Idealism Quotes - Page 7

• One of the fundamental reasons why so many doctors become cynical and disillusioned is precisely because, when the abstract idealism has worn thin, they are uncertain about the value of the actual lives of the patients they are treating. This is not because they are callous or personally inhuman: it is because they live in and accept a society which is incapable of knowing what a human life is worth.

  John Berger

  Life, Doctors, Knowing

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• Beauty is truth, truth beauty,-that is all
  Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.

  John Keats

  Beauty, Truth, Philosophy

  "Ode on a Grecian Urn" l. 46 (1820)

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• She was aware that in love even the most passionate idealism will not rid the body's surface of its terrible, basic importance.

  Milan Kundera

  Body, Passionate, Surface

  Milan Kundera (1974). “Laughable Loves”

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• What has our culture lost in 1980 that the avant-garde had in 1890? Ebullience, idealism, confidence, the belief that there was plenty of territory to explore, and above all the sense that art, in the most disinterested and noble way, could find the necessary metaphors by which a radically changing culture could be explained to its inhabitants.

  Robert Hughes

  Art, Avant Garde, Culture

  Robert Hughes (2015). “The Spectacle of Skill: New and Selected Writings of Robert Hughes”, p.16, Vintage

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• Women are the only realists; their whole object in life is to pit their realism against the extravagant, excessive, and occasionally drunken idealism of men.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Love, Men, Pits

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• The '60s redefined narcissism as idealism.

  Dennis Prager

  Narcissism

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• I heard somebody open and shut the gate to the barn lot, but I didn't look around. If I didn't look around it would not be true that somebody had opened the gate with the creaky hinges, and that is a wonderful principle for a man to get hold of... What you don't know know don't hurt you, for it ain't real. They called that Idealism in my book I had when I was in college, and after I got hold of that principle I became an Idealist... If you are an Idealist it does not matter what you do or what goes on around you because it isn't real anyway.

  Robert Penn Warren

  Hurt, Real, Book

  Robert Penn Warren (2006). “All the King's Men”, p.45, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• We must look at our life without sentimentality, exaggeration or idealism. Does what we are choosing reflect what we most deeply value?

  Jack Kornfield

  Buddhism, Suffering, Doe

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• Wishful thinking is not idealism. It is self-indulgence at best and self-exaltation at worst. In either case, it is usually at the expense of others. In other words, it is the opposite of idealism.

  Thomas Sowell

  Thinking, Self, Opposites

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• Twenty-year-olds have a kind of emotional idealism about relationships and about the world that enables them to say, 'No, you lied to me. Goodbye.' When they see wickedness, they walk away.

  Lorrie Moore

  Goodbye, Emotional, Years

  Interview with Louisa Kamps, www.elle.com. September 16, 2009.

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• [in the]..curious way that my idealism has been mixed with my fatalism, so that I can possess the soul of a dreamer and that of a cynic at the same time......I possess a power of magic...[to] destroy the balance of a well-designed destiny with my diabolical mind.

  Anais Nin

  Destiny, Soul, Dreamer

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• Life sucks, and then you die.

  Stephenie Meyer

  Wwe, Life Sucks, Breaking Dawn

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• In the revolt against idealism, the ambiguities of the word experience have been perceived, with the result that realists have more and more avoided the word.

  Bertrand Russell

  Realist, Results, Ambiguity

  Bertrand Russell (2013). “Theory of Knowledge: The 1913 Manuscript”, p.6, Routledge

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• It is through the idealism of youth that man catches sight of truth, and in that idealism he possesses a wealth which he must never exchange for anything else.

  Albert Schweitzer

  Birthday, Truth, Men

  Albert Schweitzer (2015). “The Light Within Us”, p.18, Open Road Media

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• In a weird kind of way, music has afforded me an idealism and perfectionism that I could never attain as me.

  Billy Corgan

  Way, Kind, Perfectionism

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• Well, I mean, yes idealism, yes the dignity of pure research, yes the pursuit of truth in all its forms, but there comes a point I'm afraid where you begin to suspect that the entire multidimensional infinity of the Universe is almost certainly being run by a bunch of maniacs. And if it comes to a choice between spending yet another ten million years finding that out, and on the other hand just taking the money and running, then I for one could do with the exercise.

  Douglas Adams

  Running, Mean, Exercise

  Douglas Adams (2017). “The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy Omnibus: A Trilogy in Four Parts”, p.128, Pan Macmillan

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• I have always thought that foreign-policy idealism has to be tempered with realism.

  William Hague

  Idealism And Realism, Foreign Policy, Realism

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• Idealism is the death of the body and the imagination. All but freedom, utter freedom, is death

  Anais Nin

  Imagination, Body

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• Nothing has a more sinister effect on art than the artist's desire to prove that he's good. The terrible temptation of idealism! You must achieve mastery over your idealism, over your virtue as well as over your vice, aesthetic mastery over everything that drives you to write in the first place - your outrage, your politics, your grief, your love!

  Philip Roth

  Art, Grief, Writing

  Philip Roth (1998). “I Married a Communist”, p.230, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• That glorious vision of doing good is so often the sanguine mirage of so many good minds.

  Charles Dickens

  Cities, Mind, Vision

  Charles Dickens, Gillen D'Arcy Wood (2003). “A Tale of Two Cities”, p.385, Barnes & Noble

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• Visualizing how you want to be is [an] effective way to move toward your goal.

  Ellen Bass

  Moving, Goal, Way

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• It seems almost oxymoronic to believe that this new idealism has led to a new pessimism about marriage, but that is exactly what has happened. In generations past there was far less talk about "compatibility" and finding the ideal soul mate. Today we are looking for someone who accepts us as we are and fulfills our desires, and this creates an unrealistic set of expectations that frustrates both the searchers and the searched for.

  Timothy Keller

  Believe, Past, Expectations

  Timothy Keller (2011). “The Meaning of Marriage: Facing the Complexities of Commitment with the Wisdom of God”, p.22, Penguin

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• The highest ideals are human intelligence, creativity and love. Respect these above all.

  Penn Jillette

  Creativity, And Love, Love Respect

  Penn Jillette (2012). “God, No!: Signs You May Already Be an Atheist and Other Magical Tales”, p.1, Simon and Schuster

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• Only through the conscious action of the working masses in city and country can it be brought to life, only through the people's highest intellectual maturity and inexhaustible idealism can it be brought safely through all storms and find its way to port.

  Rosa Luxemburg

  Country, Maturity, Cities

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• Lying increases the creative faculties, expands the ego, lessens the friction of social contacts. . . . It is only in lies, wholeheartedly and bravely told, that human nature attains through words and speech the forebearance, the nobility, the romance, the idealism, that-being what it is-it falls so short of in fact and in deed.

  Clare Boothe Luce

  Lying, Fall, Creative

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