Philosopher, Scholar, Writer

Man can never come up to his ideal standard.—It is the nature of the immortal spirit to raise that standard higher and higher as it goes from strength to strength, still upward and onward.—The wisest and greatest men are ever the most modest.
Margaret Fuller (1810–50) American Feminist, Writer, Revolutionary

All men are prepared to accomplish the incredible if their ideals are threatened.
Hermann Hesse (1877–1962) German-born Swiss Novelist, Poet

Some men can live up to their loftiest ideals without ever going higher than a basement.
Theodore Roosevelt (1858–1919) American Head of State, Political leader, Historian, Explorer

All genuine ideals have one thing in common: they express the desire for something which is not yet accomplished but which is desirable for the purpose of the growth and happiness of the individual.
Erich Fromm (1900–80) German-American Psychoanalyst, Social Philosopher

The idealist walks on tiptoe, the materialist on his heels.
Malcolm de Chazal (1902–81) Mauritian Writer, Painter, Visionary

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