Idealist Quotes - Page 3

• The impatient idealist says: 'Give me a place to stand and I shall move the earth.' But such a place does not exist. We all have to stand on the earth itself and go with her at her pace.

  Chinua Achebe

  Moving, Giving, Black History

  FaceBook post by Chinua Achebe from Jan 17, 2017

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• Children are great idealists, until the stupidity of their elders puts out the fires of the aspirations.

  Nellie L. McClung

  Children, Fire, Stupidity

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• The collegiate idealists who fill the ranks of the environmental movement seem willing to do absolutely anything to save the biosphere, except take science courses and learn something about it.

  P. J. O'Rourke

  Fun, College, Earth Day

  "Parliament of Whores". Book by P. J. O'Rourke, 1991.

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• Every materialist will be an idealist; but an idealist can never go backward to be a materialist.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Idealism

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1981). “The Portable Emerson: New Edition”, p.89, Penguin

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• Questioning growth is deemed to be the act of lunatics, idealists and revolutionaries. But question it we must.

  Tim Jackson

  Growth, Revolutionary, Questioning

  "Politics Without Creativity Is Not Political". "The European" Interview, www.theeuropean-magazine.com. April 07, 2011.

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• The idealist regards facts as provisional.

  Mason Cooley

  Facts, Idealism, Regard

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• To say that a man is an idealist is merely to say that he is a man.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Life, Men

  Gilbert K. Chesterton (2013). “The Essential Gilbert K. Chesterton”, p.221, Simon and Schuster

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• A man given to vice is always an idealist.

  Georges Bernanos

  Men, Vices, Given

  Georges Bernanos (2000). “Monsieur Ouine”, p.61, U of Nebraska Press

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• Teachers are by nature idealists, and they believe anything can be learned.

  Susan Wiggs

  Teacher, Believe

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• The idealist and dreamer will stubbornly go down with the ship. The serial innovator grabs the rudder and changes course.

  Larry Osborne

  Dreamer, Ships, Rudders

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• Neither idealists nor materialists are right; we must take both idea and expression.

  Swami Vivekananda

  Expression, Ideas, Materialism

  Swami Vivekananda (2015). “The Complete Works of Swami Vivekananda”, p.3116, Manonmani Publishers

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• The opposite of an idealist is too often a man without love.

  Albert Camus

  Life, Men, Opposites

  Albert Camus (2012). “Happy Death”, p.133, Vintage

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• Every great man of business has got somewhere a touch of the idealist in him.

  Woodrow Wilson

  Business, Men, Commerce

  Woodrow Wilson (1972). “The Papers of Woodrow Wilson”

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• Living with a dog is easy- like living with an idealist.

  H. L. Mencken

  Dog, Easy, Canine

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• There aren't many idealists in politics.

  Evelyn Anthony

  Politics

  Evelyn Anthony (2015). “The Avenue of the Dead”, p.53, Open Road Media

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• The only option for a pure idealist is to commit suicide.

  Wu Guoguang

  Suicide, Suicidal, Commit

  "The Gate of Heavenly Peace". Frontline (TV Series), www.imdb.com. 1995.

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• The great German idealists from Kant to Hegel saw this idealism or nihilism as a reductio ad absurdum of any philosophy, and so they struggled by all conceptual means to avoid it.

  Frederick C. Beiser

  Philosophy, Mean, Nihilism

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

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• All societies are based on rules to protect pregnant women and young children. All else is surplusage, excrescence, adornment, luxury, or folly which can - and must - be dumped in emergency to preserve this prime function. As racial survival is the only universal morality, no other basic is possible. Attempts to formulate a "perfect society" on any foundation other than "Women and children first!" is not only witless, it is automatically genocidal. Nevertheless, starry-eyed idealists (all of them male) have tried endlessly - and no doubt will keep trying.

  Robert A. Heinlein

  Children, Luxury, Perfect

  Robert A. Heinlein (1987). “Time Enough for Love”, p.225, Penguin

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• I am an absurd idealist. But I believe that all that must come true. For, unless it comes true, the world will be laid desolate. And I believe that it can come true.

  Leslie Charteris

  Laughter, Believe, Fighting

  "The Last Hero".

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• These Utopian idealists like the Clintons who think they really do have the answers. They think they're following the best minds of their generation, but they're not the best minds. They don't realize that they may be the worst minds of their generation.

  Michael Savage

  Thinking, Mind, Generations

  Source: whale.to

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• Idealists, workers of thought, unite to show how inspiration and genius walk in step with the progress of the machine, of aircraft, of industry, of trade, of the sciences, of electricity.

  Filippo Tommaso Marinetti

  Inspiration, Progress, Genius

  "Futurism". Book edited by Didier Ottinger, p. 78, 2008.

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• I am an idealist. I often feel I would like to be an artist in an ivory tower. Yet it is imperative that I speak to people, so I must desert that ivory tower. To do this, I am a journalist - a photojournalist. But I am always torn between the attitude of the journalist, who is a recorder of facts, and the artist, who is often necessarily at odds with the facts. My principle concern is for honesty, above all honesty with myself.

  W. Eugene Smith

  Honesty, Attitude, Artist

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• On the silver screen, capitalists are usually vilified as greedy and heartless, while statists of every stripe are depicted as selfless, romantic idealists who only want to help people.

  Lawrence Reed

  People, Heartless, Stripes

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• The great crimes of the twentieth century were committed not by money-grubbing capitalists but by dedicated idealists. Lenin, Stalin, and Hitler were contemptuous of money. The passage from the nineteenth to the twentieth century has been a passage from considerations of money to considerations of power.

  Eric Hoffer

  Communism, Crime, Consideration

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• Cynic: an idealist whose rose-colored glasses have been removed, snapped in two and stomped into the ground, immediately improving his vision

  Rick Bayan

  Glasses, Two, Rose

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