Ideals Quotes - Page 31

• The religious is any activity pursued in behalf of an ideal end against obstacles and in spite of threats of personal loss because of its general and enduring value.

  John Dewey

  Religious, Loss, Religion

  John Dewey, Larry Hickman, Thomas M. Alexander (1998). “The Essential Dewey: Pragmatism, education, democracy”, p.410, Indiana University Press

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• The ideal man is his own best friend and takes delight in privacy.

  Aristotle

  Single, Men, Silence

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• Death is never sweet, not even if it is suffered for the highest ideal.

  Erich Fromm

  Death, Sweet, Ifs

  Erich Fromm (2013). “Escape from Freedom”, p.270, Open Road Media

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• Even if man's hunger and thirst and his sexual strivings are completely satisfied, 'he' is not satisfied. In contrast to the animal his most compelling problems are not solved then, they only begin. He strives for power or for love, or for destruction, he risks his life for religious, for political, for humanistic ideals, and these strivings are what constitutes and characterizes the peculiarity of human life.

  Erich Fromm

  Religious, Animal, Men

  Erich Fromm (2013). “Man for Himself: An Inquiry Into the Psychology of Ethics”, p.46, Routledge

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• It is sometimes said that the tragedy of an artist's life is that he cannot realise his ideal. But the true tragedy that dogs the steps of most artists is that they realise their ideal too absolutely. For, when the ideal is realised, it is robbed of its wonder and its mystery, and becomes simply a new starting-point for an ideal that is other than itself.

  Oscar Wilde

  Dog, Artist, Tragedy

  Oscar Wilde, General Press (2016). “The Complete Works of Oscar Wilde: Novel, Short Stories, Poetry, Essays and Plays”, p.824, GENERAL PRESS

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• The Ideal Man should talk to us as if we were goddesses, and treat us as if we were children. He should refuse all our serious requests, and gratify every one of our whims. He should encourage us to have caprices, and forbid us to have missions. He should always say much more than he means, and always mean much more than he says.

  Oscar Wilde

  Children, Mean, Men

  Oscar Wilde (1988). “The complete plays”, Methuen Drama

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• Of all the nations in the world, the United States was built in nobody's image. It was the land of the unexpected, of unbounded hope, of ideals, of quest for an unknown perfection. It is all the more unfitting that we should offer ourselves in images. And all the more fitting that the images which we make wittingly or unwittingly to sell America to the world should come back to haunt and curse us.

  Daniel J. Boorstin

  Land, America, Perfection

  Daniel J. Boorstin (1978). “The Image”

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• My ideal job? Landlord of a bordello! The company's good and the mornings are quiet, which is the best time to write.

  William Faulkner

  Morning, Jobs, Writing

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• I'm no idealist to believe firmly in the integrity of our courts and in the jury system -- that is no ideal to me, it is a living, working reality. Gentlemen, a court is no better than each man of you sitting before me on this jury. A court is only as sound as its jury, and a jury is only as sound as the men who make it up.

  Harper Lee

  Integrity, Believe, Reality

  To Kill a Mockingbird ch. 20 (1960)

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• Sprawl is the American ideal way to develop.

  Richard Lamm

  Way

  "The Next American System". Blueprint America Interview, www.pbs.org. May 20, 2009.

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• In our ideals we unwittingly reveal our vices.

  Jean Rostand

  Vices

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• When the men are silent, it is our duty to raise our voices in behalf of our ideals.

  Clara Zetkin

  Men, Voice, Silent

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• The gap between ideals and actualities, between dreams and achievements, the gap that can spur strong men to increased exertions, but can break the spirit of others -- this gap is the most conspicuous, continuous land mark in American history. It is conspicuous and continuous not because Americans achieve little, but because they dream grandly. The gap is a standing reproach to Americans; but it marks them off as a special and singularly admirable community among the world's peoples.

  George Will

  Dream, Strong, Men

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• We need new friends; some of us are cannibals who have eaten their old friends up; others must have ever-renewed audiences before whom to re-enact the ideal version of their lives.

  Logan Pearsall Smith

  Friendship, Old Friends, Needs

  Logan Pearsall Smith (1931). “Afterthoughts”

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• Now, to read poetry at all is to have an ideal anthology of one's own, and in that possession to be incapable of content with the anthologies of all the world besides.

  William Ernest Henley

  World, Anthology, Possession

  William Ernest Henley (1891). “Lyra Heroica: A Book of Verse for Boys”

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• Institutional psychiatry is a continuation of the Inquisition. All that has really changed is the vocabulary and the social style. The vocabulary conforms to the intellectual expectations of our age: it is a pseudo-medical jargon that parodies the concepts of science. The social style conforms to the political expectations of our age: it is a pseudo-liberal social movement that parodies the ideals of freedom and rationality.

  Thomas Szasz

  Vocabulary, Expectations, Political

  Thomas Stephen Szasz (1997). “The Manufacture of Madness: A Comparative Study of the Inquisition and the Mental Health Movement”, p.27, Syracuse University Press

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• The ideal life is in our blood and never will be still.

  Phillips Brooks

  Blood, Life Is, Ideal Life

  Phillips Brooks (1838). “Sermons”, p.35

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• Man, in the ideal, is so noble and so sparkling, such a grand and glowing creature, that over any ignominious blemish in him all his fellows should run to throw their costliest robes.

  Herman Melville

  Running, Men, Glowing

  Herman Melville (2008). “Moby-Dick”, p.127, Velvet Element Books

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• The ideal of happiness has always taken material form in the house, whether cottage or castle; it stands for permanence and separation from the world.

  Simone de Beauvoir

  Taken, Home, House

  Simone de Beauvoir (1953). “The second sex”, Vintage

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• Routine is the god of every social system; it is the seventh heaven of business, the essential component in the success of every factory, the ideal of every statesman. The social machine should run like clockwork.

  Alfred North Whitehead

  Running, Heaven, Essentials

  Alfred North Whitehead (1967). “Adventures of Ideas”, p.90, Simon and Schuster

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• I would like to sit still for a while but I'm restless you know and sitting still is only an ideal like celibacy and complete cleanliness.

  John Steinbeck

  Sitting Still, Celibacy, Cleanliness

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• Among other things, drag queens are living testimony to the way women used to want to be, the way some people still want them to be, and the way some women still actually want to be. Drags are ambulatory archives of ideal moviestar womanhood. They perform a documentary service, usually consecrating their lives to keeping the glittering alternative alive and available for (not-too-close) inspection.

  Andy Warhol

  Queens, Women, People

  "The Philosophy of Andy Warhol: From A to B and Back Again".

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• Solitude would be ideal if you could pick the people to avoid.

  Karl Kraus

  People, Solitude, Would Be

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• Who among us has not, in moments of ambition, dreamt of the miracle of a form of poetic prose, musical but without rhythm and rhyme, both supple and staccato enough to adapt itself to the lyrical movements of our souls, the undulating movements of our reveries, and the convulsive movements of our consciences? This obsessive ideal springs above all from frequent contact with enormous cities, from the junction of their innumerable connections.

  Charles Baudelaire

  Spring, Ambition, Cities

  Charles Baudelaire (2001). “The Prose Poems and La Fanfarlo”, p.30

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• I think the ideal situation for a family is to be completely incestuous.

  William S. Burroughs

  Family, Thinking, Situation

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