#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. ↗

— Thomas Sowell

#case #either #expense #idealism #in other words

Lincoln, considering a Cabinet nominee: "He is a Radical without the petulance and fretfulness of many radicals. ↗

— Doris Kearns Goodwin

#compromise #idealism #attitude

As long as the vision of heaven is always changing, the vision of earth will be exactly the same. No ideal will remain long enough to be realized, or even partly realized. The modern young man will never change his environment; for he will always change his mind. ↗

— G.K. Chesterton

#heaven #idealism #progress #change

Being an idealist is not being a simpleton; without idealists there would be no optimism and without optimism there would be no courage to achieve advances that so-called realists would have you believe could never come to fruition. ↗

— Alisa Steinberg

#optimism #realists #courage

Perhaps one day, all these conflicts will end, and it won't be because of great statesmen or churches or organisations like this one. It'll be because people have changed. They'll be like you, Puffin. More a mixture. So why not become a mongrel? It's healthy. ↗

— Kazuo Ishiguro

#conflict #enlightenment #family #harmony #idealism

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

It has generally been assumed that of two opposing systems of philosophy, e.g., realism and idealism, one only can be true and one must be false; and so philosophers have been hopelessly divided on the question, which is the true one. ↗

— Morris Raphael Cohen

#be true #been #divided #false #generally

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

— Billy Corgan

#attain #could #i #idealism #kind

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. ↗

— Alfred North Whitehead

#aside #been #does #ever #great

Words without actions are the assassins of idealism. ↗

— Herbert Hoover

#assassins #idealism #without #words