Idealism Quotes - Page 8

• Vietnam was an exercise in mistaken idealism Iraq in cynical money-making. And there's no optimism or idealism now -- Americans are tired of knowledge. Our leaders, the C-students from Yale, know this. We're proud of being ignorant that leaves virtue at our core. We aren't frazzled by knowledge like foreigners, so we can be trusted.

  Kurt Vonnegut

  Tired, Exercise, Yale

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• In the actual world--the painful kingdom of time and place--dwell care, and canker, and fear. With thought, with the ideal, is immortal hilarity, the rose of joy.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Rose, Joy, Hilarity

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1983). “Essays and Lectures”, p.328, Library of America

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• The young habitually mistake lust for love, they're infested with idealism of all kinds.

  Margaret Atwood

  Mistake, Teenage Love, Lust

  Margaret Atwood (2007). “The Blind Assassin: A Novel”, p.257, Anchor

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• Could beauty be beaten out,
  O youth the cities have sent
  to strike at each other's strength,
  it is you who have kept her alight.

  Hilda Doolittle

  Beauty, Cities, Youth

  Hilda Doolittle, Louis L. Martz (1986). “Collected Poems 1912-1944”, p.68, New Directions Publishing

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• The acceptance of certain realities doesn't preclude idealism. It can lead to certain breakthroughs.

  Rem Koolhaas

  Acceptance, Reality, Certain

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• Ego trips by coteries of self-exalting people are treated in the media as idealism, rather than the petty tyranny it is.

  Thomas Sowell

  Self, Media, People

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• To perceive the aura of an object we look at means to invest it with the ability to look at us in return.

  Walter Benjamin

  Mean, Looks, Auras

  Walter Benjamin, Hannah Arendt (1968). “Illuminations”, Schocken Books Incorporated

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• Fairy tales and myths are forms of cultural storage for the natural history of life.

  William Irwin Thompson

  History Of Life, Fairy Tale, Natural

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• One reaches through to the continents and oceans of the imagination, worlds able to sustain anyone who will but play, and then lets the play deepen and deepen until it is a reality that few would even dare to entertain...The human imagination is the holographic organ of the human body, and we don't 'imagine' anything. We simply see things so far away that there is no possibility of validating or invalidating their existence.

  Terence McKenna

  Ocean, Reality, Play

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• Less and less frequently do we encounter people with the ability to tell a tale properly. More and more often there is embarrassment all around when the wish to hear a story is expressed. It is as if something that seemed inalienable to us, the securest among our possessions, were taken from us: the ability to exchange our experiences...Experience has fallen in value. And it looks as if it is continuing to fall into bottomlessness.

  Walter Benjamin

  Fall, Taken, People

  "Illuminations". Book by Walter Benjamin, 1950.

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• The enemy of idealism is zealotry.

  Neil Kinnock

  Enemy, Ideals, Zealotry

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• That the discovery of this great truth, which lies so near and obvious to the mind, should be attained to by the reason of so veryfew, is a sad instance of the stupidity and inattention of men, who, though they are surrounded with such clear manifestations of the Deity, are yet so little affected by them, that they seem as it were blinded with excess of light.

  George Berkeley

  God, Truth, Lying

  George Berkeley (2015). “A Treatise Concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge”, p.85, Sheba Blake Publishing

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• We remain in the Romantic cycle initiated by Rousseau: liberal idealism canceled by violence, barbarism, disillusionment and cynicism.

  Camille Paglia

  Violence, Cynicism, Barbarism

  Camille Paglia (1990). “Sexual Personae: Art and Decadence from Nefertiti to Emily Dickinson”, Vintage

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• If capitalism begins as the practical idealism of the aspiring bourgeoisie, it ends ... as an orgy of materialism.

  Talcott Parsons

  Bourgeoisie, Materialism, Ends

  Max Weber, Talcott Parsons (2003). “The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism”, p.3, Courier Corporation

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• Ideals are great in theory ... but they don't work too well in real life.

  Laurell K. Hamilton

  Real, Theory, Wells

  Laurell K. Hamilton (2001). “Narcissus in Chains: An Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter Novel”, p.145, Penguin

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• The light that shined upon the summit now seems almost to shine at our feet.

  Woodrow Wilson

  Peace, Feet, Light

  Woodrow Wilson, Arthur Stanley Link (1986). “The Papers of Woodrow Wilson”

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• There are no letters in the mailbox
  And there are no grapes upon the vine
  And there are no chocolates in your boxes anymore
  And there are no diamonds in the mine

  Leonard Cohen

  Chocolate, Vines, Letters

  Song: Diamonds In The Mine, Album: Songs Of Love And Hate

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• Reality - Dreams = Animal Being Reality + Dreams = A Heart-Ache (usually called Idealism) Reality + Humor = Realism (also called Conservatism) Dreams - Humor = Fanaticism Dreams + Humor = Fantasy Reality + Dreams + Humor = Wisdom

  Lin Yutang

  Dream, Heart, Animal

  Lin Yutang (1937). “The Importance of Living”

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• Some men -- not all men -- see always before them an ideal, a mental picture if you will, of what they ought to be, and are not. Whoso seeks to follow this ideal revealed to the mental vision, whoso seeks to attain to conformity with it, will find it enlarge itself, and remove from him. He that follows it will improve his own moral character, but the ideal will remain always above him and before him, prompting him to new exertions.

  William Batchelder Greene

  Character, Men, Vision

  William Batchelder Greene (1872). “The blazing star; with an appendix treating of the Jewish Kabbala, also a tract on the philosophy of H. Spencer, and one on New-England transcendentalism”, p.3

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• The ancients of the ideal description, instead of trying to turn their impracticable chimeras, as does the modern dreamer, into social and political prodigies, deposited them in great works of art, which still live while states and constitutions have perished, bequeathing to posterity not shameful defects but triumphant successes.

  Herman Melville

  Art, Political, Dreamer

  Herman Melville (1987). “Piazza Tales and Other Prose Pieces, 1839-1860: Volume Nine, Scholarly Edition”, p.409, Northwestern University Press

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• An age deficient in idealism has ever been one of immorality and superficial attainment, since without the sense of ideas, nobility of character becomes of rare attainment, if possible.

  Amos Bronson Alcott

  Character, Ideas, Age

  Amos Bronson Alcott (1877). “Table-talk”

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• The President is not only the leader of a party, he is the President of the whole people. He must interpret the conscience of America. He must guide his conduct by the idealism of our people.

  Herbert Hoover

  Party, America, People

  Hoover, Herbert (1974). “Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: Herbert Hoover, 1929”, p.554, Best Books on

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• Idealism leads to realism if it is strictly thought out.

  Ludwig Wittgenstein

  Realism, Ifs

  Ludwig Wittgenstein (1984). “Notebooks, 1914-1916”, p.79, University of Chicago Press

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• It took years of wear and tear before idealism crumbled like so much bric-a-brac.

  James Siegel

  Years, Tears, Brics

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• In fact, philosophy is universal in scope. No man can live without a world view; therefore, there is no man who is not a philosopher.

  Francis Schaeffer

  Philosophy, Men, Views

  Francis Schaeffer (2013). “He Is There and He Is Not Silent”, p.4, Tyndale House Publishers, Inc.

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