Americans have been remarkably devoted to the capacity for belief, to idealism. That's why we get into trouble all the time. We're always viewed as naive.
A. Bartlett Giamatti
I think it is important for readers to know that it is possible to bring intellectualism and idealism to the White House and still be political enough to advance an agenda.
A. Scott Berg
This is why universities, and civil society more generally, are so important for a democracy like ours, founded on a genuine idealism that we have a hard time holding on to. They provide a space to question whatever we are doing in the name of things we say we believe in or might believe in.
Abhijit Banerjee
One thing I carried my whole life, especially from my grandparents in Chicago, was a huge idealism for the world.
Abigail Washburn
Idealism is the noble toga that political gentlemen drape over their will to power.
Aldous Huxley
For a spy novelist like me, the Edward J. Snowden story has everything. A man driven by ego and idealism - can anyone ever distinguish the two? - leaves his job and his beautiful girlfriend behind. He must tell the world the Panopticon has arrived. His masters vow to punish him, and he heads for Moscow in a desperate search for refuge.
Alex Berenson
No period of history has ever been great or ever can be that does not act on some sort of high, idealistic motives, and idealism in our time has been shoved aside, and we are paying the penalty for it.
Alfred North Whitehead
Idealism doesn't prevent problems.
Amy Morin
Over the past decade... while many businesses have pursued what I call 'business as usual,' I have been part of a different, smaller business movement, one that tried to put idealism back on the agenda.
Anita Roddick
Has Bill Clinton inspired idealism in the young, as he himself was inspired by John F. Kennedy? Or has he actually reduced their idealism? Surely part of the answer lies in Clinton's personal moral lapse with Monica Lewinsky. But more important was his sin of omission - his failure to embrace a moral cause beyond popularity.
Arlie Russell Hochschild
Good teachers have joined Presidency from different parts of the country and even abroad. We have got idealistic teachers, and we are relying on their idealism. But state universities pay their teachers less than the central ones. If salary is not on a par with central institutes, teachers would tend to leave for those places.
Ashoke Sen
When you have both parties who will not find ways to compromise, who won't meet in the middle, you have paralysis. It's the perversion of idealism.
Beau Willimon
Much that passes as idealism is disguised hatred or disguised love of power.
Bertrand Russell
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.
The common belief is that you are either a dreamer or a realist. But idealism and pragmatism aren't as far apart as one might think.
Bill de Blasio
Ideas are great arrows, but there has to be a bow. And politics is the bow of idealism.
Bill Moyers
In a weird kind of way, music has afforded me an idealism and perfectionism that I could never attain as me.
Billy Corgan
You see, idealism detached from action is just a dream. But idealism allied with pragmatism, with rolling up your sleeves and making the world bend a bit, is very exciting. It's very real. It's very strong.
Bono
The beauty and riddle in studying the motives of any politician is in trying to decide what is idealism and what is self-interest, and often we are left to conclude that the answer is a mixture of the two.
Boris Johnson
I think the idealism has always been marketing. Even back in the early days of Apple and the 'pirate' mentality, they were building a computer that they wanted to differentiate from IBM and Microsoft.
Brad Stone
It is not often that idealism of student days finds adequate opportunity for expression in the later life of manhood.
Every form of addiction is bad, no matter whether the narcotic be alcohol or morphine or idealism.
The sublimated idealism of the Enlightenment, the spirit of the League of Nations and of the United Nations Charter have not proved strong enough to control the aggressive dynamism of nationalism.
As I have pointed out, it is the Christian tradition that is the most fundamental element in Western culture. It lies at the base not only of Western religion, but also of Western morals and Western social idealism.
Idealism is like a castle in the air if it is not based on a solid foundation of social and political realism.
Some say there is no uniquely Canadian identity, that our multicultural fabric is too varied to establish a common thread. I disagree. My grandfather came to a country that celebrates diversity, embraces strife with compassion and respects selfless idealism.
Idealism loses to pragmatism when it comes to winning elections.
I liked the clear morality of 1941, when you had no doubt about good and evil. There was a lot of idealism, people fighting for a cause. People are searching for morality today.
A kiss is often about the future and the past. A lost dream, about the discretion of the idealism.
A lot of my idealism was frustrated by the end of the '60s because of the way things went with the assassinations and the sense that the political establishment was so fixed in its ways you couldn't change anything.
Idealism that makes no distinction between areas where our national interest lies and those from which it is remote does no good for America. The weariness of the post-Versailles, post-Korea, post-Vietnam eras is never far from the national mood.
I've always wanted to play Don Quixote in some way. It's a great role. I think the idealism of the man shows that hope that we have in the human breast to achieve something.
Britain rightly sees herself as a global good citizen, but she must reconcile ambition with power, ends with means - shedding utopian idealism in favour of a more rugged internationalism, putting the national interest first, not last.
Let hope inspire you, but let not idealism blind you. Don't look back, you can never look back.
Those who profess the faith of Life regard the ideals of mankind as an expression of man's higher needs. Ideals which were once incentives to development thus become a drag upon it whenever life's needs demand new forms that are not recognised by the prevailing idealism.
What you have now is a Hollywood that is pure poison. Hollywood was a central place in the history of art in the 20th century: it was human idealism preserved. And then, like any great place, it collapsed, and it collapsed into the most awful machinery in the world.
A lot of my writer friends - some of whom are brilliant - work when the Muse calls them, for lack of a better description. You know, days of nothing, then this creative burst where they write for 36 hours straight fueled by caffeine and idealism.
Too often, young people who are just bursting with idealism either find themselves playing a game for which they have little heart or are hurling themselves into wasteful protests against the so-called Establishment.
Perhaps women have always been in closer contact with reality than men: it would seem to be the just recompense for being deprived of idealism.
The Negro problem, like all other political problems, is fundamentally a moral issue. This is realism, not idealism. Those of my colleagues who believe that they are particularly 'hard boiled' because they overlook the fact that human beings are struggling for their consciences are simply unrealistic.
It is not materialism that is the chief curse of the world, as pastors teach, but idealism. Men get into trouble by taking their visions and hallucinations too seriously.
But it is well to remember that we are dealing with nations every one of which has a direct individual interest to serve, and there is grave danger in an unshared idealism.
For we, too, have our ideals, even if we differ from those who have tried to establish a monopoly of idealism.
Words without actions are the assassins of idealism.
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.
The energy of the Kennedy years was completely compelling... I had a sense of a generous society eager to change the world. Idealism was very contagious. So that's why I went to America. I didn't intend to stay.
I have seen in the Halls of Congress more idealism, more humanness, more compassion, more profiles of courage than in any other institution that I have ever known.
My parents are wonderful people and they instilled in me an idealism for which I'm grateful.
By concentrating on what is good in people, by appealing to their idealism and their sense of justice, and by asking them to put their faith in the future, socialists put themselves at a severe disadvantage.
Idealism springs from deep feelings, but feelings are nothing without the formulated idea that keeps them whole.
