There’s some basic ideals that we should be able to agree on as Americans: We don’t tolerate violence on our streets.
Robert Kennedy was such an inspiring figure. His interest in politics seemed to come not from a desire for power, but from a need to help our society live up to its ideals.
The American birthright belongs, potentially, to everyone. This is unprecedented. Other countries accept migrants on the basis of economic necessity or as a humanitarian gesture. Only in America is it the direct consequence of our foundational ideals.
The scenic ideals that surround even our national parks are carriers of a nostalgia for heavenly bliss and eternal calmness.
When I first started acting, I had all these ideals about the kinds of roles I wanted to play, but the reality is that when you do television – and I do a lot of television – you get cast for qualities that you have as a person. So I look for qualities that I like to portray.
It is people like Chandrashekhar Azad and Bhagat Singh who should be the ideals.
Mandela was true to himself, to his people and his principles. He sacrificed everything because he was prepared to be true to his ideals. You can relate to him whether you come from Manchester or Soweto.
It’s impossible to consider living without ideals. However, when ideas lead to ideology, that’s a very dangerous thing. Ideology then leads to creating the image of an enemy, and it leads to the murder and massacre that we’ve seen since the beginning of time.
It is the power of words and books – explaining and dramatizing great ideas and articulating high ideals – that is the greatest weapon in the missionary’s arsenal.
If I could create an ideal world, it would be an England with the fire of the Elizabethans, the correct taste of the Georgians, and the refinement and pure ideals of the Victorians.
The United States is truly remarkable, a nation founded on a set of Enlightenment ideals so beautifully expressed by the Declaration of Independence and codified in the U.S. Constitution. We should feel good about our ideals, even when we don’t quite manage to live up to them.
I do sometimes painful things to my body in an effort to conform to culturally imposed beauty ideals.
These are classic, perennial ideals we are dealing with.
In Henry Adams, I discovered not only the prototype of the modern thinker but also someone who is more interesting: a viper-toothed, puling, supercilious crank, thwarted in ambition, aging gracelessly, mad at the cosmos, and ashamed of his own jejune ideals. He is nevertheless very dear to me.
If you live a rebellious lifestyle, then you rebel against things because they go against your ideals and the integrity of who you are as a person.
For much of its history, Virginia, the ‘cradle of American democracy,’ failed to live up to our ideals. All too often, our Commonwealth still treats whites by one set of standards and people of color by another.
Libertarian socialism is properly to be regarded as the inheritor of the liberal ideals of the Enlightenment.
One of the very hallmarks of our nation is the ideal of E Pluribus Unum. It is a concept that richly flows from the highest ideals of our nation.
The stories a society tells about itself are a measure of how it values itself, the ideals of democracy, and its future.
Racism and bigotry should never fuel any administration’s policies. Calls to send anyone ‘back’ contradict who we should be as a country and the ideals for which we stand.
Ours is a circle of friendships united by ideals.
I think people are always going to say things about you or disapprove of your relationships or your ideals or your beliefs or something, but I think you have to stand up and stay strong in who you are and not let it affect you.
The truth is that the vast majority of Americans are good, fair, and just, and they want their country to reflect those ideals.
The extraordinary thing in all the versions of ‘Camelot’ and the Arthurian legend is that it’s all about the romance and the passion. It’s all about great ideals compromised by falling in love with the wrong person.
However great the exertion of our mind may be to comprehend the Divine Being or any of the ideals, we find a screen and partition between Him and ourselves. Thus the prophets frequently hint at the existence of a partition between God and us.
I’ve felt this real need to ground my work in my ideals.
I was raised Catholic… I fell in love with certain ideals.
Freedom of religion is a principle that is central to our Nation’s Declaration of Independence. Congress has taken this positive step to protect our freedom to express allegiance to America’s flag and the ideals it represents.
As a writer, I am an intellectual. I believe in the ideals of the Enlightenment, I believe in the written word, in dialogue and in truth. I hate lies more than anything else. Most of the time I react by writing.
Do not use that foreign word ‘ideals.’ We have that excellent native word ‘lies.’
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.
I want the State of Israel to remain a Zionist, Jewish and democratic state. There is nothing ‘far’ or ‘ultra’ about those ideals. I also advocate the creation of a viable Palestinian state.
I had faith in Israel before it was established, I have in it now. I believe it has a glorious future before it – not just another sovereign nation, but as an embodiment of the great ideals of our civilization.
Ideals are an imaginative understanding of that which is desirable in that which is possible.
If the United States is to be a beacon of hope around the world, our actions have to match our ideals.
And it seems to me important for a country, for a nation to certainly know about its glorious achievements but also to know where its ideals failed, in order to keep that from happening again.
Some men can live up to their loftiest ideals without ever going higher than a basement.
It is not that I believe ideals are unimportant, even among the realities of war; but if a nation is to survive in a hostile world, its ideals must be backed by the hard logic of military practicability.
Our ideals, laws and customs should be based on the proposition that each generation in turn becomes the custodian rather than the absolute owner of our resources – and each generation has the obligation to pass this inheritance on in the future.
Although I never publicly defended promiscuity, I never publicly attacked it. I attempted to avoid the subject, in part because I felt, and often still feel, unable to live up to the ideals I really hold.
It is a fine thing to establish one’s own religion in one’s heart, not to be dependent on tradition and second-hand ideals. Life will seem to you, later, not a lesser, but a greater thing.
Our country desperately needs a president with a depth of global experience and an understanding of all the elements of our nation’s power, from our economy and our diplomacy to the power of our ideals and our military, including its limitations.
I think it’s really terrifying that a country based on the foundations and ideals of God, is now systematically removing God from everything. Everything!
To have striven, to have made the effort, to have been true to certain ideals – this alone is worth the struggle.
One of the great strengths of the United States is… we have a very large Christian population – we do not consider ourselves a Christian nation or a Jewish nation or a Muslim nation. We consider ourselves a nation of citizens who are bound by ideals and a set of values.
A man of personality can formulate ideals, but only a man of character can achieve them.
If you live under a system that claims to have high ideals but seems ineradicably opposed to your own people’s flourishing, the desire for idealistic reform within the system has to coexist with an openness to more radical possibilities.
Cities can be places that represent the best of our ideals: where Americans of all different backgrounds can come together and, through their interactions, and even through their unity, spawn true American greatness.
Black Lives Matter organizers hold the same values of America’s age-old enemies, who have always fought the ideals of our Constitution and our nation. That they have now taken on as their costume a false concern for Black America only adds to their depravity.
Most of us are too enmeshed in communities to live our ideals. Outsiders have less to lose.
Each social formation, through each of its material activities, exerts its influence upon the civic whole; and each of its ideas and ideals wins also its place and power.
There’s no way in the world that the United States does not want to spread democratic ideals, but the first thing we have to do is that which is the interest of our security.
Our ideals are our better selves.
If all the rich and all of the church people should send their children to the public schools they would feel bound to concentrate their money on improving these schools until they met the highest ideals.
Except two or three parties, most parties are dependent on one family. I believe that only parties where internal democracy is alive can achieve the ideals of democracy.
