#ideal

We like to stress the commonness of heroes. Essences seem undemocratic. We feel oppressed by the call to greatness. We regard an interest in glory or perfection as a sign of mental unhealthiness, and have decided that high achievers, who are called overachievers, owe their surplus ambition to a defect in mothering (either too little or too much). We want to admire but think we have a right not to be intimidated. We dislike feeling inferior to an ideal. So away with ideals, with essences. The only ideals allowed are healthy ones -- those everyone may aspire to, or comfortably imagine oneself possessing. ↗

— Susan Sontag

#ambition #democracy #egalitarianism #equality #essence

To try to reform all the power structures at once would leave us with no power structure to use in our project. In any case, we will be able to see that absolute moral renewal could be attempted only by an absolute power and that a tyrannous force such as this must destroy the whole moral life of man, not renew it. ↗

— Michael Polanyi

#tyranny #life

I don't believe in superheroes but I love Batman movies. There's a part of every person that is entertained by the idealistic, the fantastic. ↗

— Aisha Tyler

#believe #entertained #every #fantastic #i

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. ↗

— Bertrand Russell

#ambiguities #avoided #been #experience #idealism

Life in common among people who love each other is the ideal of happiness. ↗

— George Sand

#among #common #each #ideal #life

When they come downstairs from their Ivory Towers, idealists are very apt to walk straight into the gutter. ↗

— Logan P. Smith

#come #downstairs #gutter #idealists #into

There is no proletarian, not even a Communist movement, that has not operated in the interests of money, and for the time being permitted by money - and that without the idealists among its leaders having the slightest suspicion of the fact. ↗

— Oswald Spengler

#being #communist #even #fact #having

An idealist believes the short run doesn't count. A cynic believes the long run doesn't matter. A realist believes that what is done or left undone in the short run determines the long run. ↗

— Sydney J. Harris

#count #cynic #determines #done #idealist

What we need most, is not so much to realize the ideal as to idealize the real. ↗

— Francis Herbert Hedge

#idealize #most #much #need #real

While we ourselves are the living graves of murdered animals, how can we expect any ideal living conditions on this earth? ↗

— George Bernard Shaw

#conditions #earth #expect #graves #how