An idealist believes the short run doesn’t count. A cynic believes the long run doesn’t matter. A realist believes that what is done or left undone in the short run determines the long run.
—Sydney J. Harris (1917–86) American Essayist, Drama Critic
Idealism springs from deep feelings, but feelings are nothing without the formulated idea that keeps them whole.
—Jacques Barzun (b.1907) French-born American Historian, Philosophers
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
Blessed is he who carries within himself a God, an ideal, and who obeys it.
—Louis Pasteur (1822–95) French Biologist
Our ideals are our better selves.
—Amos Bronson Alcott (1799–1888) American Teacher, Writer, Philosopher
Every dogma has its day, but ideals are eternal.
—Israel Zangwill (1864–1926) English Playwright, Novelist, Zionist Activist
An idealist is a person who helps other people to be prosperous.
—Henry Ford (1863–1947) American Businessperson, Engineer
I’m an idealist. I don’t know where I’m going, but I’m on my way.
—Caroline Schoeder American Aphorist
It’s really a wonder that I haven’t dropped all my ideals because they seem so absurd and impossible to carry out. Yet, I keep them, because in spite of everything I still believe that people are really good at heart. I simply can’t build up my hopes on a foundation consisting of confusion, misery, and death. I see the world gradually being turned into a wilderness, I hear the ever-approaching thunder, which will destroy us too, I can feel the sufferings of millions and yet, if I look up into the heavens, I think that it will all come right, that this cruelty too will end, and that peace and tranquility will return again.
—Anne Frank (1929–45) Holocaust Victim
The idealist walks on tiptoe, the materialist on his heels.
—Malcolm de Chazal (1902–81) Mauritian Writer, Painter, Visionary
Our salvation is in striving to achieve what we know we’ll never achieve.
—Ryszard Kapuscinski (1932–2007) Polish Journalist
Success is the satisfaction of feeling that one is realizing one’s ideal.
—Anna Pavlova (1881–1931) Russian Ballerina
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
Some people never have anything except ideals.
—E. W. Howe (1853–1937) American Novelist, Editor
Idealism is the noble toga that political gentlemen drape over their will to power.
—Aldous Huxley (1894–1963) English Humanist, Pacifist, Essayist, Short Story Writer, Satirist
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
Reality does not conform to the ideal, but confirms it.
—Gustave Flaubert (1821–80) French Novelist, Playwright, Short Story Writer
No folly is more costly than the folly of intolerant idealism.
—Winston Churchill (1874–1965) British Head of State, Political leader, Historian, Journalist, Author
Love is an ideal thing, marriage a real thing; a confusion of the real with the ideal never goes unpunished.
—Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749–1832) German Poet
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
Ideals are the world’s masters.
—Josiah Gilbert Holland (1819–81) American Editor, Novelist
Living up to ideals is like doing everyday work with your Sunday clothes on.
—E. W. Howe (1853–1937) American Novelist, Editor
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
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.
—Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. (1841–1935) American Jurist, 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
Idealism is the despot of thought, just as politics is the despot of will.
—Mikhail Bakunin (1814–76) Russian Anarchist Philosopher
The ideal man bears the accidents of life with dignity and grace, making the best of the circumstances.
—Aristotle (384BCE–322BCE) Ancient Greek Philosopher, Scholar
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
It seems to be the fate of idealists to obtain what they have struggled for in a form which destroys their ideals.
—Bertrand A. Russell (1872–1970) British Philosopher, Mathematician, Social Critic
An optimist is a person who sees only the lights in the picture, whereas a pessimist sees only the shadows. An idealist, however, is one who sees the light and the shadows, but in addition sees something else: the possibility of changing the picture, of making the lights prevail over the shadows.
—Felix Adler (1851–1933) German-Born American Philosopher
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
All higher motives, ideals, conceptions, sentiments in a man are of no account if they do not come forward to strengthen him for the better discharge of the duties which devolve upon him in the ordinary affairs of life.
—Henry Ward Beecher (1813–87) American Clergyman, Writer
A Realist is an idealist who has gone through the fire and been purified. A skeptic is an idealist who has gone through the fire and been burned.
—Warren W. Wiersbe (1929–2019) American Pastor, Biblical Scholar
When ideas fail, words come in very handy.
—Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749–1832) German Poet
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
Let us show, not merely in great crises, but in every day affairs of life, qualities of practical intelligence, of hardihood and endurance, and above all, the power of devotion to a lofty ideal.
—Theodore Roosevelt (1858–1919) American Head of State, Political leader, Historian, Explorer
Inside every cynical person, there is a disappointed idealist
—George Carlin (1937–2008) American Stand-up Comedian
Cherish your visions. Cherish your ideals. Cherish the music that stirs in your heart, the beauty that forms in your mind, the loveliness that drapes your purest thoughts, for out of them will grow all delightful conditions, all heavenly environment; of these, if you but remain true to them, your world will at last be built.
—James Allen (1864–1912) British Philosophical Writer
An ideal cannot wait for its realization to prove its validity.
—George Santayana (1863–1952) Spanish-American Poet, Philosopher
Ideals are an imaginative understanding of that which is desirable in that which is possible.
—Walter Lippmann (1889–1974) American Journalist, Political Commentator, Writer
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
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 (1861–1947) English Mathematician, Philosopher
From my experience, not one in twenty marries the first love; we build statues of snow, and weep to see them melt.
—Walter Scott (1771–1832) Scottish Novelist, Poet, Playwright, Lawyer
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
It is only in marriage with the world that our ideals can bear fruit, divorced from it, they remain barren.
—Bertrand A. Russell (1872–1970) British Philosopher, Mathematician, Social Critic
Why should we strive, with cynic frown, to knock their fairy castles down?
—Eliza Cook (1818–89) English Author, Poet, Writer
Ideals do exist, the rest is just temporary interruption.
—Vanna Bonta (1958–2014) Italian-American Novelist, Poet, Actress
Words without actions are the assassins of idealism.
—Herbert Hoover (1874–1964) 31st American President
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 human soul has still greater need of the ideal than of the real. It is by the real that we exist; it is by the ideal that we live.
—Victor Hugo (1802–85) French Novelist