Idealistic Quotes
More Idealistic Quotes
The House Of Commons has never been a tea-party. It consists of strong-minded, often very idealistic people, who are trying to accomplish something for our country. We are inheritors of an adversarial system and that, in itself, fosters conflict.
john allen fraser— Preface, p. xi
The prestige of the Nobel Prize is due to many causes, but in particular to its twofold idealistic and international character: idealistic in that it has been designed for works of lofty inspiration; international in that it is awarded after the production of different countries has been minutely studied and the intellectual balance sheet of the whole world has been drawn up. Free from all other considerations and ignoring any but intellectual values, the judges have deliberately taken their place in what the philosophers have called a community of the mind.
henri-louis bergson— In a letter accepting the 1927 Nobel Prize in literature, read by the French minister, Armand Bernard.
His central characters are the pioneer, the doctor, the scientist, the businessman, and the feminist. The appeal of his best fiction lies in the opposition between his idealistic protagonists and an array of fools, charlatans, and scoundrels - evangelists, editorialists, pseudo-artists, cultists, and boosters.
sinclair lewis— Martin Light in The Quixotic Vision of Sinclair Lewis (1975)
People call meanidealist.That ishow Iknow that Iaman American. America is the only idealistic nation in the world.
— 1919 Speech, Sioux Falls, 8 Sep.
I didn’t allow merchandising for seven years after it was on the air because I was very idealistic, and I didn’t want parents to think we were trying to exploit their children.
art clokey— Interview by Patrick S. Pemberton, "Once and Future Gumby", The Tribune (San Luis Obispo), 13 February 2002, p. A1
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— Pt. 3 : Right Understanding, "Naturalness"
I am now even more persuaded of the urgent need to study why Socrates was accused. The dislike of philosophy is perennial, and the seeds of the condemnation of Socrates are present at all times, not in the bosoms of pleasure-seekers, who don’t give a damn, but in those of high-minded and idealistic persons who do not want to submit their aspirations to examination.
Allan Bloom— “Western Civ,” p. 19
"Some may think that to affirm dialogue--the encounter of women and men in the world in order to transform the world--is naively and subjectively idealistic. There is nothing, however, more real or concrete than people in the world and with the world, than humans with other humans."
paulo freire— Chapter 4 (Pedagogia do oprimido (Pedagogy of the Oppressed) (1968, English trans. 1970))
I now come to the third great obstacle to human self-knowledge, to the belief deeply rooted in our western culture that what can be explained in terms of natural science has no values. This belief springs from an exaggeration of Kant 's values-philosophy, the consequence of the idealistic dichotomy of the world into the external world of things and the internal laws of human reason.
Konrad Lorenz— Ch. XII : On the Virtue of Scientific Humility
But, as it is, this pied collection begs your indulgence it's been spun from threads both sad and humoristic, themes popular or idealistic, products of carefree hours, of fun, of sleeplessness, faint inspirations, of powers unripe, or on the wane, of reason's icy intimations, and records of a heart in pain.
aleksandr pushkin— Dedication (Eugene Onegin (1823))
Fights over ideas are the most vicious of all. If it were merely food, or water, or shelter, we would work something out. But in the realm of ideas one can become idealistic .
kim stanley robinson— Ch. 14, p. 329
There was a comfort in the thought, a strange sort of personal comfort in being able to believe that some intelligence might have solved the riddle of that mysterious equation of the universe. And how, perhaps, that mysterious equation might tie in with the spiritual force that was idealistic brother to time and space and all those other elemental factors that held the universe together.
clifford d. simak— Ch. 30 (Skirmish (1977))
For every idealistic peacemaker willing to renounce his self-defence in favour of a weapons-free world, there is at least one warmaker anxious to exploit the other's good intentions.
margaret thatcher— p. 50 (Statecraft: Strategies for a Changing World)
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— Ch. 32, January 13, 1944
...quite in keeping with Trotsky’s passion for ideas, his generous indignation at injustice, was his sense of personal rectitude, his idealistic approach to life. All who knew him intimately even when he was one of the rulers of Russia speak of it. Max Eastman and also Souvarine, who, a fierce opponent of Trotsky’s politics, has said of him that there was nothing “mesquin” in his character, not a trace of rascality. It is a noticeable characteristic of many great writers and philosophers, but a fatal weakness in a politician.
— C. L. R. James, "Trotsky’s Place In History", The New International, September 1940.
My work on free software is motivated by an idealistic goal: spreading freedom and cooperation. I want to encourage free software to spread, replacing proprietary software that forbids cooperation, and thus make our society better.
— Richard Stallman, Copyleft: Pragmatic Idealism, The Free Software Foundation
We dislike the IRA, most of us, and fear it.We are a peaceful and democratic people.But our history, our idealistic pretensions and our fatal ambivalence have stuck us with an ideology that is warlike and anti- democratic, and calls increasingly for further human sacrifice.
joyce carol oates— 1985 In the NewYork Review of Books, 29 Apr.
