Idealism Quotes - Page 6

• Violence, naked force, has settled more issues in history than has any other factor, and the contrary opinion is wishful thinking at its worst. Breeds that forget this basic truth have always paid for it with their lives and freedoms.

  W. E. B. Du Bois

  Thinking, Issues, Violence

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• Whatever men you take, keep the idea of man intact: let your soul wait whether your body does or not.

  D. H. Lawrence

  Sex, Men, Ideas

  D.H. Lawrence (2013). “Delphi Works of D.H. Lawrence (Illustrated)”, p.3540, Delphi Classics

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• Leadership is Idealism in Action.

  Sathya Sai Baba

  Action

  Forward to the book Lieut Gen and M. L. Chibber "Sai Baba's Mahavakya on Leadership", December 1996.

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• The ideal, after all, is true than the real: for the ideal is the eternal element in perishable things.

  Henri Frederic Amiel

  Real, Elements, Ideals

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• The old ideals are dead as nails--nothing there. It seems to me there remains only this perfect union with a woman--sort of ultimate marriage--and there isn't anything else.

  D. H. Lawrence

  Marriage, Men, Perfect

  D. H. Lawrence (2016). “Women in Love”, p.55, Xist Publishing

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• I fear that, with our current veneration for the natural and the real, we have arrived at the opposite pole to all idealism, and have landed in the region of the waxworks.

  Friedrich Nietzsche

  Real, Opposites, Natural

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• You see something very important is happening. Personality is being eaten out, and with that the idealism that always motivated an anarchist movement - the belief in something, the ideal that there is something worth fighting for.

  Murray Bookchin

  Fighting, Personality, Important

  Source: robertgraham.wordpress.com

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• As thinkers, mankind has ever divided into two sects, Materialists and Idealists; the first class founding on experience, the second on consciousness; the first class beginning to think from the data of the senses, the second class perceive that the senses are not final and say, The senses give us representations of things, but what are the things themselves, they cannot tell. The materialist insists on facts, on history, on the force of circumstances and the animal wants of man; the idealists on the power of Thought and Will, on inspiration, on miracle, on individual culture.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Inspiration, Men, Thinking

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson (Illustrated)”, p.4265, Delphi Classics

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• Idealism, alas, does not protect one from ignorance, dogmatism, and foolishness.

  Sidney Hook

  Ignorance, Doe, Hook

  Sidney Hook (1987). “Out of step: an unquiet life in the 20th century”, Harpercollins

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• The struggle against subjectivism was the attempt to avoid the charge of what was then called "idealism" or "nihilism", i.e., that we know nothing more than our own representations.

  Frederick C. Beiser

  Struggle, Nihilism, Subjectivism

  "Diotima’s child". Interview with Richard Marshall, www.3ammagazine.com. September 21, 2012.

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• Royce is the father of the thesis that German idealism is a story about the discovery and development of the Kantian transcendental ego - the "I" that accompanies all my representations - as an absolute cosmic supersubject who, god-like, creates the entire universe.

  Frederick C. Beiser

  Father, Discovery, Ego

  "Diotima’s child". Interview with Richard Marshall, www.3ammagazine.com. September 21, 2012.

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• I reject all evidence that my fabulous beloved is an ordinary person who worries, watches TV, and has bouts of indigestion.

  Mason Cooley

  Worry, Ordinary, Watches

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• The whole point about the true unconscious is that it is all the time moving forward, beyond the range of its own fixed laws or habits. It is no good trying to superimpose an ideal nature upon the unconscious.

  D. H. Lawrence

  Change, Moving, Law

  D. H. Lawrence (2006). “Psychoanalysis and the Unconscious and Fantasia of the Unconscious”, p.16, Courier Corporation

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• But it does no good--solves nothing--to distance myself from the front lines of human need by using the mail as a safe shelter. I believe that serving the best ends of humanity means getting out in the middle of it just as it is, not staying home writing checks and thinking hopeful thoughts. The world does not need tourists who ride by in a bus clucking their tongues. The world as it is needs those who will love it enough to change it, with what they have, where they are. And you're damned right that's idealistic. No apology. When idealism goes into the trash as junk mail, we're finished.

  Robert Fulghum

  Distance, Believe, Mean

  Robert Fulghum (2010). “Uh-Oh: Some Observations from Both Sides of the Refrigerator Door”, p.173, Ivy Books

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• I'm not talking about blind optimism, the kind of hope that just ignores the enormity of the tasks ahead or the road blocks that stand in our path. I'm not talking about the wishful idealism that allows us to just sit on the sidelines or shirk from a fight. I have always believed that hope is that stubborn thing inside us that insists, despite all the evidence to the contrary, that something better awaits us so long as we have the courage to keep reaching, to keep working, to keep fighting.

  Barack Obama

  Hope, Fighting, Talking

  Barack Obama's Victory Speech in Chicago, www.theguardian.com. November 7, 2012.

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• The sad end he met in Afghanistan was more accurately a function of his stubborn idealism - his insistence on trying to do the right thing. In which case it wasn't a tragic flaw that brought Tillman down, but a tragic virtue.

  Jon Krakauer

  Trying, Stubborn, Flaws

  "Where Men Win Glory: The Odyssey of Pat Tillman". Book by Jon Krakauer, 2009.

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• Nobody believes that the man who says, 'Look, lady, you wanted equality,' to explain why he won't give up his seat to a pregnant woman carrying three grocery bags, a briefcase, and a toddler is seized with the symbolism of idealism.

  Judith Martin

  Giving Up, Believe, Men

  Judith Martin (1996). “Common courtesy: in which Miss Manners solves the problem that baffled Mr. Jefferson”

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• Mort drove one of those little hybrid cars that, when not running on gasoline, was fueled by idealism. It was made out of crepe paper and duct tape and boasted a computer system that looked like it could have run the NYSE and NORAD, with enough attention left over to play tic-tac-toe. Or possibly Global Thermonuclear War.

  Jim Butcher

  Running, War, Play

  Jim Butcher (2011). “Ghost Story: A Novel of the Dresden Files”, p.56, Penguin

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• Idealism, though just in its premises, and often daring and honest in their application, is stultified by the exclusive intellectualism of its own methods: by its fatal trust in the squirrel-work of the industrious brain instead of the piercing vision of the desirous heart. It interests man, but does not involve him in its processes: does not catch him up to the new and more real life which it describes. Hence the thing that matters, the living thing, has somehow escaped it; and its observations bear the same relation to reality as the art of the anatomist does to the mystery of birth.

  Evelyn Underhill

  Art, Real, Men

  Evelyn Underhill (2017). “The Complete Christian Mystic: A Practical, Step - By - Step Guide for Awakening to the Presence of God”, p.112, Lulu Press, Inc

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• Both men and women today see marriage not as a way of creating character and community but as a way to reach personal life goals. They are looking for a marriage partner who will 'fulfill their emotional, sexual, and spiritual desires.' And that creates an extreme idealism that in turn leads to a deep pessimism that you will ever find the right person to marry.

  Timothy Keller

  Spiritual, Character, Men

  Timothy Keller (2011). “The Meaning of Marriage: Facing the Complexities of Commitment with the Wisdom of God”, p.23, Penguin

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• In order to succeed we need leaders of inspired idealism, leaders to whom are granted great visions, who dream greatly and strive to make their dreams come true; who can kindle the people with the fire from their own burning souls. The leader for the time being, whoever he may be, is but an instrument, to be used until broken and then to be cast aside; and if he is worth his salt he will care no more when he is broken than a soldier cares when he is sent where his life is forfeit in order that the victory may be won.

  Theodore Roosevelt

  Dream, Order, Fire

  Theodore Roosevelt (1913). “Progressive Principles: Selections from Addresses Made During the Presidential Campaign of 1912”

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• If a young person has any idealism at all, it's strongest about the time he finishes college.

  Sargent Shriver

  College, Young, Strongest

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• All of Koons's best art - the encased vacuum cleaners, the stainless-steel Rabbit (the late-twentieth century's signature work of Simulationist sculpture), the amazing gleaming Balloon Dog, and the cast-iron re-creation of a Civil War mortar exhibited last month at the Armory - has simultaneously flaunted extreme realism, idealism, and fantasy.

  Jerry Saltz

  Dog, Art, War

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• He seemed to be at that most dangerous of ages, where strength, skill, and confidence met naïveté and idealism; when young men skilled at the crafts of violence could be manipulated into employing those skills with brutal efficiency--and without questions.

  Jim Butcher

  Men, Skills, Age

  Jim Butcher (2006). “Academ's Fury”, p.58, Penguin

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• Nothing matters more to the future of this Nation than insuring that our young men and women learn to believe in themselves and believe in their dreams, and that they develop this capacitythat you develop this capacity, so that you keep it all of your lives. I believe one of Americas most priceless assets is the idealism which motivates the young people of America. My generation has invested all that it has, not only its love but its hope and faith, in yours.

  Richard M. Nixon

  Love, Dream, Believe

  Remarks at the University of Nebraska, Lincoln, Nebraska, January 14, 1971.

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