#idealism

For, after all, you do grow up, you do outgrow your ideals, which turn to dust and ashes, which are shattered into fragments; and if you have no other life, you just have to build one up out of these fragments. And all the time your soul is craving and longing for something else. And in vain does the dreamer rummage about in his old dreams, raking them over as though they were a heap of cinders, looking in these cinders for some spark, however tiny, to fan it into a flame so as to warm his chilled blood by it and revive in it all that he held so dear before, all that touched his heart, that made his blood course through his veins, that drew tears from his eyes, and that so splendidly deceived him! ↗

— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

#idealism #maturity #dreams

An idealist is one who, on noticing that a rose smells better than a cabbage, concludes that it will also make better soup. ↗

— H.L. Mencken

#idealism #idealist #food

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

Scratch the surface of most cynics and you find a frustrated idealist — someone who made the mistake of converting his ideals into expectations. ↗

— Peter M. Senge

#idealism #cynicism

A man is always devoted to something more tangible than a woman - the idea of her. ↗

— Bauvard

#humor #idealism #love #men-and-women #funny

We must rekindle the fire of idealism in our society. ↗

— Joe Biden

#idealism #must #our #rekindle #society

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

— Pearl S. Buck

#empty #hope #idealism #indeed #just

I've always wanted to play Don Quixote in some way. It's a great role. I think the idealism of the man shows that hope that we have in the human breast to achieve something. ↗

— Dominic Chianese

#always #don quixote #great #hope #human

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

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. ↗

— William Irwin Thompson

#because #chaos #dangerous #hysterical #idealism