Idealism Quotes

Idealism is fine, but as it approaches reality, the costs become prohibitive.

Our ideals are our better selves.

Much that passes as idealism is disguised hatred or disguised love of power.

Idealism without realism is impotent. Realism without idealism is immoral.

Ultimately, we measure ourselves against our own ideas of idealism and perfection, and we don't always come very close to them.

Wishes are recollections coming from the future.

The idealist walks on tiptoe, the materialist on his heels.

Idealism without pragmatism is impotent. Pragmatism without idealism is meaningless. The key to effective leadership is pragmatic idealism.

Cynics regarded everybody as equally corrupt... Idealists regarded everybody as equally corrupt, except themselves.

Idealism leads to realism if it is strictly thought out.

A visionary company doesn't simply balance between idealism and profitability: it seeks to be highly idealistic and highly profitable.

There is no force so democratic as the force of an ideal.

It is only for the sake of those without hope that hope is given to us.

We have to live and let live in order to create what we are.

I have never been an idealist - that implies you aren't going to achieve something.

The enemy of idealism is zealotry.

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

Idealism is the despot of thought, just as politics is the despot of will.

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

Idealism loses to pragmatism when it comes to winning elections.

It seems to be the fate of idealists to obtain what they have struggled for in a form which destroys their ideals.

I have always thought that foreign-policy idealism has to be tempered with realism.

It's important to start off with ideals, even if they become modified at some later stage.

Life without idealism is empty indeed. We just hope or starve to death.

We must rekindle the fire of idealism in our society.