20 quotes about ideals

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A map of the world that does not include Utopia is not worth even glancing at, for it leaves out the one country at which Humanity is always landing.

Ideals

PoetIrish1854 · 19th century

4.6 · 29 votes

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An idealist is a person who helps other people to be prosperous.

Ideals

BusinessmanAmerican1863 · 19th century

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An idealist is one who, on noticing that a rose smells better than a cabbage, concludes that it is also more nourishing.

Ideals

Henry Louis Mencken

JournalistAmerican1880 · 19th century

3.6 · 39 votes · 111 reads

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I am an idealist. I don't know where I'm going but I'm on my way.

Ideals

PoetAmerican1878 · 19th century

4.7 · 54 votes

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I have long been convinced that my artistic ideal stands or falls with Germany. Only the Germany that we love and desire can help us achieve that ideal.

MusicianGerman1813 · 19th century

4.0 · 60 votes · 116 reads

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If you are going to build something in the air it is always better to build castles than houses of cards.

Ideals

Georg C. Lichtenberg

ScientistGerman1742 · 18th century

5.0 · 40 votes

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Instead of killing and dying in order to produce the being that we are not, we have to live and let live in order to create what we are.

Ideals

NovelistFrench1913 · 20th century

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

Ideals

WriterAustrian1874 · 19th century

3.0 · 45 votes · 145 reads

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Man is born a predestined idealist, for he is born to act. To act is to affirm the worth of an end, and to persist in affirming the worth of an end is to make an ideal.

Ideals

Oliver Wendell Holmes

AuthorAmerican1809 · 19th century

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Many have dreamed up republics and principalities that have never in truth been known to exist; the gulf between how one should live and how one does live is so wide that a man who neglects what is actually done for what should be done learns the way to s

Ideals

Napoleon Bonaparte

PoliticianFrench1769 · 18th century

3.4 · 32 votes · 118 reads

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No folly is more costly than the folly of intolerant idealism.
Winston Churchill
PoliticianBritish1874 · 19th century
3.1 · 5 votes · 109 reads
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Our ideals are our better selves.
Amos Bronson Alcott
EducatorAmerican1799 · 18th century
3.4 · 26 votes · 64 reads
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Our ideals, like pictures, are made from lights and shadows.
Joseph Joubert
French1754 · 18th century
3.0 · 16 votes · 37 reads
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Some day the soft Ideal that we wooed confronts us fiercely, foe-beset, pursued, and cries reproachful: ''Was it then my praise, and not myself was loved? Prove now thy truth; I claim of thee the promise of thy youth.''
James Russell Lowell
PoetAmerican1819 · 19th century
3.7 · 49 votes · 185 reads
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Some men can live up to their loftiest ideals without ever going higher than a basement.
Terence
PoetRoman
3.0 · 37 votes · 195 reads
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The actual well seen is ideal.
Thomas Carlyle
WriterBritish1795 · 18th century
4.9 · 47 votes · 10 reads
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The ideal, without doubt, varies, but its enemies, alas, are always the same.
Jean Rostand
PhilosopherFrench1894 · 19th century
4.6 · 43 votes · 187 reads
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The idealist is incorrigible: if he is thrown out of his heaven he makes an ideal of his hell.
Friedrich Nietzsche
WriterGerman1844 · 19th century
4.8 · 11 votes · 28 reads
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The true ideal is not opposed to the real but lies in it; and blessed are the eyes that find it.
James Russell Lowell
PoetAmerican1819 · 19th century
3.3 · 27 votes · 114 reads
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Why should we strive, with cynic frown, to knock their fairy castles down?
Eliza Cook
AuthorEnglish1818 · 19th century
3.8 · 41 votes · 110 reads
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