The idealist is incorrigible: if he is thrown out of his heaven he makes an ideal of his hell.
—Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900) German Philosopher, Scholar, Writer
There is no force so democratic as the force of an ideal.
—Calvin Coolidge (1872–1933) American Head of State, Lawyer
Some day the soft Ideal that we wooed confronts us fiercely, foe-beset, pursued, and cries reproachful: “Was it then my praise, and not myself was loved? Prove now thy truth; I claim of thee the promise of thy youth.”
—James Russell Lowell (1819–91) American Poet, Critic
Do not consider Collectivists as sincere but deluded idealists. The proposal to enslave some men for the sake of others is not an ideal; brutality is not idealistic, no matter what its purpose. Do not ever say that the desire to do good by force is a good motive. Neither power-lust nor stupidity are good motives.
—Ayn Rand (1905–82) Russian-born American Novelist, Philosopher
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
Our ideals, like pictures, are made from lights and shadows.
—Joseph Joubert (1754–1824) French Writer, Moralist
Ideals are the world’s masters.
—Josiah Gilbert Holland (1819–81) American Editor, Novelist
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
I promise to keep on living as though I expected to live forever. Nobody grows old by merely living a number of years. People grow old only by deserting their ideals. Years may wrinkle the skin, but to give up interest wrinkles the soul.
—Douglas MacArthur (1880–1964) American Military Leader
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
When they come downstairs from their Ivory Towers, idealists are very apt to walk straight into the gutter.
—Logan Pearsall Smith (1865–1946) American-British Essayist, Bibliophile
Words without actions are the assassins of idealism.
—Herbert Hoover (1874–1964) 31st American President
The idealist walks on tiptoe, the materialist on his heels.
—Malcolm de Chazal (1902–81) Mauritian Writer, Painter, Visionary
Idealism is the despot of thought, just as politics is the despot of will.
—Mikhail Bakunin (1814–76) Russian Anarchist Philosopher
Our salvation is in striving to achieve what we know we’ll never achieve.
—Ryszard Kapuscinski (1932–2007) Polish Journalist
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
If you are going to build something in the air it is always better to build castles than houses of cards.
—Georg Christoph Lichtenberg (1742–99) German Philosopher, Physicist
Idealism increases in direct proportion to one’s distance from the problem.
—John Galsworthy (1867–1933) English Novelist, Playwright
Don’t use that foreign word “ideals.” We have that excellent native word “lies.”
—Henrik Ibsen (1828–1906) Norwegian Playwright
What we need most, is not so much to realize the ideal as to idealize the real.
—Frederic Henry Hedge
An idealist is a person who helps other people to be prosperous.
—Henry Ford (1863–1947) American Businessperson, Engineer
The actual well seen is ideal.
—Thomas Carlyle (1795–1881) Scottish Historian, Essayist
It is at our mother’s knee that we acquire our noblest and truest and highest ideals, but there is seldom any money in them.
—Mark Twain (1835–1910) American Humorist
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
The further limits of our being plunge, it seems to me, into an altogether other dimension of existence from the sensible and merely “understandable” world. Name it the mystical region, or the supernatural region, whichever you choose. So far as our ideal impulses originate in this region (and most of them do originate in it, for we find them possessing us in a way for which we cannot articulately account), we belong to it in a more intimate sense than that in which we belong to the visible world, for we belong in the most intimate sense wherever our ideals belong.
—William James (1842–1910) American Philosopher, Psychologist, Physician
A map of the world that does not include Utopia is not worth even glancing at, for it leaves out the one country at which Humanity is always landing.
—Oscar Wilde (1854–1900) Irish Poet, Playwright
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.
—Charles Cooley (1864–1929) American Sociologist
Why should we strive, with cynic frown, to knock their fairy castles down?
—Eliza Cook (1818–89) English Author, Poet
Idealist: a cynic in the making.
—Irving Layton (1912–2006) Romanian-born Canadian Poet, Lecturer
The true ideal is not opposed to the real but lies in it; and blessed are the eyes that find it.
—James Russell Lowell (1819–91) American Poet, Critic