Top 55 Idealism Quotes

The power of youth is the common wealth for the entire world. The faces of young people are the faces of our past, our present and our future. No segment in the society can match with the power, idealism, enthusiasm and courage of the young people.

Americans admire a people who can scratch a desert and produce a garden. The Israelis have shown qualities that Americans identify with: guts, patriotism, idealism, a passion for freedom. I have seen it. I know. I believe that.

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.

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.

In brief, egoism in its modern interpretation, is the antithesis, not of altruism, but of idealism.

We must rekindle the fire of idealism in our society.

Capitalism has proved its ability to adapt: at a time when so many younger people quite legitimately feel that the economic system doesn’t work for them, big business appealing to their sense of idealism is a savvy move.

The world will never have lasting peace so long as men reserve for war the finest human qualities. Peace, no less than war, requires idealism and self-sacrifice and a righteous and dynamic faith.

Idealism increases in direct proportion to one’s distance from the problem.

If you didn’t have some sense of idealism, then what is there to sustain you?

It is the style of idealism to console itself for the loss of something old with the ability to gape at something new.

Words without actions are the assassins of idealism.

Sometimes idealism and all that make believe makes the world a better place.

With so much to be aware of, awareness bracelets have reverted to signifying nothing more than color itself. Idealism has devolved into fashion.

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.

Idealism is the noble toga that political gentlemen drape over their will to power.

Let hope inspire you, but let not idealism blind you. Don’t look back, you can never look back.

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.

Joining the Liberal Party was a no-brainer for me… And when you are a young man, you don’t get a calculator out saying, ‘Am I going to get to power?’ You get propelled forward by idealism.

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.

True Americanism is practical idealism. Its aims, instead of being materialistic and mechanical, are idealistic to the point of being Utopian. In this way, the U.S. can provide and express ideals that strike a chord in humans everywhere – a declaration of independence on behalf of all the peoples of the world.

Every form of addiction is bad, no matter whether the narcotic be alcohol or morphine or idealism.

It is never wise to discourage youthful idealism.

Wishful thinking is not idealism. It is self-indulgence at best and self-exaltation at worst. In either case, it is usually at the expense of others. In other words, it is the opposite of idealism.

To me, one of the best faces America has ever projected is the face of a Peace Corps volunteer. That face symbolizes this country: young, curious, brimming with idealism and hope – and a real, honest compassion.

In a weird kind of way, music has afforded me an idealism and perfectionism that I could never attain as me.

Idealism springs from deep feelings, but feelings are nothing without the formulated idea that keeps them whole.

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.

Whether such socialism is foolish naivety or heroic idealism is a matter of opinion, but what is certain is that, however many CDs are sold or tours sold out, the sound waves themselves are free.

Idealism, unrealistic idealism, is always contrasted with the reality of the people, of the man in the street. The details of daily life are always more convincing than the political fantasies of the earlier generations.

Anyone driving great social change, willingly or not, is going to be a fascinating contradictory mix of idealism and ego.

There’s a certain kind of idealism attached to ‘Tusk’ as a subtext to the music, and I think people now can respond not only to how colorful and experimental it is, but also why it was made.

It is instructive, for instance, to trace the computer industry’s decline in vision, idealism, creativity, romance and sheer fun as it becomes more and more important and prosperous.

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.

Teens are passionate, questioning, curious, have a bit of the idealism I still cling to, and they’re making decisions for the first time that can alter the course of their lives – and sometimes, the course of the world.

America, to me, is this enormous contrast between the heady idealism of founding fathers such as Thomas Jefferson, who said, ‘All men are created equal,’ and the reality that he was himself a slave owner.

The other aspect of idealism is the one which gives us our notion of the absolute Self. To it the first is only preparatory. This second aspect is the one which from Kant, until the present time, has formed the deeper problem of thought.

I am a person of great faith and idealism and have been in too many situations too many times to become an eternal pessimist regarding politics.

Twenty-year-olds have a kind of emotional idealism about relationships and about the world that enables them to say, ‘No, you lied to me. Goodbye.’ When they see wickedness, they walk away.

Idealistic reformers are dangerous because their idealism has no roots in love, but is simply a hysterical and unbalanced rage for order amidst their own chaos.

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.

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.

If you want to accomplish something in the world, idealism is not enough – you need to choose a method that works to achieve the goal.

I think a lot of people start out full of idealism and fresh ideas. And then a lot of times, being re-elected becomes more important than staying true to your principles.

Any idealism is a proper subject for art.

I have this memory of being 15 years old, sitting with a friend on the steps of a little bookstore on Bloor Street in Toronto and saying, ‘I’ll never take money for my writing!’ I had such idealism about this idea of trading your soul for money.

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.

At present, our country needs women’s idealism and determination, perhaps more in politics than anywhere else.

America is exceptional in combining standard great-power realism with extravagant idealism about the country’s redemptive role in creating international order.

When I first ran for public office, it was with the passion and idealism of a young man who believed that government could help make our lives better, that public service was a calling and that citizenship demanded responsibilities. There was a greater good.

One thing I carried my whole life, especially from my grandparents in Chicago, was a huge idealism for the world.

It is foolish to view realism and idealism as incompatible or to consider our power and wealth as encumbered by the demands of justice, morality, and conscience.

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.

The romantic idealism of my youth has been replaced with realism and hard work at what I love.

I see history as really cyclical in terms of the intense idealism and the desire to create a better life outside of societal norms. In America, possibly because of whatever the American dream is, this happens over and over again. These eras repeat.